Critiques

My students have been writing critiques of plays and movies and, again, this has been a wonderful learning experience for me. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that "The Truman Show" is popular here, at least for those who download it from tudou.com.
I've also learned about some new plays, such as “Madame Bovary is Me.” Here's an excerpt from a student review.

The drama, in 15 acts, shows the dilemmas women face in modern life, mixed with the original plot of the novel "Madame Bovary." On the modern side, audiences can easily recognize caricatures of popular stars from actors/actresses' exaggerated performances. The 15 acts are performed in the form of TV talk shows. On the classical side, paragraphs of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" are recited by performers between scenes, which brings audiences back to 19th century France.

Why does it link modern life with "Madame Bovary"?

"Everyone is Madame Bovary," playwright Edward Lam said in an interview published on a website promoting the play. "It doesn't matter whether you have read the novel or not. You can find such kind of woman everywhere now and 150 years ago, who are always filling their happiness and love with endless fantasy."

Lam gives the fantasy a more definite meaning in the drama--desire. "One day in 2006, I saw, in a subway station, countless ads were luring woman to go shopping. Modern society is eroding women. They love beauty by nature, but not all can achieve it. Once they have immersed themselves into the created dreams, they keep thinking it can become their everyday life. Ads and the media suggest beauty is every woman's right, but all are based on money. I hope women can understand they can gain their identity by other methods."

Lam attracts audiences with the imitations of popular stars and TV shows. The parodies are hilarious. For example, female stars like Chiling Lam, Jolin Tsai, Faye Wong, and popular TV shows like "Kangxi has come" and "Everybody Speaks Nonsense" are represented in this drama. Lam uses well-known figures and stories to represent the possible styles of a modern Madame Bovary.

Lam insists that modern media have a great influence on women. TV programs focus on female audiences. They cover everything women are concerned with, such as hairdressing, cuisine, housework, and stories about stars. Women have gradually relied more and more on the media. And the media, hand in hand with advertising, erode women’s values by creating a beautiful dream. In contrast, Lam has created absurd scenarios, where stars have common people's desire, weaknesses and sorrows. It serves as a mirror, from which women can recognize their common dilemmas beneath the shining surface produced by the media.

To some extent, dilemmas shown in "Madame Bovary is Me" are not just for women. Several female characters are acted by men.. It may hint that men and women are facing similar puzzles. Since all of us are living in a society full of temptation, the question "Am I lost in desire?" is not just for women.


Below is part of a critique of a film titled "The Equation of Love and Death":

"We are not attractive and no one cares about us,", said Lee Mi at the end of the film. Both Fang Wen and she are abandoned by the mainstream of the society, and their love is suspended under great pressure from their parents. Actually, the narrative perspective of the characters in the film demonstrates the fate of the poor and underprivileged in this changing society. Their anxiety about their status, their dreams and struggle to win social recognition and their pursuit of true love are all discouraged by cruel reality. In short, they can not control themselves and nobody cares about them, so they can only care about themselves, rescue themselves, or even exile themselves.
I think Lee Mi and Fang Wen’s story is a tragedy. On the one hand, the tragedy reflects the suffering of disillusioned people; on the other hand, the tragedy makes us respect their hopes. This movie warns us that there are some marginal groups whose upper mobility is cut off in our society.

And here's an excerpt from a critique of "XIAOWU":

Finally, it is the real relationship between people displayed through XiaoWu in the Fenyang town that shocked us most.
The silence and embarrassment when XiaoWu gave the gift to Xiaoyong, the secret war between XiaoWu and HuMeiMei on the street, his father’s request for XiaoWu to donate five thousand yuan to finance the marriage of the second brother, and the home warmth between senior police and XiaoWu. These never appeared in other Chinese films, but they are so real and met with what we see in real life. They always occur in many corners of society, and they are deep- rooted in social life, rooted in our social ways and habits. Once they were put on screen, we got unprecedented shock and experience.
Now, people are accustomed to classify JiaZhangke as one of the sixth generation directors born in the 90s such as ZhangXiaoshuai andJiangWen. Their style is different from the fifth generation, such as ZhangYimou and ChenKaige. The fifth generation directors put the ethnic customs and the imagery of ancient China into the international film word, with a nation-state knot(???).
The Sixth-generation directors follow traditional realism, but make a new interpretation of realism at the same time: they demonstrate the political enthusiasm in the producing; they pay attention to the theme of urban young people's political beliefs, ideals and the suspicion of so-called ultimate concern, the dissatisfaction and confusion in the future; the leading actors of films are often marginal in our lives.
The new generation directors describe young people’s lives with distinct personal insight and experience. They choose the flowing live tide(??) to reflect the main situation of the society, and strong youth soliloquy and personal tensile force(???) can be seen in the film.
XIAOWU is Jia’s classical work. It is full of reminiscence. It tells the story about common people’s lives and their emotion. It appropriately illuminates the style of the new generation in their early days.. So XIAOWU is the magnum opus of the sixth generation’s works.