The Puppetmaster

I wonder if the people who write rave reviews of this movie have actually ever sat down and watched it? I wonder if the director of this film has ever watched any movies himself--except his own. Everything about it is wrong--except maybe the actors are ok--but not very interesting or involving to watch.

Jeeze, whoever decided, out of the blue, to declare Hou Hsiao-hsien a master filmmaker was really pushing it. Those who chose to believe that opinion are even more guilty. I don't want to declare that he's untalented. I did truly like Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness, no matter how flawed I found them to be. The Puppetmaster is an enormous step in the wrong direction, more like the atrocious A Time to Live, a Time to Die than the two I actually tolerated. Hou's just not especially talented. People praise him to high heaven, claiming that his style is incredibly unique. Let me diagram his directorial technique: 1. Static long shots with few movements and few close ups. 2. His shots are often framed by doorways and the like. 3. Many landscape shots. 4. Characters in a scene often remain out of sight for a long time at the beginning of a scene, which confounds the audience when a visible character is talking to or interacting with them. 5. Loose narrative structure. 6. The subject of his films is most often Taiwanese history, often radiating from the tumultuous period of the WWII era. That's it. There is not one thing on this list that hasn't been done before and much better, whether Asian or Western (well, maybe the thing about Taiwanese history, but plenty of great filmmakers have illuminated their own country's history). The combination of several of these factors (and no more) is a recipe for insomnia medication. His cinema is about as limiting as cinema can get, reminscent of pre-Griffith cinema, where filmmakers never thought to move their camera or give a close-up of anything. The effects are all de-dramatizing, which is extraordinarily pointless. As Pauline Kael once said, if films aren't supposed to be entertaining, then what are they supposed to be? Torture? I know what Hou's answer would be.

Sorry. I went a bit too far with that last paragraph. The Puppetmaster does have its great moments, mostly coming in two forms: theatrical performances (puppet plays and opera) and one-on-one interviews with the Puppetmaster himself, Li Tien-lu, where he tells long and rambling stories - long and rambling, but very interesting and entertaining - about his life. The rest of the film is made up of accounts of the events he's talking about acted out on screen. Some are good, some are bad, but none of them are inherently interesting. Since these episodes are only tenuously connected to the past and the future, there is absolutely no weight to these scenes. This is particularly pathetic, because the real Li Tien-lu was the best part of both Dust in the Wind and City of Sadness. I would have been infinitely more contented to just watch the interviews without the sketches, because Li is a beautiful human being (not to mention a marvelous actor) whose face, body movements, and tone of voice communicate infinitely more than the motionless actors and actresses who are insultingly acting out his life experiences.

And people who would like to deify this director and, consequently, want to crucify me, check out my other tastes: if you want to jump to the conclusion that I'm a brainless American who needs his movies fast, chew on a few of my favorite films that 99% of the population would find as slow as molasses: 2001, anything by Andrei Tarkovsky, anything by Antonioni, most things by Bergman, My Dinner with Andre, Dreyer's sound films (Ordet, Day of Wrath, and Gertrud), Rhapsody in August, The Decalogue, and The Dreamlife of Angels, for starters. How about those who would criticize me for not liking loose narratives? Godard is one of my very favorite filmmakers. And seeing that The Puppetmaster was supposedly improvised, at least in the editing room, I happen to love Pierrot le fou, Godard's film where he, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Anna Karina grabbed a camera and went out on the road, improvising an entire film (as rumor has it). And if this is all Hou could come up with if he came into this film not having an idea what he was going to make, Fellini did the same thing with 8 1/2, and that is one of the ten best films ever made, in my opinion. Now how come I don't love this master's films? The answer is simple, methinks: he's no master.

I have very stubbornly stuck with a different Hou film every Friday for a month now, and he has revealed little or nothing to me about the human condition or the nature of filmmaking. Seeing that the showings are free, I'm not going to skip them. However, I can breathe a huge sigh of relief that there is a two week break in this particular series. 5/10 for The Puppetmaster.

This movie is truely a puppet show: If I remember correctly the camery doesn't move even once - just a dozen or so cuts, each depicting one scene with a different set-up, each scene remaining for several minutes. Persons move through the scenerey: sometimes you see someone doing something, sometimes you even recognize what he is doing. After a while you realize the same persons appear in different scenes. Even later you start picking up the story. Yes, there is a story, even though noone explains anything, hardly any word is said (was there a word at all? Maybe even not). all your concentration is needed to find out what is going on. The audience finds itself in the situation of an ethnographer meeting for the first time some unknown group of people, trying to find out something about them. The scenes, which initially seemed to keep on forever suddenly appear to change much too fast - you might be able to understand more, if they kept on longer.

Once you get into this movie, it is pure gold. If you want action, even one minute of The Puppetmaster will bore you to death.

As a film detailing a period of history through the experiences of a family, THE PUPPETMASTER is very similar to HEIMAT. By using an acting troupe as the narrative and thematic focus of this history, it resembles THE TRAVELLING PLAYERS and FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. Stylistically though, it couldn't be further apart. Unlike the character drama of the first, the elegant, complicated camerawork of the second or the intense emotionalism of the last, THE PUPPETMASTER is a rigidly formal work, breathtaking to look at, baffling to understand, eventually oppressive to watch.

The main narrative concerns the life story of the title character, up until the end of World War II - his story parallels the occupation of his country, Taiwan, by Japan. Interspersed between highly stylised and composed dramatisations of his life are interviews with the man himself as an old man.

Although Hao's other films share a similar aesthetic (including the marvellous A CITY OF SADNESS), it is the puppetmaster's profession that shape the look of the film. He puts on elaborate puppet shows; and in the same way his little theatre looks like a cinema screen, Hao's film is less a fluid narrative than a series of tableaux vivants. I think there are only two camera movements in the entire film. Each scene is elaborately composed - decor overwhelms the characters, with masses of pillars, frames and characters dwarfing any individuality. There are hardly any close-ups, and such is the visual clutter, and the sombre lighting it is often shot through, that it's often hard to make out which character is which. The direction is highly distanced and artificial, letting these characters, like rats in a trap, blindly blunder, unable to find an exit.

Any perceived objectivity in this style is deliberately illusory, and it is clear that the protagonist is not the only puppetmaster. Hao's strings are rarely unfelt, and behind the domestic traumas and bildungsroman narrative is a bitter denunciation of the effects of colonialism, and rigid hierarchical societies. Much of the entrapment of environment is linked to the traditional repressions of Taiwanese family life, with its absurd rituals of family nomenclature, masculine honour, and arranged marriages, which allow free rein to domestic brutality and the corruption of decency.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the Taiwanese become such willing quislings, deference and anonymity being a familiar part of everyday life. The puupetmaster is deeply implicated in this, being a prominent, and officially valued member of cultural propagandist groups. Much of the local and symbolic detail was shamefully alien to me, so I obviously lost much, and maybe Li's plays - generous, enthralling excerpts of which appear at crucial points of the film - have a hidden subversion lost to the ignorant viewer.

What isn't lost is a remarkable visual sensibility which often speaks for characters who can't. The historical saga is compelling, and the puppetmaster's life is often moving. The recourse to storytelling and an almost scientific faith in superstition and magic gives the film a feel of magic realism. It's just that by the second half of the film, you're throwing things at your TV, just to get the blasted screen to move.

Life in Taiwan during and shortly after the Japanese occupation (1895-1945) as seen by re-enacting episodes from the life of a hand puppeteer. The film includes selections from several puppet plays and some Chinese Opera scenes as well.

Episodic and can be hard to follow for those without a knowledge of Taiwan history and customs. Beautifully shot with very nice sets, costumes and exteriors.