Big Shots Beerdigung

I don't know how anyone can fail to see - this satire is hip and wicked to the bone. Not at all a mainstream Chinese production you would expect!

The closest comparison for this baby would be to _Diva_, but for its viciously funny stab at dot-com money madness, there's no equal.

Within all the whirling satire, Donald Sutherland held down the movie's emotional anchor admirably. He made the movie more than just an average comedy. And the way director Feng used him showed me that China today can make films as sophisticated as any in the world. He made Zhang Yimou and Ang Lee look utterly out-of-date and irrelevent.

Dear movie fans,if you are not Chinese, please ask Chinese for the reason why they like to watch it.

In China, this movie is for the celebration of the New Year 2003, when a lot of people will go to the cinema, so it is a comedy for sure. And it satirizes a phenomenon that in China only bragging could take attention of people, and then make big money, so some people takes advantage of the funeral of the big shot to advertise. That's a movie for laugh and think when you leave the cinema, almost everyone in China talked about it at that time,

Thanks.

Puzzled?

Do you like to be puzzled? Do you like movies having a surprise ending?

Then it is a must to watch " Big Shot's Funeral" - a film about the difficult matter of making films. Sounds serious- but it isn't, in fact it is pretty funny.

Film within a Film

A documentary cameraman Yo-Yo(Ge You)is hired to document the way a fabulously successful director Don Tyler (Donald Sutherland) is remaking Bertulucci's movie "The Last Emperor". During the process of work the director feels more and more uninspired, if not disillusioned.

When understanding comes without Language

Lucy (Rosamund Kwan), his personal assistant tries hard to keep him going, but in a strange way Yo-Yo having no command of English touches him and arouses his interest. Due to a misunderstanding ( Lucy is trying to mediate between the two men) Tyler catches the idea that in China even a funeral is a comical event and asks Yo-Yo to arrange something like that for him just in case of his death.

To Be or Not to Be

When the director goes into coma, Yo-Yo starts immediately to arrange the whole thing. He approaches King ( Ying Da), a blond Chinese concert promoter, to make up the event as a gigantic media spectacle. How to finance such a comedy funeral? No big deal - product placement will help. When all space is sold - Tyler recovers, which clearly means that Yo-Yo is in big trouble and the film has to come to an end. The puzzle is solved in a surprising way - go and find out yourself.

As You Like It

For sure you won't regret going to the movies although you will not learn so much about China or Chinese culture and life styles. This film turns out to be a satire on media, commercialism and "Big Shots". And for all those who don't want to do without love - you do not have to.

Written by: Eva Behrendt, Dorothea Maurer, Martina Koepp, Karin Schmidt-

participants of the Berlinale- film - workshop "At the Movies",2002

I didn't believe the guy in the DVD shop down the street when he recommended this "black comedy", I'm generally not a big fan of Chinese humor. But he assured me that this was the first film of its kind in China, and so I bought it in spite of my reservations. After watching Big Shot's Funeral I'm really glad that I gave it a chance.

This movie was so much funnier than i thought it would be! First of all, it stars one of the best comic actors out there, You Ge (YoYo). He's got the deadpan delivery down pat. Second, the whole scenario of Sutherland's character as a director staging a new version of The Last Emperor was hilarious, from the eroticized woman ostensibly giving birth, to the child actor drinking his cola - subversively funny commentary on Orientalism and commercialism. Then we get to watch as YoYo completely immerses himself in planning a ridiculously extravagant funeral for a guy who a) he barely knows, and b) isn't dead yet! Seriously, that's a great comic premise in any language.

My main complaint about this film is Rosamund Kwan's character (Lucy). She just didn't seem to fit, and about halfway through the film I started to get really annoyed with her as her actions didn't seem to make any sense at all.

Not that this movie is really supposed to make sense, it's just that in the farcical scheme of things Lucy seemed to kill all the fun. The other thing is that the last 10 or 15 minutes of the film didn't really work at all; it's almost like the director couldn't figure out how to wrap things up so he just threw together a bizarre collection of scenes without bothering to relate them to the rest of the film. But these kinds of problems aren't a big deal in a movie that's not to be taken seriously in the first place. I would especially recommend it to foreign viewers who are only used to stuff by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige; Big Shot's Funeral is a nice contrast to all those Very Serious movies set in the Very Distant past.

Years ago my high school economics teacher held up a tin toy car with wooden wheels. It was the typical Japanese product of its day. "Beware of people who can do this," he told us. The class did not understand his words until he turned the car over to reveal that it had been made from a Schlitz beer can. The rest of Japanese ingenuity and production is history.

The movie Da wan (Big Shot's Funeral) carries a similar message. Though they may be behind, the Chinese can catch on quickly, particularly to the world of Madison Avenue as illustrated by this hilarious movie where hype and commercialism run amok. This movie reminds me of the 50's si/fi novel "Space Merchants" (Gravy Planet) by Pohl and Kornbluth in which an ad agency gets the exclusive rights to advertise products on the planet Venus. The unconscionable excess on both Venus and in China say much about us as consumers who would rather be entertained than informed.

Sutherland, always good, is excellent here. I am confident the low rating for this film is because of its subtitles, but they are not a bother and are part of the humor.