The Great Buddha+

The depiction of the lowlife feels very real- their timidness, their very limited, non-imaginative desire and their quiet desperation. The black and white for the poor and the color for the rich adds to the contrast of lifestyles of social classes on the extremes. Yet interestingly, I don't think the film is trying to make people angry in any sense. It just make you feel, 'that's the way it is'.

Mixed with the realness is the symbolism shown in the film. I think it's best that viewers not try it too hard to put logic into every plot of the film, but just accept it as an artistic expression .

With black and white literary films, in fact, the story is quite ordinary, but the reaction of the bottom life is very ordinary and real. Actors also grasp the characteristics of the characters, so every character seems to live around.

This is just a so-so film, pretentiously made like what Federico Fellini did long time ago in black and white. The storyline was not that interesting, struggling local lowlives vs the local rich and powerful. There're a two deadbeats, a buddha manufacturer, and a bunch of go-betweens. The main dialog in this extremely localized Taiwanese film used the Chinese southern Fu-Kien Province dialect widely spoken in Taiwan, but the high ratio of using the localized obscene curse often related to everybody's mother being raped or violated was so high, it almost covered and appeared in most of the dialog.

The Chinese title of this film was using the pronouncing tone of "Plus", i.e. POO-LA-S(ending sound of S) as "+". There were two murders in this film(didn't feel like a spoiler at all), one witnessed by the two main deadbeats, one was not witnessed but highly suspicious committed by the same person who did the first one. The "+" after "The Great Buddha" title hinted there's something more about this Buddha or in it; it's a plus, buy one get one free. The obscure mix-up similar pronunciations of the Latino "Puta" as well as "Buddha" was the high point of the creativity of the screenplay dialog.

But alas, here's the illogic kick:

A Dead Body is a Dead Weight, there' no way to be handled by just one guy to dispose it, albeit it needed to be lifted and raised so high over the Buddha's neck opening single handed without help, even a normally strong and young guy couldn't do it, not a weak past prime middle aged baldy alcoholic, especially just finished a fornication.

The "Buddha" manufactured in this film is a symbol of absurdity and the phony faith of the Buddhism in Taiwan. It's just a money-making religion, some monks used the Buddha to make a living, some politicians used this almost always Sitting Guy to fool and gain the votes. The Buddhism is so shamelessly commercialized in Taiwan, China and the South-east Asia.

You need patience to watch to the end, 'cause the tempo of this film is so slow and so predictable. The Narrative voice also made this film a not quite serious one, just with an overly used way to help telling a not-so-interesting story. This narration way is also widely used in Korean movies.

Watching this in the UK probably meant most of the subtle Taiwanese life references went over my head and whilst there is humour in the film, I didn't laugh once. The story centres around 2 struggling lowlife misfits where one is a night security guard at a Buddha statue factory and the other a refuse recycling collector. It's a sort of bizarre snapshot of a series of events. There's a theme of vulnerability and exploitation, references to faith and local culture. It's mostly filmed in Black and White and is unusual in having the director intervening occasionally with a narration. The film manages to hold a certain mood, it's filmed in an interesting way and is as they say 'different'.

My rating: 6/10 and only that high for it's absurdity. Recommended for the art-house crew. Beware there isn't much of a cohesive story to this and the trailer is made up from some very carefully selected scenes.

You never know what secret is hiding under someone's skin. The black humor of the place is interesting to present the local style, but also the bleak reality of sarcasm. Crime and punishment are casually spread out in many aspects, and events are comprehensively described in terms of trivial details. It's ironic, and at the same time appropriately sentimental.