Ostap Carmody. Cardboard tiger

Cardboard tiger
Ostap Carmody

Publication date: March 12, 2001

There are bad films that, as a Moscow film critic, one cannot help but praise. Moreover, if you are a Moscow film critic, you should love these films with all your heart. And absolutely sincerely.

Such films have one thing in common - they show Hollywood a fig, while being on its “playing field”. The last striking example was "Blood Simple" - a frankly drawn-out student film that caused a flurry of rave reviews for the main reason that it was made by the Coen brothers, naughty Hollywood children who allow themselves (and in all their other films - very successfully) to deviate from Big Style, while remaining in line with the mainstream. also belongs to the same “untouchable” films Crouching Tiger, Invisible Dragon .

Hollywood films can be blamed for anything. The main complaints made are the stupidity of the plot and the mediocrity of the philosophy being promoted. But one thing cannot be taken away from them - they are all, at least those that make it into the top twenty, professionally filmed. Any Hollywood cameraman knows how to make every frame of his film beautiful, not “brilliant” or even “original,” but simply beautiful. Any production designer can build impressive sets. Any director needs to build a mise-en-scène. There may be no idea in the film, but the film will still be a pleasure to watch - simply because it is made professionally. In a way that neither European nor, especially, Russian directors have yet learned to film. The way they have been able to film in China for 10-15 years now. Any film by Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige is made very well - by Hollywood standards. Costumes, scenery, movements of the masses in the frame, camera work - everything is worked out and calculated. These films would have been popular in the States, but the stories that interested Yimou, Kaige and other, younger, Chinese directors were absolutely not of interest to the American public. What does she care about the Shanghai triads, unless they get involved in the California drug business, and, moreover, about the tragic story of the seventh concubine of the third holder of the imperial shoe? Americans know from the cradle that the Chinese should make films about kung fu. But films about kung fu are a mass product, like the series “Cops,” and all the “pretty things” for the time being simply took up precious time from its creators.

And now Taiwanese Ang Lee, who has already proven himself in Hollywood , finally made a film that wonderfully combines three qualities - it is Chinese, professionally made and about kung fu. Until now, Americans have faced difficult choices. On the one hand, watch how, albeit beautifully, white people, in whom there is no trust, wave their legs. White people, as a schoolboy knows, can’t jump. On the other hand, enjoy “real kung fu” performed by the Chinese, but filmed a blunder in fast forward, so that before the evening you can do two more and have time to visit your sick mother in Guangzhou. And now you can watch something filmed at the level of Hollywood standards and “real”. Because every schoolchild knows that the Chinese can swing their legs for real - no editing is required. The result is a very good box office, even for an American film, and 10 Oscar nominations . Of course, its native Hollywood hit is a huge success in Southeast Asia. Of course, the film, which showed these arrogant Yankees their true place, will receive excellent reviews from the Russian film press, which loves everything “independent”.

In fact, the film is, of course, not independent. He does not pose any challenge to the bourgeois public, does not discover any new methods of editing, and does not intend to correspond to any “real life”. In all respects, except for the native language and skin color of the actors, the film is Hollywood. And it must be judged according to the criteria that are used to evaluate Hollywood cinema. And judging by these criteria, the film turns out to be, to put it mildly, mediocre.

Denis Gorelov, it seems, said that critics should be thrown to the wall for the phrase “the plot of the film is simple.” Sorry, Denis, but the plot of this film is not just simple, but indecently simple. Throughout the two hours of on-screen action, several characters try to take a magic sword from each other. Why they need it so much remains unclear - all of them, as practice shows, get by just as well as regular ones. In addition, the characters love each other in pairs. One of the love lines, between the older characters, is so poorly developed that it is unclear why it is even present in the film. The second - between the young heroes - could, if the director had paid more attention to it, form the basis of a good melodrama. But it didn't have enough space to swing a leg well, let alone a sword, and the writer abandoned it halfway through. In addition, all the heroes fighting for the sword are positive, and you can be sure from the very beginning that they will come to an agreement with each other. There is only one negative character. Being on the screen for fifteen minutes at most, he is not able to create drama. Let's add here the traditionally tearful Chinese ending. To sum up, for a plot of such intensity, Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott would be stoned by critics. Here, at best, they will notice that the plot in this film is not the main thing.

The main thing in this film - and no one will argue with this - is martial arts. The heroes are constantly waving their legs, arms, swords, poles and completely incomprehensible terrifying objects. They fight literally everywhere - on earth, in the sky and at sea. That is, they run after each other along walls, roofs and waters, fly over the jungle and fight while standing on flexible bamboo stems. When the heroes descend to earth, the fights look quite decent. Just like any other Chinese film. But most of the scenes, unfortunately, take place in an unnatural environment for humans. You can, you can make it so that the main character’s jump from the roof onto a tree standing a hundred meters away will look real. There are directors in America, the same, God bless, the Wachowskis, who can do this. The Chinese Ang Lee films such jumps in such a way that even the notorious schoolboy would doubt. He decided to save on special effects, betting that if the Chinese jumped, the white audience would eat it up. And I was not mistaken. When the hero pushes off from the tiled roof, not only does not a single tile move, not only is the poor gluing visible, but there is also no sound of the foot hitting the quite ringing surface. You're waiting for at least a rustle. And watching how Chow Yun Fat balances on a thin branch with a sly smile, it’s hard not to imagine how he, chuckling, diligently twists his body on the hard studio floor. It is alleged that the fights were made without editing. Dubious dignity. They look more interesting with gluing. And the fact that they are fighting here for real... Firstly, the elderly Chow Yun Fat is also a kung fu player. And secondly, what does the truth have to do with it? The director didn’t shoot “Dogma” after all.

Considering all this, minor operator mistakes, such as constant loss of focus at the edges, can be forgiven without looking.

The result is a very mediocre Hollywood film. If the heroes were white, the film would not even be scolded, as Ridley Scott's Gladiator was scolded - a film with a much more intense plot and much better shot. The "dragon" would most likely simply not have been noticed. But what is not allowed to Jupiter, it turns out, is allowed to the bull. By any measure, the average film has a bright future ahead of it. Let's wait until China catches up and surpasses America and Russian screens are inundated with mass production of the same vague quality, but not from Hollywood, but from Shanghai. Let us then remember the quiet kind words of Scott and Spielberg. But it will be too late.