Reviews
You, The Living, Bunny Chow and The Go Master
The morbid hilarity of mundane existence is relentlessly revealed by Swedish auteur Roy Andersson in You, the Living, a deadpan follow-up to his wonderful 2000 comeback picture Songs from the Second Floor. Again adopting a non-linear structure and a fastidiousness to ludicrous detail that recalls Jacques Tati, Andersson flits between unlinked, inconsequential episodes in the lives of various downtrodden individuals whose self-obsession blinds them to the impending doom of the bigger picture.
The opening sequences are peppered with belly laughs, as we're introduced to such characters as a melancholic tuba player, a put-upon psychologist, a teacher feeling her age and a fan yearning for romance with a rock star. But such guffaws are replaced by despondent smiles as the folly of humanity's preoccupation with petty concerns envelopes an already bleak landscape full of grey buildings and somnambulant citizens.
Musical interludes reinforce the aura of surreality created by speeches to camera and fantasy sequences, in which the idiocy of our cherished dreams are laid bare. Yet there are still moments of devastating realism, such as when a racially abused Arab barber wreaks revenge on a pompous customer who quickly learns the insigificance of his indignity. Such grimly amusing realisations can surely only lead us to conclude that our own lives are every bit as irredeemably ghastly.
The humour is also effectively downbeat in John Barker's Bunny Chow, a South African road movie exploring the serious side of making people laugh that's named after a communal dish composed of a hollowed-out bread loaf stuffed with meat and vegetables. Revisiting the 'tears of a clown' cliché, the monochrome action follows three black stand-ups as they leave their domestic travails in Johannesburg to perform at a rock festival in rural Oppikoppi. Desperate to make his mark, even though his act is painfully unfunny, dishwasher David Kibuuka tries to ingratiate himself with his more established travelling companions, the womanising Kagiso Lediga and laissez-faire Muslim Yusuf Rasdien, only to find himself the constant target of their teasing, as they offer a lift to an unreliable stoner, fall foul of a cuckolded bartender and succumb to the dubious pleasures of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll at the gig.
The improvisational style takes a little getting used to. But the freewheeling shifts between rambling dialogues and eccentric set-pieces begin to exert a wry fascination and even Lediga and Rasdien's chauvinist attitudes to their girlfriends (pregnant Kim Engelbrecht and firebrand Angela Chow) eventually raise the occasional smile - although Kibuuka's desperate pursuit of white stage manager Keren Neumann is more appallingly amusing. There are asides on racial and gender politics, the slacker mentality and the need to know yourself. But this is essentially a mocking tribute to the foibles of the average twentysomething male.
Finally, this week sees the launch of a season at the ICA in London designed to showcase the Chinese film industry ahead of the Beijing Olympics. The focus falls on Tian Zhuangzhuang, a maverick who has often fallen foul of the Communist authorities and whose documentary portrait of the indomitable peasants living on the border between Yunnan Province and Tibet, Delamu, is the undoubted highlight. However, the film showing on an extended run is The Go Master, a biopic about Wu Qingyuan, the Chinese exile who became Japan's leading exponent of the strategy game Go after he defected in the mid-1930s.
Highlighting Wu's battle with tuberculosis, the search for spiritual fulfillment that culminated in a brush with the Jiko sect and his 17-year reign as the country's undefeated champion, this stately series of tableaux has all the minimalist detail of a poem, with the meticulously staged action being bound together by succinct captions. With Chang Chen exuding Wu's dedication and respect for a game whose intricacies reflected the vicissitudes of his own life, this is an intense treatise on being true to one's self while bending with the breeze. Rewarding concentration, it also reveals much about Tian's own attitude to pursuing his art in turbulent times.
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