National Cinema: A Film Exploration

National Cinema: A Film Exploration of Kung Fu Hustle

During the 1960s Cinema Novo emerged in Brazil as the offshoot of Italian neo-realism. Inspired more by the national Italian filmmakers than Hollywood, some of Brazil's most celebrated filmmakers began producing independent film projects that were a product distinctly Brazilian in theme, character, and nature. The Brazilian film industry was embraced by Brazilians as their own expression and interpretation of Brazilian life and culture. It was manifest of a national cinema, depicting the Brazilian culture in all of its diversity, including the indigenous Indian population and the black Brazilian whose heritage evolved from the Brazilian slave trade (D'lugo 2003 25). Brazilian politics, even as it wavered by socialism and democracy, was subject to the discretion of the filmmaker. That expression seemed unhindered by the state, and was very pure in representing the filmmaker's impression of all facets of Brazilian life (D'lugo 2003 40). Brazilian film really exploded as the quintessential definition of "national" filmmaking.

By the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, national filmmaking was emerging in other "third world countries," as Third Cinema, including Cuba. National cinema is the term that defines the filmmaking that emerged outside of Hollywood, which provided the national identity for people of the country of film origin to identify with; even the politics and the setting within which that identity was explored, was subject to film documentary and debate (Chanan 1997 392). Where Hollywood film tended to treat the American diversity as irrelevant, national films explored the identity of diversity of its cultural heritage, even when that diversity arises out of the colonial experience as it did in the film made in Senegal, Moolade (Sembene (dir) 2004). It is, however, the film, Kung Fu Hustle (2005) that stands as one of the most outstanding of examples of contemporary national identity in film, and which is the focus of this brief exploration into national film.

Nationalism in Kung Fu Hustle

In the past decade there has been an explosion of national film. Great works of film have been produced in countries like Africa, Iran and Hon Kong/China. One such film out of Hong Kong is Kung Fu Hustle (2005), directed by and co-written by Stephen Chow. This film is an amazing creative work, and opens with an introduction to the Axe Gang, a violent gang that seems to mimic Hollywood American mafia depictions, but with a flare and incredible choreography dance movements. The choreographing of these opening dance sequences are extraordinary, and are the work of the renowned choreographer Yeun Wo Ping. The choreography is important to the film for several reasons. First, it connects the film to its contemporary historical time musically and helps to promote an image of the contemporary Chinese Asian person that is a departure from the traditional image in which the Asian person is internationally perceived in film. This helps to create a uniquely Asian image, and one that is consistent with the contemporary environment in China too. There have been other internationally successful Hong Kong films, but those films, like director Yimou Zhang's the Golden Flower (2006), even though it had the martial arts and special effects, it nonetheless conveyed the essence of the Asian/Chinese person in that traditional ancient Chinese role.

Yeun Wo Ping also provides the choreography for the martial arts in Kung Fu Hustle, and it is, again, geared toward the international markets, but is nonetheless national in its appeal and cultural origins. It is likewise in its characters and actors and actresses, featuring the martial arts experts Qui Yuen and Wah Yuen starring as the slum landlady and landlord who are secretly martial arts warriors, and the landlady possesses the secret of the "lion's roar." The couple left their lives of martial arts warriors when they lost their only child, a son. They took up new roles of the fearsome fighting landlord and landlady who ruled the housing projects where they lived actually quite happily amongst their tenants until the day that Big Brother and the Axe Gang arrived to extort money from the shopkeepers. In this script set-up, it is again appealing to the national identity of the people of China because it, again, is contemporary in its depiction of the modern Chinese who do not necessarily live in villages with thatched roofs or fishing villages. The Chinese citizen is shown in modernity, and this is important to the national identity. It serves as informing the international community as to the modernity of the Chinese Asian identity.

The film addresses the themes that people, world-wide, experience; making a living, developing relationships, the need for the individual personality to develop and grow and especially the sense of belonging to a community. The martial arts aspect of the film is consistent with the Asian culture, with the Chinese masters who worked in the film and in choreographing the moves and working with the special effects. Everything about this film is Chinese-Asian, or national in character, culture and nature.

The film, because of its distinctly Chinese-Asian make-up, is nonetheless a product that has been well received in the global community. Especially in Hollywood, where there seems to have always been a public interest in the martial arts, and filmmakers have produced products to that interest. The depiction of the Chinese-Asian character has been, until lately, less accurately reflective of the lifestyle and culture of Chinese Asians in film. Many of the martial arts films feature an Asian or Chinese Asian character, but that character is more often than not subordinated to the role of a supporting character to an Anglo protagonist. The director Quentin Tarantino films Kill Bill Vol I and Kill Bill Vol II are cases in point. In Kill Bill Vol I, the protagonist played by Uma Thurman is trained in the martial arts by the Chinese-Asian master, but, later, is killed by one of the antagonist characters played by Darryl Hannah, who trained with him too. However, Thurman's character leaves the master with respect and gratitude for his training; Hannah's character trains with the master and then, suggesting that she has not just learned from the gifted master, but exceeded his skills, kills him. Creating the traditional Hollywood stereotyping of the Asian as inferior to the Anglo - whether that Anglo is of a criminal element or not.

In the past two decades, since the celebrity of the actor Bruce Lee who essentially introduced Chinese martial arts into American film culture; there has remained a constant interest on the part of America audiences in the martial arts. If this interest ever wavered, it was intensely renewed Lee's son, Brandon, made the phenomenally successful the Crow in 1994, but was fell fatally victim to an onset accident.

Kung Fu Hustle has been well received in the United States, such that a sequel, Kung Fu Hustle 2 is currently in a pre-production status (SEE IMDB). This is no doubt in part because, even though the film is national in nature, it also incorporates those elements of comedy, martial arts, and theme that help to make it an international film product. The film is the story of Song, played by the director and script co-writer, Chow. Song was the victim of vicious bully attacks as a child, and suffered a humiliation by the bully's in front of his young girl friend. It was more than Song could take, and it caused him to be determined to be on the side of the winning team. The winning team, the film depicts in the opening sequences, is the gangland domestic terrorists led by Big Brother, who is introduced to the audience by terrorizing and overcoming a competitive gang group, and by turning the police into a group of cowering and cowardly men with badges, but no spine.

However, even though initially rejected by the gang leader, he lets Song live because he thinks Song may be useful to him in the future. Not before Song, trying to establish himself as worthy of the gang terrorizes a young ice cream vendor on the streets. As he speeds away on a trolley, he laughs ruthless at the beautiful, but pitiful vendor. Later, as Song has returned to the scene of his harassment of the vendor girl, she offers him a colorful pinwheel lollipop - it is special, because it is the symbol of the childhood assault on both of them by bullies. Song does not immediately experience a change of heart, even though he realizes who the vendor is.

Later, he is recruited by the gang leader, Big Brother, to break into the prison to release "Demon." This, after two of the most notable and deadly martial arts warriors failed in their bid to overcome the slum land merchants who refused to give in to their extortion. The people of the housing project suffered losses though, and it was the landlord and landlady who then revealed themselves as the martial arts experts they in defeating the two "experts."

This left Big Brother with a heart of vengeance, and a need to bring in the only martial arts man capable of overcoming the combined forces of landlord and landlady; Demon. Having unleashed Demon, the Song is now welcomed into the gang and begins sporting the traditional "black suit" of the gang members. Here, again, it is important to remark on the deviation from stereotype to contemporary national image that wardrobe and props bring to the film. There are no robes of silk, no long, silky geisha looking women waiting on men in the community baths. Rather, Landlady, one of the protagonists in the film, barely makes a move without a burning cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She is in white satin lingerie throughout most of the film. While Landlord is often seen in his silk robe, and is often being beat by Landlady. Landlord and Landlady and even Demon serve to reinforce the positive image of Asian family in that Landlady and Landlord are not elderly, but late 40s, and Demon is definitely 50 ish.

Together, good or bad, these characters give new meaning to the term "youthful." Even though, at the end of the day, the hero who emerges to save the housing project from the Demon is young. It supports the long-standing idea that has been associated with value in older citizens. That same sense of relevant tradition is conveyed when we see the Chinese noodle maker, who still makes the noodles in the old tradition of riding the bamboo pole. These are reinforcements of significant national imagery, and perhaps even imagery that the viewer without being focused on media analysis of the film, would no doubt miss. Certainly on a global scale, on a foreign distribution route, the viewer would miss those subtleties. A viewer, for instance, in the American market who is relatively new to the more accurately depicted image of the Asian, would certainly be without much need for those subtleties. In the national market, however, there is a need to reinforce those bonds of family and the responsibilities of youth to the family circle.