[Current music: Gary Jules - Mad World] [Current book: Gao Xing Jian - One Man's Bible]
[foreword: there are many digressions in this entry, so for your convenience i've highlighted them in bold so that you can skip them if you like. i'm so considerate hor :) ]
watched april snow today and i can't help but feel that it is one of hell of an absolute(lypointless) piece of trash. here's the gist: a couple met with an accident while going on a vacation and fell into coma, and it turned out that they were an adulterous pair involved in an extra-marital affair, so when their rightful partners (i.e. bae yongjun - lol he reminds me YJ - and song ye-jin) learned of their betrayal they seeked solace by (TA-DAH!) engaging in an extra-marital affair too, with (TA-DAH!) each other. and just when they were getting really in love, yongjun's wife (TA-DAH!) suddenly regained consciousness and ye-jin's husband (TA-DAH!) passed away, so ye-jin is left all Lonesome and Desolate once again. and just when she thought everything was all over and that yongjun would be returning to seoul with his wife and that she would be all by herself again and yadda yadda, the movie suddenly ended with (TA-DAH!) them finally getting together.
now can someone please tell me the point of this movie? it's so clichéd and idealistic that i cannot stand it (although i admit that i'm quite an idealist myself). is the "love" between yongjun and ye-jin even true love? they fell in love only because they were lonely, because they both suffered from the same cruel circumstances, because at that very period of their lives no one could understand them better than they could understand each other, because they felt so devoid of hope that they just wanted companionship, because they felt so deprived that they wanted to believe that they were making love when they were really just having sex (ok this is a really subjective point of view). of course there is nothing wrong with wanting companionship, and it really is alright to self-delude at times (when reality becomes too hard to take), and i'm seriously not against seeking solace by enjoying physical pleasure despite the fact that the pleasure is merely restricted to the physical level (when you're feeling really empty inside and all that. of course having sex can never compensate for your emotional loss but when you're feeling really hopeless and crumbling inside orgasms might actually help you forget your loneliness, despite it being momentary. funny how we humans practise The Art of Escapism through such an intriguing method heh heh. anyway like what italo calvino said, "the senses promise fulfilment of desires and exit from the self" - and in case you're wondering this is quoted from Under the Jaguar Sun - so it really isn't very surprising to seek solace by engaging in sexual activites. and AHHH by the way the word 'forget' - as last used in a few sentences before - keeps reminding me of Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and i really recommend everyone to read Kundera's books, especially The Unbearable Lightness of Being because in it you will see a fusion of Human Soul and Human Desires; but that's not the main point because it's a digression from this entry which is supposed to discuss april snow and april snow only, and digressions should not be pardoned even though you can argue that if they are really insignificant they wouldn't have been one of the topics for discussion when studying for literature s paper, and of course i'm not sitting for literature s paper you idiot, i got to know about it from a year-two friend who is sitting for it, and i really should end this sentence right now because it's getting Too Convoluted and we must not ignore The Importance of Punctuation Marks, so yeah baby, here is a Full Stop -> . ) - now back to what i was saying before i so rudely interrupted myself -, but did they feel for each other only because of their temporary need to heal themselves? if so, what happens after they've fully recovered? in my opinion, they got together only because they felt hollow and cheated, and it just so happened that someone else came along at that point in time to fill up that empty void. ah but whether they really last is not for anyone to predict, though i seriously find those who interpret the ending as a "happily-ever-after" conclusion a tad too gullible.
when i first watched "titanic" i didn't even think of jack and rose as the perfect couple. yeah they were very much in love when Death Did Them Part, but what if jack really did manage to survive? rose was born with a silver spoon with her mouth, she came from a really wealthy family, while jack was just a poor painter. what if they really married? how long do you think rose could endure the hardship of living in poverty with jack? what made their love so perfect was that jack died at the peak of their passion, when their relationship was in Full Bloom, so that rose was left with only the beautiful memories, so that he could appear again and again in the remaining part of her life in still frames, for time had frozen at the minute he took his last breath, and so his memory would never fail to cause Love to resonate repeatedly in rose's heart. if he hadn't died, would they have lasted? would they have managed to survive the test of time? reality would probably end up eroding the beauty of their initial passion as it slowly dies away.
i never really believe in happily-ever-after endings; i don't attach any hope to them; i prefer to take things as they come. if it is meant to last it would, if it isn't just let it go. i mean of course when one is in love one would hope for the best outcome, i.e. one would wish that one's current partner is The One for the rest of one's life (duh if i were to fall in love of course i'd wish for that too, but i wouldn't believe that it will actually happen to me), but if some things aren't meant to be there really isn't any point in holding on. yeah of course you'd feel sad, you'd feel disappointed, you'd feel like you could never love again but you still have to move on, no?
like what i've always said, “爱情总是善良，残忍的是现实，接受吧。” ("love is kind but reality is cruel, so accept it.") oops i digressed again.
ok back to april snow. honestly the plot is pure rubbish, and i'm very disappointed in the director; i'd expected something much more sophisticated from him especially after watching one of his other earlier (and better) films, but all he presented to me was this piece of... so-not-thought-provoking-cum-hackneyed piece of junk. the only saving grace is the good looks of song ye-jin; gosh she's really lovely, there was this scene in which she was admiring some flowers, and i even thought her prettier than those flowers. most importantly she's got good air too, unlike most female artistes i see nowadays who are reminiscent of ugly female leads in 5-vcds-for-$10 low-class pornography films (e.g. christina aguilera; i really love her voice but i don't know why she has to cultivate such a lousy image for herself). bae yongjun's body is quite impressive too, his build deserves a thumbs-up and his shape is nice. but seriously the both of them cannot act very well, so i guess it is not quite possible to move the viewers eh? mmm perhaps another strength of the movie is that the different piano pieces which were played throughout are really not too bad (heh heh can anyone be so kind to send me the piano scores for those pieces?).
one final thing i cannot stand about the movie: everything is so fake; the atmosphere is fake, the acting is (quite) fake, the scenes are fake (even the sexual ones; ah mah commented that bae yongjun and song ye-jin were, er, "too quiet" when doing it; but really let's not go into that), etc etc. there were very few lines throughout the entire film, the actors spoke very little, the scenes were short; i suppose the director intended to create a melancholic atmosphere by breeding sadness with its silence, but sorry to say it had absolutely no impact on me, because the plot was weak, the actors couldn't move me, so i really couldn't feel as they were supposed to feel in the movie.
oh well but as chee said, you have to watch a few disappointing movies in your life to be able to appreciate the good ones. so yeah, chee, i'm taking that as a consolation.
(p/s: gao xingjian is very, very good; most of his works actually consist of buddhist teachings (or so i've heard); i've only just started reading "one man's bible", shall aim to own full collection of his books, even if it means less trips to Jack's Place, Crystal Jade, Seoul Garden, Sakae Sushi, Pizza Hut, Pasta-Mania and etc. FOOD!!!!!! i love food, but when it comes to books, food just have to give way heh heh. chee, soo, hsiang and wx, please remember to help me purchase the books i want on your taiwan trip alright? :D thanks, i love you all -hug- )
6:45 PM - and Time will say nothing but 'I told you so'. Check out Chinese version of my bleeding voice [here].
