How I Got Interested in Asian Film

[divemaster13]

I apologize in advance if this seems like self-indulgent blogging, but perhaps others would like to tell their stories as well?

How I Got Interested in Asian Film
posted by divemaster13

One movie started it all. This film opened up an entirely new genre of film to me and refocused pretty much my entire area of film interest. In short, it opened a door into a world I never knew existed.

The film is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Prior to watching this movie, my experience with Asian cinema consisted of a few Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies. I liked those well enough and was impressed by the skills and stuntwork, but I knew nothing beyond that.

I had read a couple of glowing reviews for Crouching Tiger and figured, okay, looks pretty good.

I saw it and was mesmerized. I felt myself welling up with emotion just watching the fight scenes. My chest hurt after the first confrontation between the characters played by Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang. Why? I realized that I had forgotten to breathe, I was so overwhelmed. I went back to the cinema again and again to experience these wonderful feelings. Eleven trips to the theater. Sometimes dragging others along. Mostly by myself. There was a movie theater 2 blocks from my office. Several times I slipped out of work to watch this again. And again. It was a painful realization that I could only see it for the first time once.

I had never heard of wuxia before this. I was not aware of martial arts fantasy films. I didn't know what other types of movies Hong Kong and other Asian countries had been putting out.

So I started watching. VHS at first. I scoured the “foreign” sections of the local video rental stores for any and all Asian movies. It didn’t take me long to realize that the future of my hobby was going to be DVDs and a region-free player. OAR and no more crappy dubs! (And several versions to choose from--do I get the Hong Kong release or the Korean, or perhaps the R1? Ah, the choices DVD has opened up to me!)

I had already been introduced to Jackie Chan, so I started delving deeper into his catalogue. Then on to other classic martial arts/comedy/action films such as Sammo Hung and Jet Li.

I looked for other films similar in genre to Crouching Tiger. My infatuation with Michelle Yeoh and, later, Maggie Cheung led me to other movies and other genres. Butterfly & Sword. Iceman Cometh. Flying Dagger. Comrades, Almost a Love Story. Green Snake. The Heroic Trio. Wing Chun. Royal Warriors. Yes, Madam!

I continued on and found Iron Monkey, Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain, Chinese Ghost Story, and The Bride with White Hair. Later came Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

I discovered John Woo. A Better Tomorrow. Hard-Boiled. The Killer. Then other action films. In the Line of Duty. Tokyo Raiders. The Big Heat. Beast Cops. Righting Wrongs. Infernal Affairs.

And then there are the Category III movies. (I should write another essay just on Category III movies!).

It goes on and on, and has spilled over into other Asian cinema. Japanese: Kurasawa and Ozu of course. But more than that. I watched the entire Zatoichi series, 20+ films (starring Shintaro Katsu), and next it was the Lone Wolf and Cub series. Lady Snowblood. Sex & Fury. Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl. The Mystery of Rampo and Angel Dust. Cultish films such as Junk, Evil Dead Trap, and Reborn From Hell: Samurai Armageddon. Versus and Returner. And of course, Battle Royale.

And I haven’t even touched on Korean film here. It was about 2002 and I was kidding with my wife (who is Korean). She asked me why I never watched any Korean movies. I told her that no one watched Korean movies because they all sucked! Who would ever watch a Korean movie? She said “Yeah, that’s true!” But then Korean filmmakers started getting it together and I discovered some good ones that had already been made. I started off with Tell Me Something, Shiri, Art Museum By the Zoo, Christmas in August, JSA, Bichunmoo, and Volcano High. Not all of these are 5-star films but I was hooked. Over the past 15 years or so I have watched over 300 Korean films. Some of my favorite films of any genre have been out of Korea. For example A Tale of Two Sisters and The Classic.

And it all goes back to the door that was opened when I watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I owe Ang Lee a world of gratitude.

 

[sitenoise]

Great idea!

Upside down and coincidentally, sort of, I remember when my Chinese girlfriend tried to get me to watch this new movie 2046. I thought it was crap!

I was already on the road with Korean Film, but I didn't start keeping track of things until May 1, 2008 (check my letterboxd diary. sad). If you know me, you know that really bums me out. I wish I had a record of what I watched, when I watched it, when this journey began. I remember milestones to some degree.

I know for sure what film pulled back the curtain on the abyss for me: Bad Guy, by Ki-duk Kim. The only line of spoken dialog in the film is "I Love You". It's a creepy film, and not by a long shot one of my favorites, but it was the film that made me go "There's something else going on over there. I need to see more of it." The early/mid 2000s was a great time to be getting into Korean cinema. I watched all the Kim ki-duk I could find; Park Chan-wook; Memories of Murder, etc. I was blown away by all this 'extreme' kind of stuff. Kim's The Isle was the film that absolutely sealed the deal.

Then, the second bomb dropped: Lee's Oasis and Hur's One Fine Spring Day. Incredibly human stories like I couldn't even imagine.

I watched The Whispering Corridors stuff that was available and thought I'd check out more 'Horror'. That started a pivot towards Japan. I think I remember Dark Water being the first Japanese film I attached to. From there, Audition, Battle Royale, the Ju-on and Ringu stuff, Pulse, and Suicide Club. I've always been one to "Follow the Director", I think. Miike and Sono were the guys to watch. Visitor Q! Holy Shit.

Again, I started Japan with that extremey kind of stuff. I don't recall what may have prompted a pivot to other kinds of films but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with Miyazaki Aoi. Eureka, Harmful Insect, and then Su-ki-da sealed the deal. And may have begun a "Follow the Actress" phase.

The Japanese had such a different approach to drama and emotion compared to the Koreans.

I still wasn't into Chinese movies. I don't recall exactly what may have opened my eyes but I think it came from Zhang Yimou and/or Zhou Xun. I remember having a discussion with one of the guys at Twitchfilm, who was also immersed in "Asian" cinema. I was going on about Korean films. He said he hated them because Koreans talk funny. He couldn't stand the sound of their voices. He was into Chinese films and gave me some recommendations. The first one might have been Stolen Life. Hello Zhou Xun. Her early stuff is a veritable who's who and what's what of great independent Mainland cinema. And I watched Zhang Yimou. I wasn't really into wuxia (and probably didn't know what it was at the time) so I watched his 'other' films. They touched me in a way that Korean and Japanese films didn't. Someone here once said, or maybe I said it, lol, that the best Chinese films are About China. No shit. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress was another early film I remember just feeling this flood of empathy for.

Blue Gate Crossing was an early one that opened me up to 'regular' drama type Chinese stuff (even though it was from Taiwan. I don't think I understood the difference then). And Gooey (Black Coal Thin Ice).

I'll close by saying:

I've been known to say that Asian ... well, Korean cinema, in particular ... started a nose dive in 2009, or thereabouts. Here's what's interesting. I remember Kim Ki-dik's Breath being the first Kim film I looked forward to, as opposed to discovering backwards. I think that point of view is huge. It must have been about 2008 that I had more or less 'caught up' with things. And started keeping a record! There was, and still is, a whole lot of things out there from 'back then' that I have yet to experience. And there has been a ton of new-to-the-world-while-I'm-on-it that I have loved loved loved. But it's different now. I'm not so innocent.

 

[Zelena]

Great idea for a thread.

Funny that our esteemed colleague sitenoise mentions 2046 first. That was the first Asian film that completely blew my mind. I pretty much dropped my popcorn and stood up and said "holy shit, I just remembered why I'm alive." 2046 made me stop in my tracks mentally so hard I could hear the gravel crunching in my brain. I think I watched it six times in a weekend in January. I had never seen acting like that (WkW does dozens, sometimes hundreds of takes), set design like that, photography like that, or integration of music in film like that. I remain one of the minority who thinks 2046 is better than In the Mood for Love. I still watch 2046 every Christmas, with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

That was I think 2005, and at the time I lived in a very multinational part of Queens in NYC, so I was going to my local "dvd rental store" (...memories...) and binging on a lot of foreign films, mostly European I guess. I had zero interest in Asian culture up to that point, but I would throw in a few Asian movies here and there, mostly not making a deep impression (Yi-Yi, Raise the Red Lantern, etc). At about the same time, I also saw Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe, and that almost equally blew my mind. Sometimes it's very subjective, with films, and something resonates with you personally that allows you to open your mind and relate to 'the rest of it' which can be things that you have no previous connection to. LLitU just seemed very, very, very far away from New York, and I drank it down to the lees.

Real Asia cinephiles will have noticed that Chris Doyle photographed both of my two door-openers; an Ozzie.

These two films not only got me into Asian cinema, but into film and filmmaking more broadly. I don't know about you guys, but I wasn't even into movies when I was in my 20s. I read somewhere that it's common for men to not even get into movies until they are well into their 30s, because they are too busy doing things in reality in their 20s. Sadly, that's probably a dated paradigm nowdays, but that's my story. Asian film plugged into a spot where previously I only had a thin thread of interest in arthouse films I watched as a young adult on VHS -- Fellini and Werner Herzog and Kusturica and not much else.

In the summer of 2010 I happened on a cheesy but wonderful Korean tv krom-dram called "Mary Stayed Out All Night" and I binged on that with total delight. Enter Korea. Around that time my mind also opened to China in a more general way -- I'm from a generation that remembers when China was $600 annual per capita GDP; that was still in the 90s, so it took a while to grow out of the prejudice that it was just a massive third world country. It didn't take long to watch all the main, great Korean films, and there are dozens of them. South Korea is (still) the Greenwich Village of Asia, although I agree with sitenoise that it is getting gentrified -- all good things must come to an end. I still watch Chinese films on a regular basis, but they don't have any great ones. We've had this conversation before (me and sitenoise) but China is still growing up, and up to now it's had these State-produced-politburo-approved mega productions by Zhang Yimou, but they are "about China" (which is very artificial) and not especially creative in any particularly Chinese way.

Asian cinema has served as a portal to the most different-from developed cultures in the world. Unfortunately, that whole thing is receding, as the internet gentrifies all of human culture into one giant stinking blob of buzzfeed. I'm counting on the 19 year olds of the world to keep coming up with new things, just to do new things, and hiding them from the uncool grownups so that they can develop just a little.

 

[divemaster13]

Hey, sitenoise, I enjoyed reading your story! Very different from mine. Some of the movies you liked I did not care for at all, and that's part of what makes these discussions so interesting. In fact, one movie that you mentioned is probably the film I hated more than any other I have ever watched, LOL. (Well, no "probably" about it--it is.)

Upside down and coincidentally, sort of, I remember when my Chinese girlfriend tried to get me to watch this new movie 2046. I thought it was crap!

But...but...but, it has Ziyi Zhang in it! By definition it can't be crap! LOL

...but I didn't start keeping track of things until May 1, 2008 (check my letterboxd diary. sad). If you know me, you know that really bums me out. I wish I had a record of what I watched, when I watched it, when this journey began. I remember milestones to some degree....It must have been about 2008 that I had more or less 'caught up' with things. And started keeping a record! There was, and still is, a whole lot of things out there from 'back then' that I have yet to experience. And there has been a ton of new-to-the-world-while-I'm-on-it that I have loved loved loved.

One thing I was very glad I did, was starting almost from the beginning, I kept a catalog of every non-U.S, film I watched. I've got a massive spreadsheet that covers my DVDs as well as rentals. Tallies viewings, star rating, and my plot comments, and 17 other column entries for each DVD/film. It's almost embarrassing how OCD that sounds. But I knew that without this cataloging, I'd forget most of the details. I just saw in another thread that someone mentioned Natural City, and I said to myself "I know I've seen it and didn't really care much for it" but being able to look on my spreadsheet to jog the memory was very helpful.

The bitch of it is, my hard drive crapped out last month and the most recent back-up I had was from January 2013, so the last 4 years' data are all lost. I'm in the process of trying to re-create it from memory.

I've been known to say that Asian ... well, Korean cinema, in particular ... started a nose dive in 2009, or thereabouts.

Truth be told, I haven't kept up with recent releases (like, since 2008) much at all. Most of my contributions to this board, I'm afraid, will be quite dated. But, hey, if I see a discussion focusing on 1980s HK action or wuxia films or 1960s Japanese samurai films, or Korean films from about 2000s, then I'l be on it!

 

[sitenoise]

sitenoise mentions 2046 first

We have a six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing happening here :)

 

[sitenoise]

And btw to both of you. I was pretty stunned, in a good way, by 2046 the last time I watched it. Like comrade Z mentioned, the door needs to be opened.

 

[sitenoise]

probably the film I hated more than any other I have ever watched

Lemme guess, The Isle?

No. Visitor Q!

 

[divemaster13]

Lemme guess, The Isle?

No. Visitor Q!

LOL, no, but you are in the right ballpark. The Isle was one of the earlier Korean films I watched, picked from the shelf at Blockbuster due to the semi-naked chick on the front.

I disliked it intensely. 1 star out of 5.

There's a difference between a bad movie (too many to mention) and a "movie I didn't like but can appreciate the effort" or whatever; but it is a rare circumstance indeed for me to feel like a movie absolutely violated me. That movie was Bad Guy. My notes on this movie contain the words "vile," "reprehensible," and "no redeeming qualities whatsoever." I've assigned a zero star review perhaps 3 times in my life, and this is the most zero star movie I've ever seen. After watching it, I just wanted to curl up in the shower and cleanse my soul for an hour.

Obviously, Ki-duk Kim is just not my cup of chowder. I thought 3-iron was pretty good (3 stars), and I actually did like Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (3.5). But I felt pretty much the same for Samaria as I did The Isle, and decided that there's no point in me watching any more Ki-duk Kim films.

I have not seen Visitor Q, but I'm guessing I'd hate it. I'm one of the few "Asian movie fans" that disliked Audition intensely (though I can understand why many put it very high on their lists). And Miike has quite the reputation. I've got Ichi the Killer sitting on my DVD shelf but truth be told, I'm afraid to watch it LOL.

 

[Daniel Larusso]

Good thread!

I got very interested in Japan as a teen after watching Lost in Translation. From there I went to japanese cinema, j-dramas, anime and music. I also read a few mangas. I was so obsessed with japanese culture at the time that I ended up going to Tokyo, at the age of 20, where I spent the best days of my life.

My first asian films were Battle Royale, Ichi the Killer and Oldboy which are still, today, some of my favourite films of all time. I was fascinated with all these weird and extreme films which I couldn't find anywhere else. Hayao Miyazaki and Akira Kurosawa were also very important directors to me.

Takashi Miike was my first introduction to japanese cinema and my favourite director at the time. I've seen, at this point, 77 films from him. From there I went to explore other directors such as Sogo Ishii, Takeshi Kitano, Tetsuya Nakashima, Shunji Iwai, Satoshi Kon and Sion Sono. I was exploring asian cinema by watching almost every film from the asian directors that I could find. That's how I found Love Exposure. It wasn't even my first Sono film, but I was exploring Sion Sono's filmography at the time and later on it became my favourite film. I also got into korean cinema with big names: Chan-wook Park, Jee-woon Kim and Joon-ho Bong. Later I became a huge fan of Ki-duk Kim as well. The first chinese directors that I explored were Kar-Wai Wong and Yimou Zhang. I like these 2 directors a lot, but no chinese director had so much impact on me as the japanese and korean directors that I mentioned before.

Nowadays, I've watched around 1000 asian films. I still have a lot of work to do with japanese oldies, but I know which directors I should explore first. I also have a lot of modern chinese cinema to watch. I also try to keep in touch with the most popular South Korean films, such as The Wailling and Train to Busan.

 

[BuX]

LOL, no, but you are in the right ballpark. The Isle was one of the earlier Korean films I watched, picked from the shelf at Blockbuster due to the semi-naked chick on the front.

I disliked it intensely. 1 star out of 5.

There's a difference between a bad movie (too many to mention) and a "movie I didn't like but can appreciate the effort" or whatever; but it is a rare circumstance indeed for me to feel like a movie absolutely violated me. That movie was Bad Guy. My notes on this movie contain the words "vile," "reprehensible," and "no redeeming qualities whatsoever." I've assigned a zero star review perhaps 3 times in my life, and this is the most zero star movie I've ever seen. After watching it, I just wanted to curl up in the shower and cleanse my soul for an hour.

Obviously, Ki-duk Kim is just not my cup of chowder. I thought 3-iron was pretty good (3 stars), and I actually did like Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (3.5). But I felt pretty much the same for Samaria as I did The Isle, and decided that there's no point in me watching any more Ki-duk Kim films.

I have not seen Visitor Q, but I'm guessing I'd hate it. I'm one of the few "Asian movie fans" that disliked Audition intensely (though I can understand why many put it very high on their lists). And Miike has quite the reputation. I've got Ichi the Killer sitting on my DVD shelf but truth be told, I'm afraid to watch it LOL.

Ichi The Killer is easyier to watch than Visitor Q. Yes Ichi The Killer has gore and alot of violence but Visitor Q although quite funny, shouldn't laugh really, its a black humour, has scenes that are shocking in their nature, incest, rape, prostitution and all but I quite liked it. You feel discusted while you watch it, grit your teeth moments, but as the film progresses the disfuctional family start being abit more normal and your views on the family change. What I like about Takashi Miike is he can just about direct anything, maybe watch some of his childrens films, or his not so crazy stuff like 13 Assassins. I still say my favorite film by Miike is Big Bang Love, something he himself called his masterpiece.

 

[ebossert]

Tartan Asia Extreme horror films were the main reason I got into Asian movies. Before that, I only saw Godzilla, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Chow Yun Fat. After watching those horror films though, it generated huge interest in all kinds of Asian movies. Once you watch and love a glacially-paced art-house horror film, you can basically watch anything.

 

[elanor]

I can't say that there was a definite film which got me into Asian film. In contrast, I had an head over heals experience with Asoka which plunged me into a completely unknown sphere, Indian film. But Asian film was mostly something like noise in the background for me. I had seen Hero, Rise the Red Lantern, so I was following Zhang Yimou. My first Korean film I remember is Bichunmoo, which is just not very well made (well enough for a first film IMO), but addictive for me nevertheless. I think I followed director Kim and main actor Shin.

I always liked Miyazaki animes and somehow via this preference I found the anime series Moribito - Guardian of the Spirit. The opening title is by the rock group L'Arc - en - Ciel, and I liked it a lot. Thus I found my first Asian rock group. And from there probably via youtube Nicholas Tse. Via Nicholas Tse, whom I probably first registered as a singer, I began to discover Hong Kong film and found another of my favourite directors Dante Lam.

Moreover, I always have liked martial arts like sword play and fencing in Hollywood. So I asked on IMDb for good martial arts films. Someone mentioned 13 Assassins, which didn't really work for me. But I liked the visualisation, so I searched for other Miike films and watched next Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai. After this film I knew that this is a director to follow for me. Subsequently, some Miike films later, I found my top favourite Miike film Big Bang Love, Juvenile A. Somewhere around this time I began to lurk on the IMDb Asian Cinema Board.