舒琪：這部電影對張國榮是一個剝削
Extract from “Leslie Cheung’s Movie World 3”
[Note: Shu Kei is the Dean of The School of Film and Television of The Hong Kong Academy For Performing Arts and a professional film critic]
Code Article: Rain Butterfly [Pinyin: Yu Die]
Downloaded from http://www.mtime.com/group/10017/discussion/85868/
Translated by Daydreamer 20080514
For Wong Kar-wai, “Happy Together” was a milestone in his career; for Tony Leung Chiu Wai, it could be said as a gain because at least it allowed him to steal some limelight in Cannes and won him another best actor’s title at the Hong Kong Film Awards; but for Leslie, it was a regret.
A regret because his performance was neglected. More accurately put, his performance was discriminated rather than neglected. Perhaps due to the movie critics’/jurors’ typical prejudice and fallacy, they intentionally cold-shouldered and desolated him. Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung were both nominated in the Hong Kong Film Awards as the best actor. Leung’s being elected was in accordance with expectation because his “I-gave-it-all-I-had” attitude in performing in this movie had gained additional credits from the majority jurors, thus yielding twice the result with half the effort; on the contrary, Cheung was only “playing what he was”, it therefore was natural for him to perform well; besides, he had already had too many awards, everyone felt that he could not care less for another one. This really was how many people in this circle felt. When Leslie Cheung was beat by Tse Kwan Ho 謝君豪 in the Golden Horse Film Awards for the category of Best Actor, Clifton Chi-Sum KO 高志森 said, “Hey, everyone is aware that Leslie knows how to act, but for this newcomer, he really needs this award in order to get more future opportunities. What does Leslie need an award for?”
Last year, when Shu Kei, the Dean of The School of Film and Television of The Hong Kong Academy For Performing Arts and professional film critic, was asked about his views towards the movie “Happy Together”, he said that to Leslie, it was an exploitation, or even an injury. He also had great reservation towards Wong Kar-wai’s motive in filming “Happy Together”.
“Wong Kar-wai asked me initially, ‘Do you think it a good idea to film a story about homosexuality?’ His implication was that when everyone in the world knew he was a heterosexual, as a director with heterosexual nature, would it be attractive to film a story of homosexuality?” Shu Kei felt that Wong’s question itself already contained an element of exploitation. At first, Wong Kar-wai told Shu Kei that he wanted Andy Lau and Anthony Wong Yiu Ming to play the roles, then later he changed them to Andy Lau and Leslie Cheung, and finally the cast went to Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung. From this, one could tell Wong’s vision and idea. Shu Kei felt that Wong had a bad motive, therefore he did not like it.
Shu Kei emphasized many times the word “exploitation”.
“If my understanding is correct, one of the reasons why Leslie was not happy at the later stage was that Wong Kar-wai had exploited him. He made use of Leslie’s personal experience to put it into the film, thus fully exposed him. Leslie was not trying to protect himself, only felt that his personal experience and the character were two different matters, he did not believe he was the character in the film. After he figured out this later on he was not happy, because he felt that Wong Kar-wai had exploited him and was unjust to him. He therefore did not like this movie; or perhaps afterwards he was not willing to co-operate with Wong Kar-wai again.”
Leslie Cheung had once said, “Wong Kar-wai was intelligent to film a homosexual story as if it was any ordinary heterosexual story; in this respect, he was successful.”
Shu Kei responded, “First, since there were two big stars in this movie, the recognition of sexuality therefore would not cause any major problem; second, Wong Kar-wai declared his position right at the beginning that it was not a story about homosexuality, this declaration somewhat extinguished the restless feelings of the audience. But if it was not a story about homosexuality, then why did he film homosexuality? Very simple, it was a fallacy. Why did he deny it and make a clear distinction between the two? The question is whether you really cared about those characters or not.
He also said that, “Considering Hong Kong’s environment, Leslie’s willingness to play in “Farewell To My Concubine” and “Happy Together” required a lot of courage, but I believe that he was not satisfied. An artist, to a certain extent, wishes to express himself through his own work, such as movie or music. Unfortunately, those two directors had a great deal of deviation towards the cognition of homosexuality, in this respect, Leslie was relatively unfortunate. I believe he would have greater satisfaction in filming “Farewell To My Concubine” because it allowed him to have diversified performance, he would feel better when filming it. Also, Kaige cared about and protected him a lot. But the experience Leslie had in filming “Happy Together” was that he felt he was being harmed because from the starting point, it was an exploitation already. He had done all he could of what the director requested him to do, but I believe he totally disagreed with the director’s understanding towards the character of Ho Po Wing.
When discussed about the film critics’ and majority audiences’ one-sided favour over Tony Leung Chiu Wai and cold-shoulder towards Leslie Cheung, Shu Kei said, “There is no denial that Leslie played the role excellently, but because Wong Kar-wai intelligently made use of the audiences’ curiosity towards Leslie’s private life thus leading them to believe that Leslie was the character himself. The audiences felt that Leslie was merely playing his own self, therefore he did not require any performing skill. Actually that was a wrong idea. The ability to perform and whether playing his own self or not are absolutely two different things. The more the character is close to one’s real self, the more difficult it is to play because one has to expose oneself to other people, therefore that must be a performance.” Due to such a wrong conception and misunderstanding, audiences thought that Tony Leung had a better performing skill in playing the role of a homosexual as he is a heterosexual himself. On the contrary, the degree of difficulty for Leslie was not high at all. Not only the audiences held this same kind of view, even the so-called “specialized or professional” film critics also did so!
As Wong Kar-wai had won the Best Director Award in Cannes, how did Shu Kei appraise his directing techniques? Has he made any progress?
“I felt that after “Ashes of Time” and “Chungking Express”, Wong Kar-wai started to regress. Actually, “Happy Together” did not have sufficient contents, it almost could not be edited together. If you look at the movie closely, you can see that there were only a few scenes and he repeated them over and over again. Some of them were merely divided and used separately.”
But he had filmed many many things, for instance, the entire section that Shirley Kwan had filmed was cut.
“The problem was those things were just like puzzle pieces, they did not fall into place.” As a matter of fact, his method of creation is very dangerous. “2046” did not fall into place. “Happy Together” could be regarded as the beginning of the crisis.
After talking with Shu Kei about “Happy Together”, I changed the subject and asked him to compare Leslie’s acting skills with the other actors.
“It’s very difficult to make comparison, but Leslie’s superiority is that he took acting very seriously, especially when his acting skills started to mature, he truly believed that his acting was a kind of art.”
Since which movie?
“I would say since “Encore”. It possibly was not very clear at that time, but he was very much involved and had very strong faith, truly believing himself to be an artist.”
“At the early acting stage, he acted according to his own intuition; but at later stage, his life experience became richer and more knowledgeable towards movies, he became more and more earnest. He was fully absorbed in the movies, he undertook preparation work before the movies were filmed, he conducted research and spent a lot of time in understanding the characters. I don’t see a lot of Hong Kong actors who would carry out those tasks or even would have a sense to do so. Majority of the actors in Hong Kong merely use their talent to act. Some of them who are more skilful in acting techniques may be able to easily develop the expression of laughter, anger, sorrow and happiness, as a result are relatively natural. Most of the actors belong to the latter type. Not too many actors are capable and willing to ponder on the character to make it more lively. Most of them are not willing to spend their time to do so. You can count them on one hand.
Sometimes I felt that since Leslie had contributed so much to the movies, he surely hoped to be recognized, but if such a recognition is to be judged by awards, his giving and getting were never in direct proportion.
Shu Kei said, “This does not really matter, time is the best proof. Hereafter, Lesile’s status in China’s movie history will never be changed.”
I always felt that for Leslie not getting an award for the movie “Happy Together” was a regret and this had made him very unhappy.
“He might not necessarily be unhappy. Although it was his character that he needed others to recognize him, but he was very smart; if you did not recognize him, he knew how to teach you to do so”, Shu Kei said with a smile.
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