Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Remarks on the last episode of Tian long ba bu 1

I would say that I am quite disappointed with the ending. Some things just seem wrong in the last episode.

1) I got the impression that Qiao Feng died because he wanted to die. In the original book, he was forced to die by circumstances. As in he has a stronger case for commiting suicide. In the book, the Liaos had been chasing the Song people for many weeks and casualties were high. This caused Feng to feel very remorseful for the deeds commited by his own people. At the same time, he also feel a great wu2 nai4 about the fact that the Song and Liao people simply cannot reconcile their differences. They see each other as a separate tribe, a separate entity whose lives are not worth anything. It is under this atmosphere of wu2 nai4 and the loneliness of having nobody to understand him (to understand that all man are equal) that he began to sink closer and closer to death.

All major events need a catalyst for the events to occur. But the overall mood is important as well and serve as the breeding bed for catalyst. In the show, the breeding bed is not tangible to me.

2) And so he died. Due to all the special effects, I still cannot locate exactly where he died. He died on a cliff. But where is the cliff with reference to the song and liao soldiers. I thought he caught the liao king and flew up to the cliff. So I thought he is very far from everyone else. But it seems so easy for A Zi to come and hug his body later on. She literally just run there in a few steps like a 100m dash.

I know that effects are important and I can feel that they are trying to create a good effect. But somehow it feels very weird to me. Especially later on where A zi is hugging Feng's body, it seems like the two of them is on a small piece of iceberg floating in a deep ocean, isolating from everything else.

I guess this is specially created to give a feeling of strong isolation. But I guess you cannot just change scenes so abruptly, at least let there be a transition from the reality to the dream state. Or else it is like she hug his body and suddenly they are teleported to a piece of iceberg.

3) Seems like too much physical contact between A Zi and Feng (when he is alive). When he is poisoned and surrounded by the liao soldiers, he told her "fu2 zhe4 wo3" It is as if he allows no one else to help him except her. She hugged him outside the tunnel too. He din pushed her away.

I have to clarify that I am not a great A Zhu fan, meaning I actually dun feel jealous from A Zhu's perspective. But I do feel that if A Zi and Feng both din die, he will take care of her for the rest of his life and the two of them may live in some secluded area with just the two of them and if you go and visit them twenty years later, they might be either deeply in love with each other or in the state of sadness cos they feel that they like each other but should not be together.

Haha... mebe you dun feel this way. Of course, I think a lot of people will not feel this way. But I do feel that that too much physical contact gives a great sense of intimacy between the two of them. And it is as if Feng is subsciously liking her a little bit.

Of course, he should not be. At least if you follow the book.

Okie... one compliment. I like Chen Hao as A Zhi a lot. Haha.. mebe I will like her as anything. I think her acting as A Zhi sort of explains why Qiao Feng did not die of high blood pressure while scolding her and why nobody has killed her yet. A zhi is annoying but if you look as Chen Hao's A Zhi, you will know she is evil but somehow cannot bear to kill her or hate her.

4) You tan zhi's death...... sigh..... in the show, he killed cos A zhi plugged out his eyes not cos A Zhi died. haha... so indeed, he loves his eyes more than her?!?! I think the show producer wants to let A Zhi died last in the show, hugging Feng, creating a romantic scene at the end that will stay with the audience for a while. But then.... sigh.... i think the order of death is important and once you change it, it does not make sense anymore.

1 Comments:

Blogger Azzurra said...

Haha I'm once again impressed by how easy you make everything clear. Your logic is undefatigable.

Now for the ending, I can't remember that they've been chased for ages in the book. What Xiao Feng said was that he captured his own king, and that's real nasty treachery, that's why he can't face his own people any more. But of course he's gotta do that (or he's gotta not find his brothers' acts regrettable). Or he can't face the Song people or himself. [The Song people are watching, the beggars, the monks. It's just nice that his act impressed them at that moment and we shouldn't rule out the intention, whether of XF or JY (author, not me) to create a tragic hero's gradiosity.] So the moment of capture is the moment of decision for death for XF. In those days people commit suicide for shame, not for depression. If that's so for XF, would you even call him cowardly (oh no!)? - just a side thought.

I didn't like the effect as well. XF 's supposed to have died at the cliff where his daddy jumped down thirty-some years ago. That's located at Song-Liao borderline, the Yan4 Men2 Gate. What I didn't like is the contrast, without transition, between steep projections of rock and the plains the Liao army is standing on. I'm sure the soldiers gotta stand on somewhere solid but at least they can show us how vast expanses transforms to a single piece of rock. And the real and computerized images are too obviously different. So the Liao soldiers look like some floating creature from the Lord of the Rings.

The scene with A Zi and XF is a bit long and I agree shots of how sad the ladies were weren't all that necessary. But I love the shot with A Zi's hair blowing in the wind and two lines of blood on her face. Although how her hair all of a sudden became undone is baffling as well.

I guess you can say You Tanzhi killed himself for grief of A Zi not accepting his eyes. And that she threw away the last link between them. And in the book, if my blurry memory still has some accuracy, it was like he was running to A Zi and oops fell down the cliff by mistake.

7:43 PM  

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