peach blossom luck: Crazy Stone (2006)

Wrote this for my school newspaper but they never published it because nobody cares. I really like this review and I really like the film, though. It also appeared on my Wordpress, which I abandoned because I didn't like the interface, and on the Sino Arts blog.

Crazy Stone (2006)

Jiaqi Kang

The first scene in the movie Crazy Stone (Fengkuang de shitou) features one of the main characters getting his anus checked by a doctor. We won’t discuss that.

The second scene in the movie Crazy Stone (Fengkuang de shitou) is set in a gondola in Chongqing, a municipality that was once part of Sichuan province. As it lurches forward on its cable, we catch a gray, desolate overview of the city, with its damp-looking concrete buildings, milky skies, and patchy roofs. A voiceover that seems at first to be a monologue on the godlessness of this pathetic metropolis is stripped of its romanticism when it turns out to be spoken by a fat man with bad teeth and chapped lips trying half-heartedly to seduce a beautiful woman as old ladies look on in disgust. Similarly, later in the film, an image of a pair of artists sketching an ancient statue zooms out to show, next to them, a topless man lying on a table getting suction cup therapy, the circles on his back swelling into purple prunes; and a dialogue between an illiterate peasant and a benevolent stranger is revealed to be an unoriginal scam for money that nobody falls for anymore. The oddly touching beauty of Chongqing is compared to, contrasted against, and complemented with the vulgarity of its inhabitants, a huddle of low-level hustlers and dusty-fingered corporates with no real ambitions.

This is the essence of the film, a marvelous low-budget heist comedy made in 2006 with an unknown cast and crew that, against all expectations, topped the national box office. It is a thoughtful meditation on the urban ecosystem of unglamorous Chinese city life, yet never strays into the pretentious or the melodramatic. Instead, it drags the audience into a world of chaos, crassness and confusion, an elaborate mash of storylines all circling violently around the titular object, a single piece of mesmerizing green jade… found inside a toilet in a bankrupt D-class museum-slash-operahouse.

There is the security guard with urinary troubles, fiercely loyal to his job at the failing institution, despite not having been paid for almost a year; the fashionable Hong Kong assassin with thin lips hired to do whatever it takes to steal the stone; the three conmen who, just as they have begun to run out of tricks, see their big break; Cha-er-si (Charles), the talentless photographer who wishes to woo a lady with riches; the jumpy, rodent-like real estate assistant with his repulsive white shoes and flimsy contract; the museum owner who is as old, fragile, and treacherous as his crumbling imperial property; the zero-star saloon-like hotel that houses crooks and employees alike; the seemingly infinite Coca-Cola cans that pile up mountainously in a cramped guestroom; the suitcase large enough to fit a grown man; the lamb brochette barbecue; the pothole covers; the lethal crossbow; the light diffusers; the pair of identical spy suits; the ash from a cigarette … all of these and more are the players in this brilliantly hectic plot peppered with a menagerie of local dialects and the cynical, omniscient clash of traditional Sichuanese opera cymbals. The film is a Western set in a frontier land where the people are still frantically taking advantage of Deng Xiaoping’s 1980s post-Communist market reforms, where the cowboys are really the Indians and vice versa, where honor dictates all actions but dignity is nonexistent, and where the fatal high noon showdown takes form in two installments: at first as a scrambling, medieval-style joust by the road in the middle of the night, and again the next day in a nouveau riche’s tall office accompanied by a mournful, closed-eyed guitar soundtrack.

Watching this cacophony in which the characters are constantly covered in bruises for myriad reasons fills the audience with a strange sense of pleasure, and the schadenfreude is made more intense by the greasiness of the color palette and the dim lighting that makes everything in the frame look as though it is coated with a layer of grime. We watch on with glee, mocking the obliviousness of the characters and grateful for our own clean lives in which we have the privilege of living amongst good-mannered people who know how to flush a toilet. Casual yet masterful editing and perfectly-timed visual twists turn cliché into pastiche art and misfortune into dark humor. Huang Bo, who ten years later today is one of the most successful actors in mainland China, exudes ugly and cunning charm as a pseudo-Jean Valjean, and Guo Tao is pitiful as a humble and resigned yet clearly intelligent man with vast potential that we all know will forever go untapped. Most of all, however, it is director Ning Hao who excels, and this at the green age of 28. There are a million ways to ruin such a film, but with a magic touch, he is able to avoid pitfalls and create a wonderfully exhilarating and aesthetically inelegant (yet exquisitely so) piece of work that deserves to be as highly regarded in Chinese cinema as the historical arthouse films so adored by foreign cinephiles.