Happy Times
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Movie Reviews of Happy Times
Movie Review: Bitter-sweet story
Summary: 5 Stars
There was a time when I longed to see another Zhang Yimou film. His greatest films, "Raise the Red Lantern," "Shanghai Triad," "Ju-dou," and "Red Sorghum" are--without a doubt--some of the richest cinematic experiences--and I'll stress the word "experiences" that I've EVER had.
But something happened to Zhang Yimou, and his artistry--as perhaps one of the greatest directors of all time--waned. Was it perhaps because he lost his muse, Gong Li, star of "Shanghai Triad" and "Raise the Red Lantern"? Many professional reviewers speculate that Gong Li's departure is the cause for Yimou's artistic slump, but regardless of the cause, Yimou seems to be on the rise again with this film "Happy Times."
Zhao (Bensahn Zhao), an unemployed, middle-aged lonely factory worker longs for a wife. After being jilted 18 times, he decides to marry an unpleasant, domineering divorcee. While friends scoff at photographs of Zhao's large new fiancee, Zhao defends her rubenesque proportions by stating that the other 18 women left him because they were skinny, and as this fiancee is far from skinny, Zhao believes she will stay put and marry him.
Zhao, in order to impress the divorcee, brags that as the manager of the "Happy Times" hotel, he is fairly well-to-do. Problems develop when the divorcee contends that they need 50,000 yen in order to get married in style, and this is when Zhao starts to involve his friends in his relationship. Acting on the advice of his best friend (who also has no money), Zhao refurbishes an abandoned bus as a romantic retreat for lovers with the idea that the lovers will pay for their privacy.
The divorcee, who really is a most unpleasant character, decides that the non-existent "Happy Times" hotel would be the perfect place to dump her unwanted blind step-daughter, Ying, and before Zhao realizes it, he is responsible for the neglected, frail blind teenage girl. Zhao's faulty logic, accompanied by his unrelenting desire to please and placate his nasty fiancee lead to further fabrications and eventually to disaster.
The title of the DVD, "Happy Times," is ironic--just as the "Happy Times" hotel does not exist, there are also really no "happy times" for any of the characters in this film. Happiness remains elusive--or exists in the imagination, at best. Zhao's make-believe hotel--a metaphor for life--is really only a gutted, abandoned bus that serves as a tacky love nest. Similarly, happy times for Zhao and Ying are elusive and fleeting moments spent eating an ice cream, and describing the colours and patterns in a dress. There is no lasting happiness in reality, and yet indulging in fabrications and make-believe ultimately also brings unhappiness to those who indulge in fantasies--displacedhuman
Movie Review: Heart rending
Summary: 5 Stars
My university's east asian cultures department is showing an east asian movie every friday for a month and this was the first one shown. I finished watching this movie a little over an hour ago, and it still is affecting me.
After China opened itself to the world in 1980, and especially after Tiananmen, it began a huge process of modernization to fuel the potential for its economic growth; however, everyone was not involved in this whirlwind of development. While many younger entrepreneurs were able to take advantage of the massive changes, many older individuals who were steeped within the system of government subsidized businesses and depended on the "iron rice bowl" for housing and food were left out in the cold. A group of these individuals make up the core characters of Zhang Yimou's 2000 film Happy Times.
Noted for films such as The Road Home and Red Sorghum which show off the beauties of the Chinese countryside, Zhang Yimou also created films such as Not One Less and The Story of Qiu Ju which display the clash between the urban and the rural. However, Happy Times is different because it focuses entirely on the urban and the displacement some individuals can feel when their homes go through rapid changes.
Old Zhao seems like a decent enough fellow. He is friendly and humorous, but has yet to get married. However, with the appearance of Chunky Mama in his life it seems that maybe he will finally get married, it is the 18th time that he has attempted to do so. The problem is that Chunky Mama desires an expensive wedding that would cost Zhao 50,000 Yuan or so: an amount of money that is quite out of his reach. However, determined to marry Chunky Mama he goes to his friend Fu for help and they establish the Happy Times Hut which is nothing more than a broken down bus where young couples can make out. Being a chronic liar, Zhao tells Chunky Mama that he is in the hotel business and that he is making lots of money. Believing him, Chunky Mama dumps her unwanted blind stepdaughter Wu Ying onto him. Having no true place for the girl to work, Zhao and his friends build a "massage parlor" for the girl to work at so Zhao can keep his promise to Chunky Mama that he will look after the girl, but for how long can he keep up such a subterfuge?
While it was panned by many critics, in my opinion, Happy Times is quite a delightful film. Zhao Benshan is absolutely hilarious and Dong Jie as the blind Wu Ying is magnificent. Full of humor and sadness Happy Times contains some extraordinarily touching moments. A great film for those who enjoy Zhang Yimou's films or Chinese film in general.
Movie Review: Zhang Yimou does it again...
Summary: 5 Stars
I was so happy when I was in Blockbuster last evening and admist all the Hollywood mass-produced "big A-list star" [movies] I was able to find Zhang Yimou's recent import. Once again I was not disappointed. I started watching this, and it was interesting- a look at modern China through Zhang's excellent direction- the old man lying to marry the very coruplent woman...lying about his finances and scheming to make money. So far, nothing special, but I definitley felt like seeing what's next. So the old man goes to the woman's apartment, and she has this equally obese and extremely obnoxious son- and it's a great character portrayal, I'm thinking...when out comes the step sister, Wu Ying, and everything changes. .... she was abandoned by her father, and left with this horrible stepmother who horribly mistreats her and shows how loathsome a human can get...I'm talking complete human refuse. At first the old man ignores Wu Ying since as he's trying desperately to please the horrid stepmother, then gradually gets closer to her in a plot of putting her to work at his fictional hotel to appease the stepmother. All of this middle part is a bit slow, but the payoffs are seeing this beautiful, pathetic, and perhaps the most tragic figure I've come across in cinema for a long time show what appear to be the first smiles she's ever had. The other reviews written here will go into more detail, but all I want to emphasize is that the movie takes a whole different direction the minute Wu Ying appears and steals your heart. She's another one of Zhang's wonderful heroines, who has everything against her, and struggle on, like the teacher who camped outside of the TV station in Beijing in Zhang's "Not One Less," and the pregnant Gong Li's struggle for justice in "The story of Qiu Ju." And as the story progresses, the old man increasingly grows likeable, as his relationship with Wu Ying brings out the best of humanity, and the coruplent worst of humanity stepmother gradually fades from the story. But the ultimate payoff comes in the poetic, shocking, and absolutely devastating ending to the movie...which absolutely overrides any potential flaws in plot and setup of the previous sections of the film. As another reviewer wrote, I was horribly affected as well..and I am still thinking of Wu Ying. If you are an intelligent moviegoer, you will be glued to this film. Rent it, buy it, but by all means, make sure you see it. It is the type of wonderful film with an ending that forces you to think about it long after it's over...I'm looking forward to Zhang's next...Movie Review: Happy viewing, at least.
Summary: 5 Stars
Zhang Yimou's ironically titled *Happy Times* is really a remarkable tightrope act: it offers us some very sappy melodrama while commenting on its own artifices, and gets away with it like a charming thief. Get a load of this plot. . . . A fat divorcee with two teenagers -- her own boy and a blind, unwanted step-daughter left behind by her ex-husband -- gets involved with an unemployed proletarian named Zhao. Zhao, depressed, broke, and lonely, claims he's a big-shot hotelier in order to impress the divorcee, who turns out to be very hard to impress. Hence, Zhao's lies -- as one might expect -- become more grandiose and difficult to sustain, especially after the divorcee dumps the unwanted blind girl onto his doorstep. "I'm sure you can find SOME work for her at your fancy hotel!" the woman declares. Zhao hits upon the idea of hiring the girl as a masseuse for the imaginary hotel's wealthy guests. But how is he going to pull THIS off? Desperately, he lets the girl stay in his shabby apartment, which he claims is a "worker's apartment" -- his OWN place, of course, is some unspecified mansion elsewhere. Of course, by now he's forced to get his fellow-unemployed friends in on the act: they pose as the wealthy guests and receive massages from the girl in a decrepit factory that they have hastily dressed up as a massage parlor at the "hotel". Once these jobless pensioners run out of real disposable income, they tip her with rectangular cuttings from brown paper bags instead of money. This all sounds very cruel, I know, but just watch the movie: Zhao and his friends come to feel a deep fondness for the poor wretch, who -- you guessed it -- just wants to find her father somewhere in Beijing so that he can pay for a procedure to cure her blindness. This whole set-up -- poor man, blind girl, and their unlikely friendship -- could so easily slide down toward appalling sentimentality. But Zhang Yimou avoids that by making his characters well-rounded: selfish one minute, solicitous the next; hopeful one minute, suicidal the next; comic one minute, tragic the next. The story requires an artist to negotiate the narrative through the pitfalls of cliches that would otherwise sink it. But then, there aren't too many directors equal to Zhang Yimou's artistry, anyway. And here's a tip to the filmmakers out there: don't mistake the manipulative plot devices in *Happy Times* for universal situations. This is a story that could only happen in China. Therefore, no "loose remakes", please. Leave it alone.Movie Review: Happy Times---Learning to Live With the End of Illusion.
Summary: 5 Stars
Zhang Yimou is always at his best when he is portraying ordinary people facing overwhelming circumstances. Although not an epic film, this movie joins the ranks of "To Live" and "The Story of Qiu Jiu" as yet another supreme example of that genre.The story surrounds the efforts of a man in his fifties (Zhao) who is desperately trying to get a woman to marry him. The woman, when we meet her, is obviously a caricature-morbidly obese, with an enormous slob of a son. In this pathetic environment, the door opens on a frail, pretty young lady, who obviously doesn't fit the picture, and who, though blind, "sees" better than anyone else what is really important. I was struck by the pathos of her blindness, as she plays it magnificently. But I was even more fascinated with the "blindness" of Zhao, who can't see the forest for the giant Sequoia.
You know what? Forget reviews-you just need to see this movie. From the pathetic opening, to the elaborate ruse of a fake massage parlor that forms the bulk of the story, to the "relationship" that each of Zhao's retired friends forms with this young lady, to her noble response to the deception, which she discovers far before any of them suspect, to the incredible ending... Talking to a playing tape recorder...I never would have thought of it; it's really one of the most unusual endings I have seen.
When it comes right down to it, the whole movie is a caricature, because the storyline is so outlandish that you can never quite believe that something like that would actually happen. Throughout the movie, my most consuming thought was, "How in the sam hill is he going to end this thing?!" Zhang Yimou did not disappoint me. Zhao and the young girl are saying good bye to each other in a way which is tragic, because we know that neither of them can hear the other, and yet triumphant, because in some very real way, each of them has finally come to reality-the end of illusion.
Happy Times? Hmmm....I'd have to think about it. Yes, in a way, because throughout the whole time that this "game" is being played by Zhao and his friends, they really are being kind to the young girl. And she is having more fun than she has ever had in her life. Yet, the story is a tragedy, because none of the relationships are ever fulfilled. This movie is perhaps the most apolitical movie Zhang Yimou has made, but it is rich with the themes that have made him the great director he is. It is easily a movie for the whole family, and a movie that can be talked about, and talked about, and talked about long after it is over.