Happy Times
(Xing Fu Shi Guang) (2001)
Directed by
Yimou Zhang
Happy Times
(Xing Fu Shi Guang) (2001)
Directed by
Yimou Zhang
Story:
Happy Times is a small but broad Chinese language
comedy about human nature when it comes to love and the pursuit of happiness.
Middle-aged Ding Shikou visits a matchmaker to find a wife. Finally, she sends
him the perfect one.
Zhao (Zhao Benshan), a retired factory worker, has decided, late in life, to put an end to his bachelorhood. Although he has lined up a prospective bride -- a roly-poly divorc¨¦ (Dong Lihua) who lives with her teenage son and stepdaughter -- the 50,000 yuan a suitable wedding would cost is beyond his means. Through a series of fibs and omissions, Zhao has led his fianc¨¦ to believe that he is a man of substance, and his simultaneous efforts to sustain this imposture and to raise money set ''Happy Times,'' a wise, gentle and sad new comedy by Zhang Yimou, in motion.
Other Reviews:
Zhao is a middle-aged bachelor who thinks that at long as he has found a wife and promises her an expensive wedding that he cannot afford. To pay for the wedding he and a friend fix up an abandoned bus in a park, calling it the 'Happy Times Hut', renting it out to courting couples. The hut is a modest success, but Zhao can't resist making it out to be more than it is, telling his fiancee that he manages a hotel.
There is no doubt in my mind that Zhang Yimou is one of the
world's finest film makers. He manages to straddle the bounds of both art house
and commercialism with his catalogue of works that show a beauty and grandeur
that often earns the description "painterly", whilst also telling
a really good story. Happy Times is something of a departure from works like
Raise The Lantern and Shanghai Triad, being a fairly
realist comedy.
The
simple story of Happy Times overlays an interesting commentary on China's
government, society, and future. The first act
of film creates the characters, their relationships, and the overall situation,
to set up the political allegory that plays out in the final two acts. The
story unfolds that retired/laid-off Old Zhao must take care of the young blind
girl, Wu Ying. Through a series of lies, Zhao has put himself in a situation
where, although he is retired and poor, Wu Ying believes he owns a successful
hotel.
Zhao is a 50 years old unemployed loser making one last attempt at finding love. He courts a portly divorcee, but keeps having to lie to pass himself off as a better catch than he really is. Eventually, of course, the lies backfire. Zhao tells his sweetheart that he is the manager of a fancy hotel. She responds by foisting her blind stepdaughter off on him, confident that he can easily find her employment at his fancy hotel.
No longer partnered, artistically or domestically, with the stunning Gong Li, director Zhang Yimou has probably redeemed himself with Party satraps through his engaging serio-comic "Happy Days." (He's been in and out of hot water with past films.) Destined to reach a miniscule audience in theaters, this touching film ought to be widely viewed when released for sale or rental.
Zhang Yimou has long been one of my favorite directors not only for his opulent historical dramas but also for his some of his small-scale, intimate films. Though I did not care for his previous effort, The Road Home, I eagerly anticipated Happy Times since Terence Malick was listed as Executive Producer. Unfortunately, I found Happy Times to be a clich¨¦-ridden and uninvolving film.
Zhang Yimou made his reputation with lush and stunning historical epics like Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern, films that defined Chinese filmmaking but dwelt on a China that was disappearing as each film won acclaim outside the country.
Toward an Ethics of Postvisuality: Some
Thoughts on the Recent Work of Zhang Yimou
by Rey Chow
Abstract: "Taking as its point of departure the unresolved problematic of ethics in poststructuralist theory, this essay approaches ethics from the perspective of mediated visuality in the contemporary cultural politics. Noting how the sensitivity to otherness--be it in the form of mass culture, gender, or race--has often been accompanied by iconophobia, a fundamental distrust and rejection of images, the author offers an analysis of the contemporary Chinese film Happy Times, directed by Zhang Yimou, as an instance of a kind of ethical film practice in which a responsible, non-iconophobic thinking about visuality and its implications may be traced. In a culture caught between the forces of globalization and its own attempts at modernization, such as contemporary China's, Zhang's work contributes to an ethics of what may be called postvisuality."
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