My new favorite Spanish actor

Although I've somewhat enjoyed watching Antonio Banderas for a while, I have recently discovered Javier Bardem. Well, not so recently in fact: Biutiful was one of the in-flight movies when I flew out of Beijing in June 2011. I didn't watch more than a few minutes of the movie, but that was the first time that I remember recognizing the actor. It wan't until a few weeks ago when I saw Los Lunes al Sol that it really began to click in my head, though. After looking him up, I realized that I first saw him in Jamón, jamón, during my Spanish-and-Indian-movie-week of Spring Festival 2011. Later, when I was in Minnesota for parts of June and July of 2011, I saw him in Carne Tremula and Mar Adentro, both of which I enjoyed.


I saw some similarities between Los Lunes al Sol and Biutiful. They both focused on the hard life that people have with not much money living in Barcelona. Although I enjoyed Los Lunes al Sol, I thought that Biutiful was really a beautiful movie. I did enjoy that it had some Mandarin spoken by the Chinese immigrant workers, but the sorrow of the film, the tragedy there, and the hard life portrayed are things that I found to be very moving.


I really like movies like that: perhaps it is because I was raised on movies that always had happy endings and always had the good guys win. These films cut black and white so clearly, and films that display the world as more ambiguous seem so much more real to me. Main characters that aren't very good or heroic, obstacles that aren't from a megalomaniac evil person, and difficulties that can't be blamed or placed on any person, but merely are. Sometimes I wonder if movies that display conflict as so clear-cut and black-and-white are somewhat responsible for simplified views of the world. The movies that I saw as a child were almost all American movies, but that isn't to say that other countries don't have movies like this too. I think that this is also one of the many reasons that I like Miyazaki films so much: rather than having villains and heroes, the antagonists of his films often have clear motivations that an audience can understand and sympathize with, such as wanting to protect one's people from destructive monsters, or to be reunited with a long-lost loved one.


In Biutiful, Javier plays a man with a pretty tough life. Not enough money to treat his children as well as he would like, an ex with drug problems who keeps coming back, trying to manage a bunch of illegal street vendors while placating (bribing) the cops enough to back off, and dealing with a high pressure agreement with Chinese immigrants workers make his life difficult right from the start of the film. When he gets more bad news he makes some small efforts to live a better life, but this is no Disney fable, so the world continues to shit on him. I highly recommend it. This is one of the best Spanish movies that I have seen. Biutiful was nominated for many film awards, and it won several of them too, so if you care about film committees and their opinions that may sway you.

Movie Review: 不再让你孤单 (English Title: A Beautiful Life) (2011)

A Beautiful Life is a 2011 movie which seems to be a cooperative project between Hong Kong and mainland China. It was directed by Andrew Lau, who is responsible for the excellent Hong Kong action film, Infernal Affairs, so it was strange to me to see him directing a sappy love story. The Chinese title, 不再让你孤单, roughly means "I Won't Let You Be Lonely Again." I always wonder how they translate these titles so differently into different languages. Movies like this often make me hate Chinese movies, but A Beautiful Life seemed to have two separate and distinct parts to it, and I will have to analyze it as such. 

Fang Zhendong doesn't know who this obnoxiously drunk lady is, but he still carries her home.

The first half of the movie seemed like a standard Chinese romance film, and therefore I did not like it at all. It has some standard (cultural?) elements with I find quite of-putting. First, the main female character, Li Peiru, manipulates and uses men as though they were objects, apparently with no regard for their feelings. She throws temper tantrums when things don't go as she wishes, which I find to be quite annoying. This actually is a cultural thing: it is not unusual to see a grown Chinese woman having a fit. Whereas in the United this would be seen as a sign of great immaturity (which is still my culturally-bound judgement of it), in China it is not soon quite so negatively. Alternatively, maybe there are just many women there who can't control their outbursts, and people in China have learned to put up with it. While Li Peiru is acting like a rich and spoiled brat, the main male character, Fang Zhendong is a standard Chinese guy: he is moral and upright, takes care of his brother, tries to do the right thing, and doesn't really have much driving force. What I mean by that is that his actions rarely push the story forward, and that he is generally quite passive. In the romantic pursuing between Li Peiru and Fang Zhendong, the pursuing is all done by Li Peiru, with her continuously chasing after him. Fang Zhendong puts up with all of Li Peiru's shit without voicing a single word of complaint: her drunkenness (which seems alcoholic), her manipulation, and even her financial instability.¹ This reflects another part of Chinese cultural norms that I am not a big fan of: while the women throw tantrums or act out, the men just shut up and deal with it. This is, of course, not always the case in reality, but this is what is commonly portrayed in films (and I assume other media as well), and in the same way that I was socialized by American movies, there are millions of young Chinese people watching this type of behavior repeatedly in films and on TV. So to wrap up the first half of the review, I did not like the characters of the film, neither of whom seemed particularly lovable. The story of the affection between them also seemed fairly contrived to me: there were just too many chance encounters in which they met, too many coincidences for me to believe it. There is a quiter side-plot of Fang Zhendong's brother and the girl that he likes (they get married and live happily), which I enjoyed much more than the romance between Fang Zhendong and Li Peiru.

I enjoyed the second half a lot more. It made me miss Beijing. In the first half there were a few scenes that gave me a nostalgic feeling (Li Peiru's apartment is near the CCTV tower, while Fang Zhendong lives in the Hutongs near Drum Tower). The second half of the film, however, had a alternatly warm and sad feeling. (spoiler warning) Eventually, Li Peiru realized what a great, honest, loyal guy Fang Zhengdong is, and how he has put up with all of her shit and still wants her, so she goes to him, they get married, and they have a baby. Here is the sad part: Fang Zhengdong has a head injury which causes him to forget more and more things as time goes on. He uses sticky notes all over to remind him how to do things like how to feed the fish and how to mix the baby milk powder. He forgets to pick up Li Peiru from work, and at one point he even forgets to make the rice for dinner, and only realizes it after all the other dishes are ready and on the table. It is painful, and frightening, to watch. However, they live a happy domestic life with Fang Zhengdong's brother and his wife in a calm and cozy little home, tucked away in a maze of hutong-like alleys. That is the part that most made me yearn for a domestic life. Watching the family together in their home made me want to return to China and settle down, cooking Chinese food and living with a little family or with close friends. Maybe after a few more years of bouncing around the globe I will have to go back and find a cozy home in the periphery of Beijing. EDIT: Kind of like this, perhaps.
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1 It seems that Fang Zhengdong gave Li Peiru a long of several hundred thousand RMB, which she then failed to pay back. I am not completely sure on that, though, as there were some details that I didn't understand (I watched it in Mandarin with Chinese subtitles).

Thor... in Spanish

I had an interesting experience the other night: on the WWOOF farm we watched Thor. That's right. Normally we have dinner at 11:00 or so, (with plenty of red wine) and I sleepily go off to bed as soon as I finish eating while the Spaniards chat, smoke, and drink until God knows what hour. That night, however, we started dinner ludicrously early; perhaps 10:00 in the evening. Edua set up a computer and some speakers next to the table in the yard, and we all stared at the small screen for the duration of our meal. There were plenty of jokes about how (SPOILERS) naturally when Thor comes to Earth he lands in the United States, about how easy American girls seem in Hollywood movies, and something Remi said upon his seeing an Asian actor that unsettled me (due to my unsureness of what constitutes racism) about how the Chinese are everywhere, even in Asgard.

The film itself was nothing memorable; in fact, I would consider it to be less entertaining and of lower quality (in terms of an engaging story/plot that I could not predict) than most American blockbuster movies. Since the film was in Spanish, I didn't catch a good deal of the dialogue, but it wasn't too necessary to understand what was going on. I was, nonetheless, surprised by how much I did understand. Perhaps it was so clear form the context, perhaps, because I could have guessed the lines anyway, or perhaps due to it being spoken very clearly and without any think regional accent. I guess that it is a possibility that most of what I understood (linguistically) was not due to my Spanish language skills, but rather due to my childhood passion for mythology. I guess it just gows to show that not all of my childhood was wasted!

I ♥ Spanish Film and Bollywood

Over the spring festival vacation I watched a bunch of movies. Even though work has resumed, no juggling this week plus no improv this week means that I have spent more evenings chilling out at home, so my high rate of movie watching has continued.

I started off the spring festival vacation by watching some Spanish movies, which consisted of an excellent film by Pedro Almodóvar, Todo sobre mi madre. I next saw a couple of films with Penélope Cruz, such as Jamón, jamón and Volver, both of which I enjoyed. Although these three movies may not be representative of Spanish cinema, so far I really enjoy what I've seen. I had seen The Girl of Your Dreams during my senior year of college and I enjoyed it a lot too. Of course, if I restrict myself only to the cream of the Spanish cinema crop, I have no doubt that I will enjoy what I see. I look forward to seeing more of Pedro Almodóvar's movies, as well as movies featuring Penélope Cruz.


But I got a lot of cinematic excitement from outside of Iberian Peninsula as well. I don't remember why I downloaded several films from India, but ever since watching 3 Idiots a few months ago I have gained a new appreciation for Bollywood. Such an appreciation, in fact, that I am now telling all my friends that they should watch 3 Idiots. In the past two weeks I have added greatly to my knowledge of Indian film by watching Lage Raho Munna Bhai, then followed by a couple of films featuring Aamir Khan, who is currently one of the biggest stars in Indian film. I didn't enjoy Taare Zameen Par quite as much as 3 Idiots, although I saw a lot of similarities in the ideas portrayed by the two films. I just finished Lagaan this afternoon, which was really a behemoth of a movie at nearly four hours. I can see why it was subtitled as Once Upon A Time in India, as it was a very epic film, encompassing a colonial/imperial struggle, a clear personal rivalry and some very strong emotions throughout. Not Epic like Lord of the Rings or the Matrix. I mean more like epic as in Ben Hur, although I find myself unable to put into words exactly why I draw that connection. No wonder this is considered a modern classic in Indian film. I really enjoyed it, and I highly recommend that everybody checks it out.


There are still a few other films with Aamir Khan that I have on my computer that I haven't gotten around to yet, but they are definitely a priority for my as far as watching films go. It has also piqued my interest in other Indian film, and I have just looked up a list of highest grossing Indian films and started to download a bunch of them. I have high hopes for Bollywood and I. For my language-learning future, perhaps Urdu/Hindi is in the works after Portuguese. I can think of nothing more appropriate to end this post than to say that I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.