Goodbye, South, Goodbye
Taiwan / Japan
Hou Hsiao-Hsien - Director
King Jieh-wen - Screenwriter
Chu Tien-wen - Screenwriter
Jack Kao - Screenwriter
Mark Lee Ping-bing - Cinematographer
Kao is a middle age gangster with trimmed short haircut and grave mien who you do not know exactly what he does for a living. He has a father who came from Mainland China to Taiwan with the Nationalist government in 1949, he speaks mandarin to his father and use both mandarin and Taiwanese with friends. He has a vision, talking about opening a restaurant in Shanghai all the time, both fulfilling his father’s wish and his own vision of making something big. He tries very hard to describe his vision as promising as possible to his girlfriend. But in the end, his investments will fail, his girlfriend will leave him and join her sister in America, and he is going to end up in a car crushing into rice field in a backwater town of southern Taiwan.
This is the story of Goodbye, South, Goodbye (1996), a film by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien. Look at the image of the protagonist, Kao (a recurring actor in Hou’s films, played by Jack Kao), the resemblance look of Kao and Hou himself is not easy to omit. Besides, this fictional character has a gangster background and a father who used to live in China hint the link back to Hou himself. Using biography style to state the story is one of Hou’s trademarks. Boys from Fenggui (1983) is a loose adaptation of his own wild and lost teenage time, A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985) is the autobiography of his life before twenty years old. Hou also borrows stories from others. Summer at Grandpa’s (1984) is based on the memories of his long time screenwriting collaborator Chu Tianwen. Dust in the Wind (1986) is base on the life of the screenwriter Wu Nianzhen. Not to mention The Puppetmaster (1993), a half documentary of the puppet artist Li Tien-lu.
But personal life and story is not Hou’s sole concern; his characters are in the swirl of history, tumbling with Taiwan’s social and political turmoil. For Hou, Taiwan is a place that always hurtles into the next era, with constant and ongoing power struggle, every new regime tries to construct their version of history and leaves the past behind.(1) In his films which recite tales of the past, Hou stops and looks back, pondering and reflecting a slice of time that is easily forsaken in the fast pace modern society. Hou’s protagonists are nobody, and yet they are everybody live in the very island as him.
Modernization in Taiwan has resulted in a paradox, on the one hand, it's a mess - chaotic, extremely greedy for instant gains, with no sense of justice, or respect for law and order. But, at the same time, it's a vibrant country brimming with energy and life. There is a thin line between loving and hating it. - Hou Hsiao Hsien (2)
In Goodbye, Hou turns his gaze back to the contemporary. He does not stress on the troubled history of Taiwan, but on the life of the people who live in it this moment. Hou is famous for his long takes, still camera shots as if he tell every story (including his own) as a bystander. The way he depicts personal memories is “through a de-personalisation of the narration, putting his intimate feelings at a distance and choosing a detached perspective…the real protagonists are his family and his country.”(3) Although not as direct as his early works, the references to his personal experience make this film join his long time traditional of biographical filmmaking style.
In the beginning, Kao and his protégé, Flathead (Lim Giong), and Flathead’s girlfriend Pretzel (Shizuka Inoh) take a train to a little town to work in a gambling house. He is being asked why he has the leisure to take a train rather than drive (since the town is not far from Taipei), he replies that he has not done so for a long time, and it brings back lots of memories. Nostalgia flows through the entire film. Train and trail is the link between city and countryside, between adulthood and childhood form many Taiwanese.
In Goodbye, Hou uses a lot of scenes shot from or on moving vehicles like train, scooters and cars. But these shots can be divided into two kinds. One is with positive spirit, like placing the camera in front of the train as if we are listening and watching it winds through the refreshing lush valley. Another example is the three main characters on scooters and merrily rides up along the hill. The rural scenery portrayed here is full of memory and harmony.
But other shots bear darker meanings. We see characters sit in vehicle; the frame mostly jams with characters’ face and body. We only know they are moving, but can not see where they are going. The aimless feeling generates from these scenes echoes with the never ending talks on cell phones about business. Hou makes it clear in the opening scene when Kao tries to talk through the phone on train and is interrupted by poor reception. Modernization pushes people forward and urges people to catch up with the trend, but the promise is empty and the effort is futile, people have no control over their life and lost their way while pursuing the elusive and deceiving future.
Koa is the only character receives clear description in the film. He embodies the disoriented people live in the fast pace modern society in Taiwan. He carries the question and memory, both sweet and sorrow.
Until the second half of the film the party of three go to the South as the title stated to complete the swine scandal. The last thirty minutes of the film is in the dark. The tranquilize south countryside usually represents peace and childhood memory; but here it is the battleground for gangsters and politicians fight to drain something out of it, with these two parties sit around the same table wheeling and dealing with pretentious good manners. The last scene, after Flathead is released, the three are in a car fleeting back to Taipei. In the dawn on the crooked road, the car rushes into the rice field. The car is stuck inside the mud that grows rice, the food that all the residents on this land depend on; so as our protagonists and their future. Hou uses static and long shot capture the breathtaking rural scenes, yet what happens inside the frame is gloomy and tragic. The ambivalent emotion of both love and hate flows though Hou’s portray of modern Taiwan.
After the Taiwan trilogy, Hou Hsiao Hsien tries something different in Goddbye South, Goodbye. He uses more music, including the dark, electronic soundtrack composed by the actor, singer and songwriter Lim Giong (4)who plays the punk kid Flathead. He also uses more camera movement, and less historical reference. Although this is a story with people hit the dead end, Hou still tells it in a humanistic and compassionate way, filming the story, the people, the place he breathe and live.
Notes:
(1) “The Secret History.” 35th International film Festival Rotterdam Publication No.8 2 February 2006
(2) Hou Hsiao Hsien on Goodbye, South, Goodbye, Cannes Film Festival Catalogue
(3) Neri, Corrado. “A Time to Live, A Time to Die: A Time to Grow.” Chinese Films in Focus. Chris Berry eds. London: BFI, 2003. p161.
(4) Lim Giong started his career as a pop singer in Taiwan. Recent years he turns underground and adds more electronic element in his musical work. The theme song (titled Self Destruction) in the beginning and end of Goodbye South, Goodbye is composed by him with lyrics written in Taiwanese. He also composes for another Hou’s film, Millennium Mambo (2001) as well as Jia Zhang Ke’s The World (2004), Still Life (2006) and Dong (2006).
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