HAPPY TIMES (Xingfu shiguang) Rating based on 4 stars: Reviewed by Harvey Karten Sony Pictures Classics Director: Zhang Yimou Writer: Gui Zi, based on the novella "Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh" by Mo Yan. Cast: Zhao Benshan, Dong Jie, Dong Lihua, Fu Biao, Li Xuejian, Leng Qibin, Niu Ben, Gong Hinghua, Zhang Hongjie, Zhao Bingkun Screened at: Sony, NYC, 4/29/02
When was the last time you told a lie? A year ago? A week ago? Today? Most likely the last; in fact one study indicates that the average person answering a phone in an office lies some twenty times a day. Hard to believe? Think about it. Would you lie to get out of a date? If you were a doctor, would you lie to a patient on the grounds that telling the truth would set off a major clinical depression and wouldn't help him one bit? Can you think of when a lie is ever ethically justified? Sissela Bok wrote a book called "Lying" some years ago which defended her extreme view that lying is always wrong. Always. If she saw Zhang Yimou's latest film, "Happy Times," would she go along with the numerous fibs told by the central character, Zhao (Zhao Benshan)? As the movie progresses, you may say to yourself, "Hmmm, I'll bet this is the big exception to her thesis." By the time the story wraps up, you'll think again. That's just what of the great things about directors who respect their audience: they have you leaving the theater thinking more about the ethical situations than about what you're going to have for dinner.
"Happy Times," or as the Mandarin language title goes, "Xingu shiguang), could be entitled "Pinocchio Meets Cinderella," in that China's greatest fibber meets one of that populous country's most psychologically abused and physically tormented young women. You could call it a middle-age crisis movie if you wanted to reduce it to Hollywood formula, but let's not, because the poignancy is genuine. After all the film was made by Zhang Yimou, whose works include one story of a 13-year-old schoolteacher who looks for a truant boy ("Not One Less") and a more epic tale of a fourth wife in a 1920's household ("Raise the Red Lantern"). Here, the novella by Mo Yan, "Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh" has been adapted by Gui Zi into a contemporary, bittersweet comedy about a 50-year-old bachelor (played by the 44-year-old Zhao Benshan) and an unusual meeting he has with an 18-year-old, unhappy blind woman, Wu Ying (Dong Jie). Zhao, unlucky in love, finally finds someone willing to marry him not the 18-year-old but her obese stepmother of the blind girl: a gold-digger who thinks that the poor factory worker, Zhao, is rich.
To earn the "50 grand" that the chunky mama insists on for a lavish wedding, Zhao and his friend Li (Li Xuejian) model an old bus into a private place for young couples to have their trysts, but when that does not work out as planned, Zhao agrees to take young Wu off her stepmother's hands and hire her as a masseuse in his hotel. The only thing is that there is no hotel, just an broken down space; there are not customers to massage; and Zhao has to use his ingenuity (read: ability to lie) to convince the poor, blind girl that everything's legit and that customers are tipping her generously. How he does this is the central focus of the movie, yielding considering comedy with an overlay of poignance.
It's never too late for an unhappy fellow (or woman) to step into an unplanned situation that will turn his or her life around. In "Happy Times," both Zhao and Wu attain what just might be their first wonderful experience in life, but the entire house of cards had always been ready to collapse. With Zhang Yimou's sympathetic portrayal of a compulsive liar who both gives and receives a bounty of pleasure (albeit satisfaction mixed with sadness), "Happy Times" emerges as a film not as endearing as "Not One Less" but one which offers substantial food for thought and emotional resonance.
Rated PG. Running time: 106 minutes. (C) 2002 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 31699 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 310222 X-RT-TitleID: 1114082 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: 3/4
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews