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Wayne Wang's return to Asian-themed filmmaking reminds us of his (and others') past accomplishments in Hollywood and the American indie scene, turning out great films few would guess were made by Asian Americans.
Asian American cinema took off in the 1970s and 80s under the ideal that such films "for us, by us" could represent the community accurately and provocatively. Today, the tide has turned toward making films about Asian Americans which are not Asian-specific; in other words, these are films (like Mike Kang's The Motel) which could be about any Americans, regardless of ethnicity. "They just happen to be Asian" has become the new mantra.
But why stop there? Can't "they just happen to be Asian" also describe a director making the latest blockbuster starring Christian Slater and John Travolta? A strong case can be made for the Asian American filmmaker who has infiltrated the system and proved that he or she can be just as versatile and reliable as any industry insider. Of course, there are detractors, as Wayne Wang has found out first-hand, having received criticism for his star-driven projects such as Anywhere from Here (1999), Maid in Manhattan (2002), and the underrated Last Holiday (2006). The dissenting opinions range from those who claim that such directors have forgotten their roots, to the more sophisticated argument that the color-blind selection of directors undermines the efforts by ethnic-based organizations like CAPE and the logic of affirmative action, which is to infiltrate the system yes, but also to inject a diversity of voices, not just a diversity of faces.
This debate's not getting settled anytime soon. In the meantime, it's worth recognizing that the phenomenon exists, and that some fantastic films have emerged in the process. As a phenomenon, we observe four main tendencies. One is for directors who started out in Asian American cinema to use their success in community filmmaking as a calling card for Hollywood. Wayne Wang and Justin Lin (Annapolis) are examples.
Second is for celebrated directors in Asia to move to Hollywood, in hopes that their overseas success can translate into North American box office success. The most famous example is John Woo (Mission Impossible II), but others include Chen Kaige (Killing Me Softly), Hideo Nakata (The Ring 2), the Pang Brothers (Bangkok Dangerous), Tsui Hark (Double Team), Ronny Yu (Bride of Chucky), Wong Kar-wai (My Blueberry Nights), and Ryuhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train). This trend has two important historical precedents: the importation of European directors into Hollywood in the studio era, and the regional borrowing of directors within Asia (for example Indian directors in the Malay industry and Japanese and Korean directors in Hong Kong).
Third are those who have allegiances to niche filmmaking other than Asian American cinema. Gregg Araki (Totally Fucked Up) and Jon Moritsugu (Terminal USA) are central figures of the 1990s American underground scene. The Australian-born James Wan (Saw) is one of the most sought-after slasher filmmakers working today. M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) continues to be the most cinematic of Hollywood suspense filmmakers. James Wong (who started off as a producer of The X-Files) has continued his exploration of the sci-fi genre with the Final Destination franchise. Jay Chandrasekhar (Beerfest, The Dukes of Hazard) is one of the more interesting frat-humor directors.
Lastly, there are those who have proven that, for them, boundaries are meaningless. Ang Lee's filmography has no consistency in genre or ethnicity, only in quality. Mira Nair has made films about Cuban Americans (The Perez Family), 19th century Britain (Vanity Fair), Indians from Africa (Mississippi Masala), and 1980s New Jersey (Hysterical Blindness). Shekhar Kapur has made two films about Queen Elizabeth, as well as the 19th century Sudanese battle epic The Four Feathers. Joan Chen has transcended boundaries as a truly international actress; and as director, she's made the Cultural Revolution drama Xiu Xiu: the Sent-Down Girl and the Winona Ryder / Richard Gere weepie Autumn in New York. Today we have Lee Isaac Chung (Munyurangabo), Bharat Lalluri (Tsunami: the Aftermath, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), and Mora Stephens (Conventioneers) emerging in this category as well.
Now, to the list. Some provisos: to keep things simple we have limited our list to American films, which explains the absence of Elizabeth (Kapur), Hilary and Jackie (Anand Tucker), and those by the many diasporic Asians around the world who we haven't discovered yet. Also, we haven't seen James Wong Howe's 1954 film Go, Man, Go!. We're not including documentarians, in which case Oscar-winner Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal) would definitely make the list. And lastly, to showcase as many talents as possible, we're limiting ourselves to one film per director.
The Living End (Gregg Araki, 1992)
Araki famously dedicated his tender AIDS drama The Living End to "the hundreds of thousands who've died and the hundreds of thousands more who will die because of a big white house full of Republican Fuckheads." The dedication encapsulates the rage of Araki's impassioned and tragically funny cry for recognition. When it was first released, The Living End's fresh sense of rhythm captured the energy of the early 90s gay subculture. Seen today, the film is above all a crushing love story between two men facing death. A director's cut is coming out this year on DVD.
Mod Fuck Explosion (Jon Moritsugu, 1994)
Asian American film history has unjustly, though not surprisingly, swept anarchic cult artist Jon Moritsugu under the rug. With films like Mod Fuck Explosion, Moritsugu defied taste and convention, telling off all of cinema before him with hammy acting, canny dialogue, and shoddy storytelling. But the result is a blast of freedom from the darkest corridors of hell. Moritsugu is the Asian American Godard for the punk age.
Smoke (Wayne Wang, 1995)
After gaining acclaim and attention for the culturally-monumental The Joy Luck Club, director Wayne Wang decided to take on another tapestry of stories in his next project, Smoke. However, this time Wang trades Chinese American women for gruff, lonely men in a Brooklyn cigar shop. The film follows the smoke shop owner, Auggie (Harvey Keitel), disheartened writer Paul Benjamin (William Hurt), and an impressive supporting cast that includes Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, Forest Whitaker, pre-The Riches Jared Harris, and pre-Lost Harold Perrineau. The film won numerous awards in the domestic and foreign film scenes, including a Berlin Silver Bear, a Cesar, and an Independent Spirit Award.
The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)
Four or five Ang Lee films could have easily made this list, but The Ice Storm is the finest. In fact, it's arguably the pinnacle of his career, a film where every element -- from James Schamus's brilliant script, to Mychael Danna's hypnotic score, to the all-star cast -- locks together in an eerie silence, capturing a Connecticut November moments before implosion. With Sense and Sensibility (1994), Lee proved he could direct anything. With The Ice Storm, he proved he could do it better than anybody else.
Face/Off (John Woo, 1997)
With Face/Off, John Woo showed how effortlessly a foreigner could make a Hollywood film without compromising all of his old preoccupations (cop/villain doubling, heroic sacrifice) and iconography (doves, religious symbols, bullet shells). Much has been said about the awesome, over-the-top action choreography which was completely new to Hollywood at the time, but less about Woo's compelling direction of melodrama, which is the direct link between Face/Off and Woo's previous A Better Tomorrow and The Killer. John Travolta and Nicolas Cage are also pitch-perfect in their parodies of each other.
The Cell (Tarsem Singh, 2000)
Tarsem is the Asian American Matthew Barney. To some, he's a one-trick pretentious hack, stealing others' visual ideas and stringing them into a supposed "narrative." To others, he's on the cutting edge of a medium that's seemingly forgotten the manifest destiny set forth by silent cinema and the classical avant-garde. Whatever one may say about his storytelling ability, there's no denying how in a film like The Cell, he's able to convey suspense and emotion through the elements: color, contrast, light. He's a true visual iconoclast in the mold of the Brothers Quay, Guy Maddin, and post-2000 Zhang Yimou: filmmakers who mock narrative with their visual excess, at the same time that they revel in the grandiose places it can take them.
Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
The Sixth Sense was M. Night Shyamalan's breakthrough, but Unbreakable is his masterpiece. Forget Iron Man, Batman Begins, and the other so-called revisionist comic book movies. Only Unbreakable rewrote the genre from the bottom up, starting with fear, modesty, and the everyday. There's little overtly exciting about Unbreakable, at least compared with the effects-laden ka-pows of most comic book movies. But the slow-burn buildup is suspense in its most basic form -- based in uncertainty not explosion, danger not flag-waving heroism. Shyamalan seems to be the only Hollywood filmmaker who gets away with the long take and creeping tracking shot. He's also, with the possible exceptions of James Wong Howe and Tarsem, the purest visual filmmaker in the Asian American canon.
Girlfight (Karyn Kusama, 2000)
One of the most talked-about films from Sundance 2000, Girlfight launched the careers of actress Michelle Rodriguez and director Karyn Kusama, who went on to direct Aeon Flux. With its gritty take on gender and ethnicity, Girlfight did what other high school films of the time refused to do. Girlfight is structured like a sports film, but the honesty of its characterizations and relationships transcend the machinations of the genre. Rodriguez emerges a star, and Kusama a formidable independent voice.
Shopgirl (Anand Tucker, 2005)
Taking a critically-repected novella written by Steve Martin and making it even better on the big screen, Anand Tucker's film version of Shopgirl reminded the world of why we fell in love with Claire Danes in the first place. Tucker delicately crafts this strangely awkward romance between an older man and a young aspiring artist who sells gloves in Saks, and Shopgirl leaves the audience staring mesmerized at the open wound on display when vulnerable strangers strive for honest connections.
Munyurangabo (Lee Isaac Chung, 2007)
Director Lee Isaac Chung shot his first feature film Munyurangabo in Rwanda's native language of Kinyarwanda, filming for only 11 days and using non-professional actors -- many of whom where students from his filmmaking class at a Christian relief base in Kigali. The result is a quietly powerful film about two young boys in the aftermath of the genocide. Despite being an outsider, Chung strives for authenticity by allowing the actors to share their own personal stories and to become part of the storytelling. In one of the film's most powerful scenes, he leaves the camera rolling in an extreme close-up of Rwandan national poet Edouard B. Uwayo reciting a ten-minute poem about Rwanda's past, present, and future.
Date Posted: 9/19/2008