Big Shots Funeral is Feng Xiaogangs reflection on movies, spectacle, the power of advertising and how perception becomes reality. It centers around a movie being shot in Beijing and the planning of the funeral for a person who isnt quite dead. Old Hollywood pro Donald Sutherland is well cast; at this stage of his career he does somnolent as second nature so his few flashes of emotion are all the more effective. Rosamund Kwan makes one sorry that she retired when she did. She is perfect as Lucy, Tylers hyper-loyal assistant. She does a great acting job showing how she is slowly falling in love with YoYo, the cameraman hired to shoot a making of piece for Tylers remake of Bertoluccis The Last Emperor.
The discussion of remake introduces many of the themes that Feng Xiaogang touches on through the film. Tyler, YoYo and Lucy are walking through the Forbidden City (or a set made to look like a section of the Forbidden City) and Tyler is expounding on his reasons for making the movie. Bertolucci, he says, showed things from the outside; as a European all he could do is show the pomp, ceremony and extravagance of the setting while making the emperor an almost stock tragic figure. Tyler will do things differently and show the emperor as a human being, do the story from the inside. The point, of course, is that Tyler is as much an outsider as if he just arrived from Mars. He knows no Mandarin; his idea of Chinese culture is vulgar and insultingly simplistiche acts as if he was the first to notice the use of gold and red in the palace; worst of all he seizes upon the first Chinese person he seesYoYoand makes him into the epitome of all Chinese people, the representation of his race.
The depiction of how we are influenced by advertising and media is not subtle--Feng Xiaogang is as blatant in showing how we love the crass enticements of the ads as the ads are themselves. Tylers corpse, for example, will have an athletic shoe on one foot and a dress shoe on the other since each company bought placement for its products. Chinas greatest actorFu Biao playing Fu Biaodoes a scene in which he breaks down weeping, wailing that in China the film industry knew how calcium supplements made for longevity and he only wished he could have gotten word to Tyler, his great friendwho he has never met. He finishes the scene by placing a bottle of the sponsors supplement on the chest of the dummy standing in for the corpse.
A very creative scene takes place when Lucy, who has control of Tylers estate, is introduced to Louis, a promoter/hustler friend of YoYo, as the person to sell the funeral to potential sponsors. It begins with a wide shot of several leather armchairs in a semi-circle facing the camera. Louiss aidesout of work actors hired on the spotfill most of the seats with Louis, Lucy and YoYo in the middle. It looks very much like a ceremonial photo-op from Richard Nixons meeting with Mao Zedong almost 40 years ago. Louis speaks in Mandarin which is translated into English for Lucy by an interpreter standing behind him. Lucy is bilingual and tells him that she speaks and understands Mandarin perfectly but Louis tells her that it is the rule of his firm that when dealing with a customer for the first time the transaction must be in the native languages of each party.
There are other examples of the insanity of post-modern display, some less effective than others. When some triad thugs arrive late in the proceedings to insist on a place in the funeral for an orchestra and chorus praising their brand of bottled water it seems tacked on and superfluous as if the director decided that here was one more trope to shove into the film.
The parade of outrages against civilized order never becomes tiresome because we are also interested in the romance between Lucy and YoYo. YoYo is painfully shy around women. After Tyler has his stroke and Lucy is trying to deal with it she asks YoYo to hug her, which he isnt able to do. We see their relationship progress in how Lucy speaks of him with Tyler and his sleazy but lovable friend and business partner Tony (Paul Mazursky). She doesnt want them to take advantage of YoYo, doesnt want him hurt. Her interest clearly isnt one of simply wanting fair play for an innocent, which they point out to her embarrassment. The affair grows slowly and unevenlythe way things do with middle aged adults and their first kiss isnt exchanged until the two of them are on a movie set playing themselves as characters in the movie directed by the recovered Tyler.
Big Shots Funeral is a lovely movie that rewards some patient watching and listening. While missing the action and fraught emotions of The Banquet and A World without Thieves, the other films by Feng I have seen, it is well worth seeing.
Reviewer Score: 8
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