Posts Tagged ‘film’

I love martial arts films. I mean, obviously. Does anyone not love martial arts films? Anyone who counts, I mean.

I’ve just watched Chocolate, directed by Prachya Pinkaew, who did the Tony Jaa films Ong-Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong. It’s about an autistic girl (called Zen) who becomes a martial arts genius by watching Ong-Bak and Tom-Yum-Goong. Brilliant. I mean, silly, but it’s Pinkaew’s way of telling you, “Hey, you know those films I made, that you love? Well this is another one, that you will also love!” And he was so right.

Zen’s autism is a magical plot device, making her able to mentally absorb people’s moves by watching them fight. But at the same time — certainly in the first act — Chocolate seems sincerely earnest about portraying autism seriously. And succeeds, I think! The acting is very good. So Pinkaew gets to eat his cake and still have it, there. The concept also produces, in the character of Zen, the paradoxical combination of two fantasy-asian-girl stereotypes: The doe-eyed, special, moe, fragile flower; and the hot, unstoppable, kick-arse martial arts babe. What a genius. I bet this film made so much money.

Towards the end of Chocolate, Zen meets her match in what, realistically, can only be termed a ‘retard fight’. When you term it thus, you will probably do so with both fists in the air, and at the top of your voice. You may then feel sort of ashamed. But come on.

I should mention that Chocolate is all about the setpieces. If you want to make a good martial arts film, the formula is really very simple: Create an awesome-looking location, and put a fight in it. Think of choosing stages in a fighting game. Same thing. Tom-Yum-Goong is an odd, disjointed, pretty shitty film — but it also has a fight in a Buddhist temple, in water, and the temple is on fire. All you have to do to enjoy this sort of film is look at it. The point is, Chocolate has a fight scene in a big butchery, with knives, and meat hanging everywhere. I’ve never seen that before.

Anyway, anyway — this isn’t supposed to be a review; I’m actually posting about Chocolate entirely because I wanted to show you this image:

This shot, from early in the film, is about two seconds long, and of no importance. But look at it — it’s wonderful!

• Crows
• Antennas
• Silhouette
• Sunset

I bet it wasn’t planned; I bet Pinkaew and his crew were on their way somewhere else, and Pinkaew saw this and went, “Shit! Wow! Set up the camera and film that. Shit; look at that.” (I feel like it was spontaneous, because otherwise the crows would be computer generated.)