Post-modernism in Kung Fu Hustle

This movie was really fun to watch. It took a while for me to really understand what I was supposed to think about it. For a while in the beginning, I was trying to figure out if this movie takes itself seriously or not.

The animation and computer effects seem very out of place in the serious setting of a Wu Xia movie, and often made people laugh. At first I thought it was just a silly movie like a Kung Pow or one of the Scary Movie films, but the post-modern references to other films and the animated and exaggerated effects don't seem to be there solely to make the audience laugh or to divert from the established style. It seemed like the beginning was packed full of references and visual effects that made me giggle, but there wasn't much to hold my attention to the plot. As the story went on, I became more interested in the story itself through the plot and the kung fu instead of the more superficial (in my opinion) aspects of the beginning. I think this might be to purposely defy our expectations. As moviegoers who would have seen this style of film many times before, we would have a very specific idea of what to expect from this film. Incorporating these new elements into this film challenged what we knew, and made us more open to whatever the filmmakers had for us.

This idea sort of hit me when Professor McRae was explaining the importance of being relaxed in order to be good at martial arts. Similarly, we as an audience had to loosen up and not be so rigid in our expectations for this film. I haven't seen too many Asian martial arts films, so I can't say how original the plot and ending are, but the point is that it had my undivided attention because the movie began by giving me many things to focus on visually then gradually became more plot-focused and the animation and references fell into the background, just serving to further the plot while the characters and the action take over the movie, once we know who is doing what and why.

I think this was a great technique, because there was a reason behind it. Most of the time post-modernism confuses me because there seems to be no reason for it, but here there seems to be some kind of logic behind all the references and such--instead of using references for the sake of making references, here it seemed more like making references to other movies to take the audience out of their preconceived ideas about what the movie will/should be like.

Mulholland Dr--the most wonderfully confusing thing I've ever seen

Let me apologize now. This post will probably not make complete sense and I can pretty much guarantee most (if not all) of my ideas will be vague and trail off. I feel like this film made my brain crash. I am extremely dependent on logic to figure things out, usually more than my senses, but trying to applying logic to this movie doesn't seem to work for anything longer than 10 seconds.

My biggest source of confusion comes from looking at the movie as a whole, before taking any details into account. In class, someone mentioned something about the director hating when people try to explain his movies. I refuse to believe that means he's making movies just for the sake of making movies, but if there is no explanation how can there be meaning. By watching this film I really feel like it means something, that all of the visual and narrative aspects are purposefully there to tell me something, but I'm completely missing the point. Whenever I try to figure it out, the harder I think the less sense it all makes. Am I supposed to accept the movie as a lovely ball of confusion and move on, or do I try to figure out an explanation the may or may not exist?

The confusing effect the film created was more genuine because it extended to the characters as well. In most of the beginning, the characters are all trying to figure out what's going on (not what happened, not what's going to happen, but what is happening in the present), either to find out Rita's identity, or what's going on with Adam's film. As the audience we get more information than the characters, but we are no closer to any kind of answers.

I can say for sure I liked the overall effect of the film. Of all of the movies we've watched this semester this one was the most enjoyable ride once I stopped using my brain. This wasn't the first film that made my brain feel like it was short-circuiting, but when it was all over I could honestly say I really liked it, even though I couldn't explain what happened in it or really why I liked it so much.

This was so different from anything I'm used to that even though it is squarely outside of my comfort zone, it was almost refreshing to come across something like this. I think what I'm getting at is that even though I didn't completely understand other movies, I could find something, anything to make sense of. I feel like this film offers no way to find get out of the mess of confusion the viewer finds himself stuck in.

The reading was very helpful for me to come to that conclusion. At first it confused me about things I didn't even know I was confused about, but that probably has more to do with the film itself than the article. At one point, it seemed to suggest that attempting to approach this movie logically wouldn't be very effective. Once I said to myself, "it doesn't make sense, just go with it," things were slightly easier to understand (and by that I mean I went from understanding nothing to only getting vague shadows of ideas).

Many of the plot lines the article discussed were things I hadn't noticed or felt were very important. For example, When Betty doesn't meet with Adam after her audition and then finding Diane's dead body in her apartment, I didn't see those as huge turning points in the film, and I don't understand how Betty's life ended when she didn't meet with the director. now that I think about it I'm not sure if the meeting didn't happen because he chose the other girl or because she had to leave to help Rita. Either way, I don't see how her life ended there. And I'm REALLY confused about the body in Diane's apartment. There is absolutely no way to put this movie into any kind of chronological order or even determine if everything we see actually happened (although arguably none of it happened because it's all fictional), but Diane's suicide was in another reality or timeline and I have no idea how that dead body fits into the storyline in the first half of the movie.

Is the "heinous absurdity of the entire entertainment industry" and the article calls it being critiqued because the cliches are so over the top that they're ridiculous? Lots of people were laughing the more intense a style got (especially at the really happy beginning with Betty and the old lady or with the detectives investigating the crash or later with the cowboy--at that point even Adam didn't take it seriously when he found out the meeting place). Or is it that they're all so generic and useless by now that really any story can be told through the Hollywood cookie cutter styles?

I think I need to watch this movie a few more times. And I think I need to watch it all the way through before I really get it, because we stopped just as everything went from a little confusing to really confusing and that really screwed up my chances of having a clue.

Wow, I really rambled on, sorry about that.