Tsui Hark's Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind is a film which I somewhat feel ill-equipped to write about, in large part due to my inability to fully grasp the specificity of what it exhibits through a polemic display of disobedience and rebellion. Perhaps one of the most defining works of "Punk cinema", Hark's stark vision of Hong Kong violently expresses the collective angst of its people in constant conflict. Caught between the forces of transnational capital and commerce brought by modernity and colonialism, and that of traditional hegemony in which Hong Kongers struggle to find their own unique identity, Dangers Encounters of the First Kind is a grim, violent descent into collective angst purveyed through youth aggression. Hark deploys a bleak and kinetic style that is very much attuned with the somewhat shapeless narrative, enunciating this sense of angst, despondency, and aggression through a formal structure that largely feels inconsequential from the perspective of the power structures which oversee the colony. Subjugation breeds anger and an eruption of violence, yet for Tsui, there is no escape for this Hong Konger, as despite their rage, they are nothing more but a rat in a cage under the current paradigm of governance in which the tenuous political situation between foreign and local interests rages on but with little promise of a resolution.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
|