Red Cliff

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, 9:15 p.m on Jan. 6, 2010

It took me a little while into the New Year's to feel like seeing movie. It was nice start out the year at the Lyric.

This movie very much confused me. On the one hand, it was a technical masterpiece of historical storytelling (a Chinese production directed by John Woo about a Third Century battle between Chinese warlords).

On the level of storytelling, however, I didn't know what to make of this. It was as if the entire movie was one long climax, punctuated by dramatic moments. Maybe because of the subtitles it reminded me of the style of storytelling in 1920s silent epics from Hollywood, before the canons of storytelling were established.

It left me wondering whether: a) Chinese cinematic storytelling is primitive compared to western storytelling; b) all movie storytelling lately is just going downhilll as a lost art; c) China has different cinematic storytelling of which I am not familiar; or d) this was just a bad movie, on some level.

The last choice seemed too harsh a judgement, giving the historical battle drama, which if perhaps a bit anachronistic (Hollywood always is, anyway) it nevertheless avoids all but a few flourishes of the air-spinning leg-churning martial arts fighting maneuvers that would have ruined it.

In any case it wins an award:

Best battle: Red Cliff