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Other reviews by Howard Schumann
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Four from Vancouver Directed by Vancouver documentarian Velcrow Ripper, ScaredSacred Ripper visits the site of a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India where a gas leak (deliberately caused or not) killed 8000 people in 1984; the killing fields of Cambodia, where reminders of Khmer Rouge atrocities are everywhere; Sarajevo, where anger still haunts the survivors of the Balkan civil war. Included are visits to Hiroshima, refugee camps in Pakistan, women's schools in Afghanistan, and Israel and Palestine where survivors mourn the loss of their loved ones. Reminiscent of the documentary Promises, Ripper finds that when Israelis and Palestinians realize their common humanity, they can no longer be enemies as they tell him that "we paid the highest price possible"; so "if we can talk, anyone can." The director reveals that part way through his journey that he had "become a tourist of darkness," and that he "was filling my pockets with images while Another affecting sequence is in Cambodia where Aki Ra tells how he was forced by the Khmer Rouge to lay landmines in the jungles and how his entire family was murdered without reason. Aki Ra today spends his life uncovering and disarming from 15 to 100 of the landmines each day. In Sarajevo, he interviews artists that lived on the infamous Sniper's Alley during the war and who used their art to transform the "negative energy of the war into a positive vibration of the human soul". In India, he listens as the Dalai Lama tells his followers that “the concept of war is based on the concept of "we" and "they"; and that the first disarmament must be internal. Over and over, Ripper meets people to whom pain is not a trigger for revenge but an opening for spiritual advancement. A Rabbi even dares to articulate that there is a larger context for our pain even though hidden to our conscious mind. Although ScaredSacred does not probe how these events might have been prevented or who is responsible, it does provide a deeply moving response to those who despair for humanity's future. Ripper himself concludes the film with the statement that brings home the underlying theme in the film: “dread allows me to see each face as my own.” Three Times,
the latest film from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien, is
Utilizing a traditional three-act structure, the mood of the film shifts from one time period to the other but the position of the women remains significant. The first segment is set in 1966 and is titled "A Time for Love". Uncharacteristically, Hou uses pop songs as background to the episode involving a chance encounter between Chen, an on-leave soldier and May, a young woman who works at various pool halls in different Taiwanese towns. The songs, repeated throughout the segment in the style of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, are the Platters 1959 version of the thirties love song "Smoke Gets in your Eyes" and the 1968 hit by Aphrodite's Child "Rain and Tears". Chen becomes attracted to May after returning to visit a previous pool girl to whom he had written love letters while away in service. Both watch each other carefully across smoky pool tables but are forced to leave and the remainder of the segment follows Chen as he attempts to track May in local pool halls across Taiwan. Though the first act contains some poetic moments of mutual attraction, it is mostly teasing in its elusiveness. May and Chen rarely speak and when they do, it is mostly about snooker. Nonetheless, Hou creates an atmosphere of tension as the lovers, perhaps like Taiwan itself at this time, must choose between remaining comfortable in their status quo or taking risks to engender more intriguing possibilities. Set in 1911, act two, "A Time for Freedom", takes place in a concubine reminiscent of Hou's beautiful but claustrophobic Flowers of Shanghai. Unfortunately, he does not address the issue his concubine is most concerned about - her own personal freedom, and he remains indifferent as she expresses her longings, again perhaps reflecting the political idea that Taiwan was not capable of independence at this time. The final chapter brings us to the modern world of freeways, cellphones, and text messaging. Named "A Time for Youth", the title of this segment is steeped in irony. No longer a subtext, the lack of communication fostered by modern technology reminds us of previous films by the director that eloquently conveyed the apathetic self-indulgence of modern Taiwanese youth, Goodbye South, Goodbye and Millennium Mambo. Unlike Goodbye South, Goodbye, which employed colored filters to highlight the garishness of modern Taipei, however, the city in the current film is now dark and foreboding. The characters are a photographer, his girlfriend, a rock singer, and her own female lover. The singer is torn between these two lovers and I was frustrated by the intrusion of the female lover who acts as a brake on a fulfilling possibility between the two main protagonists, promised in the opening two segments. Though most likely true to the director's intentions, the final section feels artificial and cold and Three Times, while bearing flashes of Hou's brilliance, comes across as a cinematic exercise, an appealing concept that is ultimately unsatisfying. ©2005 Howard Schumann |
looks at how people who have experienced brutal disasters during their life have been able to maintain their humanity and devote themselves to working for social change. Scared Sacred, which was voted into the Toronto International Film Group's Canada's Top Ten list in 2004, takes the viewer on a personal journey to visit some of the most troubling spots on the planet and shows that the only meaningful response to hatred is compassion. Ripper, who is also the film's narrator, explores the possibility of transforming the "scared" into the "sacred" by "breathing in" the pain and "breathing out" compassion. 
leaving my heart untouched." He pauses long enough to reflect on this in a Buddhist monastery and discovers that meditation brought him closer to the pain rather than shielding him from its reality. One of the most moving sequences is at ground zero in New York City after 9/11 where Ripper shows us a Zen teacher who says the reason tourists come to look at the ruins is not to simply stare but to “connect with their vulnerability.”
a
lyrical, sensuous, but disappointing collection of three love
stories set in 1911, 1966, and 2005. Marvelously performed
by Shu Qi (Millennium Mambo) and Chang Chen, the
film is both a retrospective of Hou's earlier work, a historical
study of a culture, and a cogent statement about how social
limitations affect each person's ability to relate. The message,
however, that social restraints and modern technology hampers
our ability to connect with one another is hardly new and,
though depicted via Hou's gorgeous minimalism, was not enough
to allow me to become emotionally involved with the characters.
This 35-minute segment contains no dialogue, simply intertitles as in silent films and a tinkling piano in the background. Hou's ostensible reason for using this device is that he was unable to recreate the Taiwanese spoken language of the period. Though this is understandable, I doubt if many would have noticed and the absence of dialogue for that long a period of time comes across as an affectation. In this section, the two lovers from the first segment are now reprieved as master and concubine. The master is a political activist who writes articles promoting independence and provides financial help to a concubine pupil to allow her to achieve the status of companion.