Millennium Mambo and Hou Hsiao-hsien
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche talks about Millennium Mambo and other movies by the renowned Taiwan director Hou Hsiao-hsien.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche talks about Millennium Mambo and other movies by the renowned Taiwan director Hou Hsiao-hsien.
“I just watched Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Mambo. I thought that’s one of the best again. I mean, I like all of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s films—I can’t really say all, but quite a lot of them. The Time to Live and the Time to Die—really, really good. And then there is A City of Sadness, [with] Tony Leung and—I forgot that woman’s name [Hsin Shu-fen]. I heard that she never acted after that, something like that. It’s really good. I mean, she is incredible.
Anyway, Millennium Mambo—wow! That is so profound. And I should say, of course the director was great, of course Mark Lee Ping-bing [cinematographer], how can you not like him? But I think the casting, the girl, Shu Qi, I think Shu Qi, right? I wasn’t that impressed with her in The Assassin—the same director. She just was sort of a gloomy warrior. But in this, wow, she is good. … There’s something about coming-of-age, there’s a lot of sadness … I don’t know, it really was good.”
Millennium Mambo (2001)
A stylish and seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, Hou’s much-misunderstood marvel stars Shu Qi (The Assassin) as an aimless bar hostess drifting away from her blowhard boyfriend and towards Jack Kao’s suave, sensitive gangster. Structured as a flashback to the then-present from the then-future of 2011, it’s a transfixing trance-out of a movie, drenched in club lights, ecstatic endorphin-rush exhilaration, and a nagging undercurrent of ennui. (Source: Rotten Tomatoes)
“The main thing is for the actors to forget the camera. They have to act as if they are working in a documentary.” — Hou Hsiao-hsien (Source: MUBI)
Hou Hsiao-hsien (b. 1947)
Following his family’s resettlement in Taiwan in 1948, Hou grew up in the Fongshan District of Kaohsiung. Though he was not a keen student at school, he was passionate about cinema since his youth. After finishing his compulsory military service, Hou attended the National Academy of Arts to pursue film studies. When Hou was 26 years old, he entered the film industry by working as a script supervisor for director Li Hsing (李行).
Hou once stated: “My motivation [to make films] is strange; I am always emotionally attached to human beings.” After experiencing the post-war period of Taiwan in the 1950s and the change in social sentiments in the 1960s, Hou began to express his sympathy for human trials through film. Specializing in using long takes and nostalgic images, Hou mostly made films depicting the stories of pained individuals and the turbulent society of the past with which Hou identified. (Source: Ministry of Culture)