Confession of Pain (Behind the sin), or, 《傷城》
The title of the film earns most of its credit; which represents not only the emphasis on the psychological effects of the film, but also the feeling of the audience; that after watching it, we cannot help to confess that it is indeed a pain to have watched it.
It is true, that the film evokes certain psychological effects to us; unfortunately, they are not so much of the sympathetic and the pathetic, as of the loathsome. We would, most likely, apprehend those scenes in which Tony Leung brutally and mercilessly hammers on the skulls of the ‘victims’ with our eyes half-opened, and claiming that the character is indeed full of horror. It is important, however, that a distinction be made between loathsomeness and the sublimity of terror; the former is detestable to the eye, whereas the latter is a ‘negative pleasure’ produced in the mind. Furthermore, no matter how much ‘symbolic power’ – as some may suggest – the tools that Leung uses for his tortures possess, be it a bust of a Buddha or a Barbie doll, they can by no means recompense the displeasure his acts provoked.
The pathetic, I contend, is what the author strives to arouse. In this respect, the film is a failure. This is a heavy charge indeed; such as I am very sorry to make; and such as I should be perfectly ashamed of making without sufficient foundation.
To those who are versed in dramatic art, they would not fail to find that almost all of the dialogues in Confession of Pain are badly written; regarding which, the film deserves most of our contempts. It is plausible to suggest, insofar as the art of film is concerned, that speeches merely form parts of the eloquence of a work, and, that the montage, the plot, and the visual are rather its true essences. Insofar as the pathetic is concerned, however, there is good reason to believe that it is rather the expression – speech being one of its forms – of the character that is necessary. In most cases, a pathetic expression does not require much art or gesture; on the contrary, the character simply says what needs to be said, what is directly related to his state of mind or his character ¬– to be genuine. In view of this film, instead of finding any charm in the speeches of the characters, we only think that they talk too much; instead of beauty, we only perceive affectation in their expressions. All of these defects lie in the fact that we do not know the soul of each character. They express, it seems, not their soul and feelings, but the script writer’s; instead of speaking for their own sake, they speak merely for the plot – in the form of voiceover – telling us the course of events in a tedious way.
We do not pity Leung, for, although he has a moral right to revenge, we can nowhere perceive his sorrow of losing his families and his hatred of his enemies; nor could we understand the intensity of his grief at losing a wife who he never loves, which in turn leads him to suicide. The death of Takeshi Kaneshiro’s wife does not raise our interest or the suspense of the film at all; she comes from nowhere, and thus should disappear without much of our concern. The character of Leung’s wife is somehow interesting, but I suspect that her fascination for Kaneshiro (or wine?!) and for cameras are much greater than that for her husband.
As for its plot, we find that almost all the sub-plots are irrelevant and otiose; instead of enhancing the suspense (which thrillers are supposed to have) or the agreeableness (given that movie is an entertainment) of the play, they contribute nothing to the film other than giving us an impression that the main plot is too weak or too short to stand alone. Who would care, for instance, how long, for whom, and for what purpose does Kaneshiro’s wife drink on her own in a pub? What is the relevance, moreover, of that mysterious character who threatens Leung and after whom Kaneshiro chases for five minutes, to the ‘twist’ of the film? These incidents remind me, inevitably, the saying of Aristotle (or the neoclassists?!), that the action of a play ought to be single and ‘probable’. Francis Jeffrey once said that ‘when a dramatist brings his chief characters on the stage, we readily admit that he must give them something to say,– and that this something must be interesting and characteristic.’* We can scarcely find this ‘something interesting’ in this film, not even that dialogue regarding the pleasure of drinking alcohol, which is neither of wit nor of humour whatsoever.
Notwithstanding these imperfections, there are pathetic expressions that are noteworthy. In the concluding scene of the film, after realising that Leung is the killer of her father, brother and herself, his wife – at the moment of awaking from a coma – stares at him in the coldest and the most damnable manner without a word. Likewise, Kaneshiro’s tears, as a result of the suicide of Leung, are the sparks of our sympathy. Nothing is clearer than the fact that a genuine expression is essential to the pathetic. In some situations, silence is indeed the most powerful expression of the soul; particularly in the case that the author has no talent in the art of conversation.
*Francis Jeffrey, ‘Article I’, The Edinburgh Review, 36(August, 1811), p. 286.