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Millennium Mambo
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Co-author: Cristina Álvarez López Stirring In Twenty-five minutes into Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Mambo, there’s a scene that might strike some viewers, at first glance, as fairly ordinary, not especially impressive. A surprise event occurs – policemen at the door instead of Hao-Hao (Duan Chun-hao), the boyfriend of Vicky (Shu Qi). As so often in his work, Hou achieves in this scene a level of naturalistic realism that seems spontaneous, off the cuff – when it is anything but that. The intricacy of the scene becomes more noticeable once we look at it, and listen to it, over and over – each time concentrating on different aspects. For there are filmmakers who (as Jean-Pierre Gorin once said) work through saturation, carefully stirring in successive elements and layers to a scene as they shape it – and Hou is one such artist. First, Hou, with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin, determines the best spot for the camera in the setting. This is always a crucial aesthetic decision, from which all other stylistic choices flow. The position of the camera grounds the filmmaker’s attitude, his special view upon events – and also carves out, in advance, the various, successive spatial zones of the scene. The light is arranged in unusual ways. The open door throws light onto Vicky’s face. The background bathroom is more illuminated than the central foreground. And an unseen TV set casts flickering lights onto the back wall and the bodies. This is a one shot/long take scene, running for 3 and 3-quarter minutes. But it’s full of movement: movement of the frame as the camera pans and tilts (but never zooms), and movement of the actors. Hou plays with the shifting positions of five bodies (in total) in a small space (Vicky even comments on its smallness). Hou keeps finding ways of underlining or marking Vicky as the central subjectivity of the film – at the literal centre of events, or their privileged witness. The camera makes its first strong move: following the walking action of the cop. We reach the scene’s second major spatial zone: the bedroom. Hou deliberately engineers an awkward frame (the cop’s head is cut off at the top) for the sake of getting the action moved to this position where it can be viewed through the doorframe and curtain. Hou often uses masking or concealing devices: within the frame, and within the set or location. He also likes to switch the positions of the actors for variety. Here comes an unusual exploratory move: the camera follows the cop’s action, which cannot actually be seen behind the glass. The shot anticipates slightly where the cop will go next, back into the 2-shot configuration … before another position switch. Now the scene begins marking the tension uniting its two zones of bedroom and front door: via Vicky’s anxious look, by her inching toward the bead curtain, and eventually by the off-screen sound event of Hao-hao’s return. (For more on the concept of sound events in cinema, see here.) Again, the camera follows a character’s movement. Hou continues to detail his distinctive mise en scène: the cop in the back is more brightly lit than the central figures, the chief in front is out-of-focus. Meanwhile, Hao-Hao’s agitated movement stimulates groupings and regroupings of all the characters in the slightly shifting frame. Yet, once again, Vicky is subtly centred. Her move initiates a camera pan, and then she lurks at the right-hand edge of the frame. Meanwhile, the discussion between Hao-Hao and the cop takes place in semi-darkness. Let’s consider some more general aspects of the scene, working through it again. First off, Hou and his performers invent marvellous physical gestures: everyday gestures of jiggling restlessly, killing time, smoking. The density of cigarette smoke is fleetingly captured due to backlighting from the bathroom. The aural dimension in Hou is just as important as the image. He engineers or orchestrates a complex sound design that is captured and mixed live by Tu Duu-chih, not primarily constituted later in post-production. In this scene, note that there is no extra-diegetic music score mixed in. Instead, there are layers of sound. A surrounding, ambient, environmental sound, such as the cars in the street. Deliberately harsh, grating sounds, like the radio communication of the cops. Note Vicky’s body language: small, protective, defensive gestures, such as pulling her red robe tighter. Hou’s characters often freeze when they listen – and then answer back with telling bodily reflexes. Vicky’s disdain of the cops is caught in her deliberately restricted gestures of pointing. When the cop moves to bedroom, listen for this: there is a principle of sound perspective at play, allied with the rock-solid camera position. The further away that characters are from the camera, the lower their volume level, and the less they can be heard. Hou is clearly fascinated by particular objects, forms and colours, especially those involving reflective and semi-transparent materials. The camera constantly racks its lens focus in order to bring out the changing optical relations between surface phenomena. For instance, we pass from noticing a Hello Kitty toy in the background, to the illuminated, heart-shaped curtain beads. And, just as the image of the bead curtain is fascinating to Hou as a sight, its special musical sound is also dwelt upon in the mix. This overall visual style creates an almost abstract, contemplative aspect at the very heart of a narrative scene – thickening the textures of an incident without derailing its informational and plot content. To make a transition out of the live, direct sound mix, Hou finally inserts the very different tonality of Vicky’s voice-over, which overlaps into the subsequent scene. It’s an unusual, distancing voice-over reflection, because it’s fixed in the third person – Vicky telling her own story as if she is a character in a fiction, and from a point far in the future. Only through a properly saturated viewing of and listening to Millennium Mambo can we get a full sense of its richness – and its dense texture of sensations, forms, meanings and feelings. This text is a version of the commentary that forms part of our audiovisual essay Stirring In, reworked from its original 2015 version for the 2023 DVD/Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber/Metrograph. MORE Hou: Good Men, Good Women, Three Times, The Boys from Fengkuei © Cristina Álvarez López & Adrian Martin 6 May 2015 / 20 April 2023 |
