Master of emotion

by RICHARD JONES

CHINESE director Zhang Yimou has scored international successes with his martial arts action films Hero and House Of Flying Daggers.

But if, like me, you relate to gentler themes expressed in his heartrending Chinese peasant village story The Road Home, you'll warm to Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles.

Japanese fisherman Mr Takata (Ken Takakura) has been estranged from his son for about a decade before finding out he's seriously ill in a Tokyo hospital with cancer of the liver.

The son Ken-ichi (Nakai Kiichi) steadfastly refuses to see his father, due no doubt to the prolonged separation, yet Ken-ichi's wife is keen for a rapprochement.

She hands Takata a tape of Ken-ichi's work for Tokyo University - a documentary he's been working on concerning Oriental folk art. Ken-ichi is an expert in this field.

The tape contains an interview with another man about the purest form of Chinese mask art. The interview is all about the Chinese folk opera Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles, but Ken-ichi was unable to convince the interviewee, the famous actor Li Jiamin who was ill himself at the time, to perform the mask opera for his tape.

So Takata sets off for a remote Chinese village to finalise the recording of the performance of Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles. He hopes to bridge the gap between himself and his dying son by videotaping the performance of the legendary Li to complete his son's research. Unfortunately when he arrives in a remote village of Yunan Province after many adventures along the way Takata finds that Li (who plays himself in the film) has been imprisoned following a stabbing during a drunken brawl.

Now Takata faces more problems. A Japanese national in a foreign country he has to try and convince officials not only to allow Li to perform the mask art opera inside the prison walls, but also to permit Takata to film the performance.

But he is nothing if not determined to break down the barriers of red tape and all this while relying on interpreters to convey his messages to Chinese bureaucrats.

Zhang Yimou is a master at portraying feelings and emotions without clogging up his films with layers of sentimentality. Indeed, during his Chinese odyssey Zhang's central character, Mr Takata, re-discovers kindness and a sense of family he believed he had lost long ago.

Riding Alone For Thousands Of Miles was first released in 2005, but is presently enjoying re-runs in art house cinemas across Australia.

10 October 2006

australianrules.com.au

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