Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues by Tan See Kam (review)

In tsui hark's "peking opera blues," tan see kam provides a thorough and artfully constructed analysis of Tsui Hark's celebrated film. Tan executes this analysis by exploring a number of lenses through which the work can be intra-, extra-, and intertextually understood. The book is part of a series on New Hong Kong Cinema, which is designed to fill a gap in current scholarship by providing authoritative texts focusing on individual films. Tan considers "multiple readings of [the] film—from biographical to the formalist, from the historical to the postmodern—and their value in film analysis and studies" (6). Splitting the book into five "acts," Tan explores Peking Opera Blues by analyzing its plot and story, historical contexts, Tsui's 1984 film Shanghai Blues, Peking opera, Canto-pop and Mandarin songs, "mandarin ducks and butterflies" fiction, and the "three-women" film.

Along with examining Tsui Hark as a filmmaker with consistent interests and approaches to material, Tan provides a thorough overview of the contexts in which Tsui produced his work. Tan argues that any study of Tsui must "take account of the social, political and cultural contexts of film production in Hong Kong, as changes in these aspects have an influence on a particular film's content and style" (16). Tsui and his work existed within a matrix of conflicting forces, such as colonialism, globalism, nativist culturalism, Chinese nationalisms, and localism, all of which shape production circumstances, marketing tactics, and patterns of distribution. These influences in turn affect Tsui's films.

The book's first act considers the lens of structuralist narratology and provides a close reading of Peking Opera Blues' narrative and formal components. To facilitate this analysis, Tan supplies a very detailed story-plot segmentation, down to the number of shots in each segment—an impressive feat, as the film has 2,006 shots total. Through a combination of this breakdown and several shot-by-shot tables and illustrations, Tan illustrates specific examples and makes compelling arguments about Peking Opera Blues' narrative economy, high-speed editing, cluttered mise-en-scène, and editing transitions. For example, in relation to fast-paced editing and the use of crosscutting, Tan argues that these techniques "give Peking Opera Blues an exhilarating burst that may seem chaotic to the untrained eye. However, it is more fruitful to think of Tsui Hark's signature fast-editing and crosscutting style as a form of 'organized chaos,' as generative of aural excitement, visual vigor, and narrative energy" that comes with Tsui's personal style (73).

Act 2 delivers a detailed look at key historical contexts. Peking Opera Blues is a period film set in 1920s China, and one of the plot's driving forces is the fight for democracy. Tan links this historical plot with Tsui's contemporary moment of 1986 Hong Kong and with the current political climate. These connections invite "a rethinking of the Chinese democratic project, self-reflexively and self-consciously assessing its failure and achievements" (102). This examination of historical contexts and reimagined histories leads into the next act, which compares Peking Opera Blues with Tsui's 1984 film Shanghai Blues. These films create dialogues between the past and present, and Tan argues that they present Tsui's response to changes occurring in 1980s Hong Kong.

The final two acts contain examinations of a number of other art and cultural forms that can enhance our understanding of Peking Opera Blues. Act 4 provides a close reading of elements of Chinese theater, particularly traditional Peking opera, as well as Canto-pop and Mandarin songs. In the final act, Tan explores the lineage of the "mandarin ducks and butterflies" literary tradition and the "three-women" film. Peking Opera Blues shares certain similarities with these traditions but deviates from them in significant ways.

Throughout these discussions, Tan skillfully moves between textual analyses and broader theoretical underpinnings. This volume represents a carefully crafted, multilayered argument connecting Peking Opera Blues with its contexts. Tan makes...