If a movie is to be popular entertainment, it must, of course, link to the mass, aiming at the possibility of handsome financial rewards rather than the full requirements of art. And this explains why box-office hits so often receive bad reviews from film critics, and why only a few films do well with both. The recently released movie Old Mo's Second Spring is, almost, one of the few.
The movie realistically profiles the lives of two low-ranking career soldiers, now retired. Their stories emphasize that red carpets do not necessarily lead to future happiness, but that September-spring marriages may as easily be heaven as hell, depending on how the partners weave their way.
When one squeezes into a small 1200cc Taiwan-made taxi cab, to be asked in a heavy accent "Going where?"—well, almost everyone who has lived in Taiwan can recall those heavy tones. They re-echo in-" Anyone want to buy paozior manto (steamed stuffed buns and plain steamed buns)?" —along the small lanes of island cities. These people are war veterans; they campaigned across the mainland in the 1940s. Growing up in a China wracked by war and deprivation, they never received sufficient education, learned marketable skills, or enjoyed rewarding social ties when they finally retired from the military service. Sergeants, corporals, and privates gradually became taxi drivers, hawkers, janitors, and messengers. Though many have since made their ways up, riding the crest of Taiwan's prosperity, yet many still go on, retainers in the lower echelons of society as they were in the army. .
Old Mo's Second Spring is the story of two such men.
The film follows Old Mo on a long ride by train to join old army buddy Chang Juo-sung in a small and remote island town. There he finds Chang, about to marry (or buy in actual terms) a young and goodlooking aborigine bride.
At Chang's wedding party, the matchmaker spots Old Mo as a business prospect. And not long after, Old Mo sells a small horde of gold he has saved in his old military trunk for all those years and has the matchmaker set him up, too, with a young aboriginal bride.
Chang's wife, Mana, young and wild, finally runs with local street toughs and becomes a junkie. In order to make more money to satisfy Mana, Chang gives up his job helping in an office, to work on a fishing boat and is blinded in an accident. Mana's young life ends with drugs, along with that of the baby she is carrying from an unknown father.
Yu-mei, Old Mo's wife, grew up with Mana. Yet Yu-mei is a complaisant, home-oriented girl who appreciates her old husband's gentle kindness. She cooks, washes clothes, and cleans house for him. Though Yu-mei, like her friend Mana, also likes to be with other young people, she holds it all to the level of simple friendship. In the end, she gives Old Mo a son to carry his name and develops a prospering small business.
The presentation is unornamented, non-sensational. Scriptwriter Wu Nien-chen has skillfully woven this story of two unlikely marriages and filled it with bounteous daily nuances. Wu's perfect command of colloquial Mandarin, Taiwanese, and aboriginal phrases reaches out to Taiwan's multi-linguistic audiences.
The 90-minute movie runs (mostly) smoothly to almost the very end-when Old Mo and Yu-mei, hand in hand to the now of slow and mellow music, are not terribly persuasive. Wu Nien-chen explained:
"I was intending a sad ending for the story, but it then seemed to me that the audience would prefer a happy finale. It was not what I really wanted, and I knew the ending was the weakest part of the script. But a motion picture, after all, is a commercial product rather than a work of fine art." And, of course, that said it all.
The director's duty is to visualize scenes created by often formless language. Bad directors can-and often do- ruin a perfect script; a good director can put new life in a so-so script. Director Lee Yu-ning is all too human, and there are contradictions in his work. In some scenes, we can really appreciate a maturity in comprehension and in art. In others, he mistakenly interprets the possibilities of human behavior.
One night when Old Mo visits old friend Chang in a dim room, clad only in their olive-drab military underwear, the two lie on the same bed. The tempo is slow, and they reminisce.
To Westerners, sharing one's bed with another grown male is a totally strange thing to do, involving homosexual implications, no matter how close the friendship. Yet to Chinese, personal privacy does not have such stringent parameters. It is not at all unusual for men to share a bed and talk; there are no sexual implications or uneasiness. The director uses this scene simply to indicate a close and long-standing friendship.
Very close Chinese friends feel about each other as brothers and sisters. If they have children, they will consider the friend's kids as their own sons and daughters. Chinese consider being really close, becoming one family. So, in the movie, Old Mo has taken his old battalion commander's son as his own, in this case, out of sheer admiration. And when the son goes to the United States to advance his studies, Old Mo gives him US$5,000, a tremendous amount of money for a retired old soldier. When the commander has to tell Old Mo that his son returned to Taiwan on a visit, but was occupied with his work at a nuclear plant, and that he himself saw his son only on the day before he went back to the States, director Lee makes superior arrangements to indicate Old Mo's reaction. He seems indifferent to what he has just heard, slightly turning his head, never responding to his old commander's complaint or inherent apology.
We realize that we, too, do not really answer all the questions that come up in a conversation. We evade often, as Old Mo has done.
Most directors have a tendency to treat the action of a movie logically and sequentially, ignoring the very irregular nature of true human behavior. Director Lee has the ability to integrate that regularity and irregularity and form a complex of reality. Though Old Mo had reason to be angry, he has been obedient to this commander and admired him for almost a lifetime. He would not show anger; he has nothing to say; he evades.
There are other excellent treatments in the movie, yet melodramatic episodes hurt the production's credibility.
The first night, Old Mo does not know how to get his new wife into the marriage bed with him. So they sit on the edge of the bed talking. Yu-mei mentions that she has always slept with her little brother, and Old Mo gets so angry at this, he goes off with a curse. Perhaps this outcome interests the audience. Yet it is, clearly, a wrong interpretation of human behavior, severely out of character-a gross overreaction.
As indicated in its title, the movie story centered on Old Mo, and the performance of that role was critical to the success of the movie. It is fair to say that actor Sun Yueh's portrayal of Old Mo made the movie—an incomparable performance.
Sun Yueh, incidentally, has been hated for years by movie goers for stereotyped villain roles in numerous films. His long nose and narrow eyes make him a natural bad guy. But he finally tired of contemptuous reaction of strangers in Taiwan streets and seized an opportunity to play a comic on a popular TV weekly variety show. And his public image changed almost overnight at a time when he was nearly fifty years old.
The familiar TV commercial for Maxwell House Coffee was another major turning point for him. His hand some revenue from the commercial became a subject of public gossip, but above all, his warm and gracious appearance in the ad was a delight to watch. His Golden Horse Award-winning performance as a mute junk collector in the box-office hit Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing? then made him the top-draw actor in the Taiwan film industry. And happily now, handsome faces no longer dominate the local screen.
Without exaggeration or unnecessary motion Sun Yueh was, without doubt, Old Mo—that old, honest, loyal, and sometimes ignorant retired foot soldier. This is all the more astounding, as Sun Yueh is a very intelligent person who, for such roles, has to dim the wit constantly shining in his eyes. Director Lee says of his performance: "Sun Yueh has greater life experience than I. He immediately knew the role better. I didn't need to direct him in playing his role."
Oversimplification and "typification" are two major pitfalls for the scriptwriter in creation of characters. In Old Mo's Second Spring, except for the stereotyped roles of Mana and her friends, the rest of the players in the movie are realistic, very familiar—everyday people around us. And the audience is very aware of this. This successful presentation of ordinary people for ordinary viewers, is probably the best explanation of why they lined up so long at cinema houses here waiting to see the movie.