With a stellar cast and a well-calculated marketing strategy, “Monga” swept movie theaters islandwide during the Lunar New Year holidays and brought in a record NT$100 million (US$3.14 million) in its first week in cinemas. Reports abound in the media on movie tour routes in Taipei City’s Wanhua District, an older name of which the film uses for its title.
While it enjoys popularity among young viewers and is bringing in tourism dollars for shops in the area, “Monga” has drawn criticism for its violence as well as its selective depiction of the locale. Critics argued that this might result in a misunderstanding of the city, which may not help with city marketing.
In the 19th century Wanhua was one of Taiwan’s three major ports and the commercial and military center of northern Taiwan. In 1987, when the action in the film takes place, Wanhua still retained its old-time glamour with historic temples and stores, and had also become famous for its nightlife, crime and sex trade. In that year, the ruling Kuomintang government ended martial law on the island amid drastic social changes and concerted grassroots efforts for democratization.
Just three years earlier, the KMT government had conducted its largest crackdown on crime in history. In the film, a minor gangster is released after three years in prison. As the story unfolds, he initiates the collapse of the local gang world, capsizing the “little boat”—the meaning of “monga” in the language of the indigenous people who long ago inhabited Wanhua.
Director Niu Chen-zer is not unaware of the implications of the name; in the film he intertwines personal experience with a period of time that for him was full of energy and possibilities.
“The old name Monga reminds me of those vibrant years of the 1980s when I was becoming an adult and feeling lonely as a little boat on the sea,” Niu said in an interview, recollecting his youthful days squandered in curious exploration of the gang world.
“Those were also years when Taiwan’s democratization movement was at its height, and everything seemed possible. I wanted to revisit that age,” he said.
Advertised as the first Taiwanese gangster flick, the movie has all the elements the name implies—blood and violence, macho vigor, street justice and preaching on the survival of the fittest.
The tale begins with the development of friendship and personal loyalty among five youths. The protagonist, Mosquito, is new to the neighborhood. Monk, the brains of the group, introduces the social network of the area to Mosquito—how the place is run by several criminal rings, each with its own boss and turf, and how they manage their businesses in a symbiotic relationship with residents, all the while maintaining the upper hand.
The five innocent youths become sworn brothers and engage in foolhardy daily activities such as teen gang fights. They are gradually initiated into the adult world of experience when a gang from outside Monga attempts to take a share of the pie in the prosperous district from two established local gangs led by Geta and Masa.
Tension builds up when Monk falls under the sway of Masa’s underling, Wen Qian, just out of prison. Wen Qian persuades the junior gangster to set himself off from local and local-minded gangs by thinking big and cooperating with the “outsiders,” who look more progressive in terms of organization and weaponry.
Through this plot, the director tries to present his interpretation of Taiwan’s history of immigration. “Taiwan is a small place packed with generations of immigrants. In trying to edge out a survival space, they fought with one another—people from different parts of China’s Fujian province, or Fujian people against Hakka people,” Niu said.
“Local history is characterized by the vigor and bravery of these people, which impressed me a lot and is also why I wanted to make this movie,” he explains.
Indeed, the film captures this vitality in its visual presentation of the characters, unconventional editing and epic-like action scenes, according to renowned film commentator Lan Zu-wei. The manner of filming and its use of music, in Lan’s words, are “unrestrained yet precise, dashing yet refined.”
However, for members of community organizations based in Wanhua, the representation is selective. “The humanity and cultural heritage of the area are overshadowed by the film’s focus on negative elements,” a community guide for the district said.
This partiality in representation makes the film more a coming-of-age romance than a Taiwanese gang film, critics said.
This result is in part due to the production team’s limited understanding of Taiwan’s convoluted social and political history, according to Yang Meng-che, assistant professor of Taiwan studies at National Taipei University of Education.
For example, the collaboration of “inside men” with outsiders to bring down local influence is a strong reflection of how the KMT ruled the country during the martial law era. “The film touches upon this in an allegorical way but fails to really dig into it,” he said.
“Colonial powers ruling over Taiwan found it convenient to nurture gangs, using them to check one another, so as to help maintain law and order and suppress democracy,” he said. As a consequence, “Gangs are used to profiting through attachment to the ruling power, and there is really nothing to glorify, as is done in the film.”
The film raises doubts about people’s awareness of their own history. A more historically sophisticated film would have demonstrated cultural ambition more fitting for a city in terms of promoting tourism. (THN)
Write to June Tsai at june@mail.gio.gov.tw