Saturday, January 20, 2007
One Last Dance-- a review.
This is by miles the most literary movie i watched in years. Initially i walked out of the theatre thinking i could come up with something better, but, on hindsight, i was way too wrong. In fact, it beats the previous movie i watched (stranger than fiction by a whole hell lot). Till now, i still cannot piece together everything in the movie. Firstly... the main plot... which has all its sequence jumbled up. Second, the coffee and tea... what on earth is that? Thirdly... the game of chess... what's that too? It got me thinking quite abit, but working on the premise that the answer is all around us, i shall attempt to provide some spoiler to the movie.
Looking at the poster to the movie gave a small hint on what to expect... its the poster that aided my understanding, it show T's face being "jigsawlized". First clue that the sequence of the plot is a complete haywire. 2nd, somewhere early in the movie, Ko commented on the way he mixed his earl grey way tea is reversed, but T was so adamant that what he does is logical (which in actual fact, it was completely illogical).
Here's my interpretation: Story begins with T (T for tea) standing at a ticket booth (he is gonna run to somewhere, but i have no idea why or where) when he saw Mei (M for Milk) (Ko's (K for Kopi?Koffee?) sis) and it was love at first sight. Coincidentally, the next assignment he got was from Ko, which after he complete it, he made use of the chance to get Ko to introduce Mei to him. On the other hand, the mafia leader, whose son was kidnapped by Ko got T to avenge his son by killing Ko. However, T couldn't bring himself to do it. Nonetheless, Ko got into trouble with the italian mafia whom he was running errand for and got killed. Not only that, Mei got raped by the italian mafia's men. T wanted to avenge so he seek Arthur, one of Ko's accomplish for names of all those involved. T then went on a killing spree. However, on the faithful night, Mei chanced upon the italian mafia and got overran by her own emotion wanted to kill the mafia on her own. However, T, in a bid to protect her killed the mafia on his own, which led to his own death. He has made his own public killing and lady luck ran out on him.
That was the geist of it. So now let's try to stuff the clues in. Firstly, earl grey tea is not grey, its dark red. the whole movie has 2 main colour, red and orange. And what happen when you add milk to red? it turn orange (or so i think). basically when the milk is completely mixed into the tea. the story ends. Why i think Ko is coffee... cos firstly i cannot make sense of all the espresso and cafe au lait in the whole movie. but i still want to think that Mei means milk, after all cafe au lait is espresso with milk. can't really explain that part.
at the same time, i also cannot recall the conversation between the policeman and T. i think they provide a strong metaphor to the plot of the story. but the chess game does have a meaning. the first move was the policeman taking his bishop (in this case is Ko's dead), and then moving to attack the queen (rape of Mei) before ending with a check (the final scene)(the order of moves is in that).
so on the whole, that is what the whole movie is trying to drive. by messing up the whole plot and making use of abstract metaphor to help us understand the film. but in terms of the message it want to drive across...honestly i don't know.
posted @ 10:50 PM ||
