破風

Dante Lam's 破風 (To The Fore) is the latest Taiwanese film to grace Hong Kong cinemas, and it does not disappoint. It's a movie about Taiwan's "national sport" - cycling - but also a fast-paced, suspenseful and refreshing exploration of the lengths one will go to for success and what it means to know (or push) one's own limits.



As the movie informs us from the onset, the “破風手" (called "the domestique") of any cycling team is the right-hand man who helps the sprinter facilitate a final sprint to the finish line by riding in his slipstream, blocking opposition. Despite the important role the domestique must play, however, it is only the sprinter who gets to stand on the podium of victory after each race. Domestique, after all, means "servant" in French.

破風 revolves around three bikers: 仇銘, 鄭知元 and 邱田. They all start off in the same team, in which 鄭知元 (Siwon Choi) is the sprinter, 仇銘 (Eddie Peng) is his domestique, and 邱田 (Shawn Dou) - although strong - stays near the rear. 仇銘's cockiness, 鄭知元's skill and 邱田's under-doggedness are all established early on. At first, such a trio brings their cycling team, Radiant, to glorious heights as they win race after race. 仇銘's bullheaded confidence is not yet disastrous, while 邱田's reserve does not take a toll on him yet. Once Radiant disbands, however, turning the three riders into immediate rivals from different teams, the film picks up - and each cyclist must face his flaws (and swallow his pride).

Although at times loophole-heavy and conspicuously CGI-ed, 破風 also teaches you more than you'd expect about biking tactics, competition rules, and the rigid (yet changeable) nature of human capabilities. Does the sidekick ever have the chance to be the star? How far can endurance take someone? Why do we go after the victory that we desire? These are the questions the movie poses and answers, supplying two-hours worth of humor, drama and explosive cinematography that will have your feet itching for a bike ride afterwards!

The opposite of disappearing

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Immediate thoughts after reading The History of Love: 1) Aaaaah, how can a book be so marvellous.
2) Ken Kalfus was so right when he said this book "will break your heart and at once mend it." 3) I love how this book is not only about love, but also about history.

Nicole Krauss's The History of Love is a book I've been eyeing for ages, but only read today. It's a beautiful and complex story filled with surprises and characters whose stories intertwine despite their differences (halfway through the book, I actually had to draw a diagram to stay on track). I love it when that happens.

Our protagonist is Leopold Gursky, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. In the story, he wrote the book The History of Love for his childhood love, Alma Mereminski. They have a son together, but he is eventually raised by a different father when World War 2 separates the couple and leaves Alma thinking Leo has been killed. Zvi Litvinoff, Leo's friend, shares the same belief and - as the only one with the manuscript of The History of Love in his possession - ends up publishing it in Spanish under his own name. So the book goes out into the open, a certain David Singer reads it, he names his daughter after Alma, Alma's mother is approached by a mysterious stranger to translate the book from Spanish into English after David dies, and the whole story takes off from there as young Alma sets off to find this stranger.

The whole story is about searching. Leopold spends most of his adult life hoarding any records he can find of his son, an established author. Alma's brother, "Bird," never stops searching for an impression of who his father was. And as Alma says,

"I'd started out looking for someone who could make my mother happy again, now I was looking for something else, too. About the woman I was named after. And about me."

Everything that the characters search for ebbs on the brink of the forgotten. Leo, for instance, often says that he is invisible; when his photo is taken with a polaroid camera, his face does not appear on the film. Although he is a locksmith ("I helped those in who were locked out, others I helped keep out what couldn't be let in, so that they could sleep without nightmares"), he ironically remains locked-out of life: forgotten after the war, author of a book that sells under a different name, father to a son raised by a different husband.

Krauss dedicates the novel to her grandparents, who were immigrants from Germany, Ukraine, Hungary and Israel. And at the very end of the book, it seems like it is also dedicated to the Leopold Gurskys of the world who "started dying on August 18 1920," who "died practicing a new way to sign his name," who knew the terrors of the war. In a very poignant moment, we learn that Leo's friend "Bruno," whose was always enigmatically portrayed, is actually a figment of his imagination - that the real Bruno "died on a July day in 1941." When Leo banishes Bruno from his room, he perhaps also banishes some part of the ghost of the war that haunts him.

Aside from its serious meditations on love and history, however, this novel is often humorous, such as when Alma's Judaism-enthusiast of a brother turns out to be surprisingly helpful, and when we realize that it is completely possible Alma may have sketched a naked Leopold during one of her classes. I also love how Krauss describes the only two kisses in the novel in details that vividly suggest their awkwardness: 1) "then we got it right, sort of, opening our mouths at the same time like we were both trying to say something, [...] then my shoulder got accidentally mashed against his accordion." 2) She tried to kiss him, but Litvinoff, taken off guard, backed away, leaving Rosa tipped forward at an awkward angle, neck outstretched. [...] He blindly stuck his neck out into the gulf. But by then, Rosa had already counted her losses and pulled back into safer territory." Alas, love is not easy. "Part of me is made of glass," Leopold admits.

The History of Love is beautiful and innovative. You will treasure both the young and old voices you hear in the novel (although the number of times Leo says "And Yet" is mind boggling excessive). Ah, reading is the best.

To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you’re limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.

“The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people’s hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely. [...] Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together.

"Having begun to feel, people's desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how much it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions.

“At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.”

View all my reviews

Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been meaning to read Stephen King's On Writing for some time, and now that I've done it, it's something of a wake up call.
Something that King gets straight early on in the memoir is the importance of reading AND writing for any writer. I suppose I do loads of the former, but how about the latter? Time to amp up the hours, cut out YouTube and reserve a slice of early morning for creative outpouring...

On Writing is accessible, humorous and wonderfully insightful. It begins by seeming part-memoir through the way King writes about his early childhood, relationship with his family and later alcoholic problems - until we realize that every detail he offers helps explain why he is the writer he eventually became. From working for his brother's "magazine," "Dave's Rag," to virtually forgetting the experience of writing a whole book because he was so often under the influence, King has taken quite the writer's journey. And as he reminds us, behind the success of every bestseller was the huge pile of rejection letters he had pinned onto his wall with a spike.

The memoir is full of writing-advice gems such as these:

"The writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader’s."

“Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.”

"Stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."

I don't think I'll be able to use "the fact that" again, now that I know how much King detests it.

King also cautions us on the overuse of adverbs and misuse of dialogue attribution, and praises both the power of the paragraph and of choosing simpler words. He also notes the shortcomings of language itself: "The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning."

A whole section of On Writing is dedicated to the beautiful metaphor of a one's writing skills as a toolbox, where the "bread of writing," vocabulary, goes on the top drawer, followed by grammar and elements of style. If you haven't got the time to read the whole book or can't find it in your local bookstore, here are the 'toolboxs page:' https://thewritersjourney2011.wikispa...

Reading this novel, I felt that there were times when King glossed over certain details (his alcoholism, for instance, but I guess that isn't the point of the memoir). Nonetheless, I loved how I could resonate with some of his own experiences; from toothache - "each time I swallowed, pain lit up the sides of my face like a jukebox" (this is precisely what I tried to articulate post-wisdom tooth surgery ) - to a love for reading -

I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms are made for books—of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john.

Yet the one pithy motto I'll take away with me forever is this:

You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Like all art, writing demands dedication and attention. With toolbox in hand, I vow to come to the blank page with the serious intention of creating something meaningful, perfecting my craft - and having a great time.

View all my reviews

Our brother's keepers

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Norman Maclean's only novella to date, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, consists of three semi-autobiographical short stories set in Western Montana.  In each story, we are introduced to a specific art and presented with a memorable portrait of a complex character. In the novella's titular story, A River Runs Through It, we learn about the art of fly-fishing and meet Norman's brother, Paul; in "Logging and Pimping and 'Your pal, Jim'", we read about the nature of logging as well as an enigmatic logging expert, Jim; finally, in "USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky," our characters pass their time playing cribbage, eventually betting on the mysterious and dislikable cook - a cardshark - to win big in Hamilton, helping them "clean out town" at the end of the summer.

Bill, the ranger from "USFS 1919," calls the cook an artist; yet the true artist of the novella is in A River Runs Through It: Paul. Our narrator, Norman, speaks of Paul as an artisan multiple times throughout the story, even calling his fishing stick "a wand."

"At the end of this day, then, I remember him both as a distant abstraction in artistry and as a closeup in water and laughter"

As is the case with so many artists, however, Paul is reckless, troublesome and hard to understand. Everyone in Paul's family adores him and wants to help him - yet the difficulties of both articulating and accepting a help offering stand between them until the final, irreversible end.

The difficulty of extending a helping hand is already captured at the beginning of the story, where Norman humorously admits that giving advice on fly-fishing could pose a "strain on family relations" if not carefully expressed. It's one of those relatable sibling problems where giving tips and suggestions is considered offensive/inappropriately authoritative/nosy. And it is because of this, a problem equally noted in the first part of Paul's father's claim, that Paul is so tragically unhelp-able: "Help," he said "is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly." The difficulty of mutual understanding is also captured through fly-fishing, particularly in the scene where both brothers are shouting at each other across a raging river, unable to fully interpret the other's words. "Finally, we understood each other," is the remark Norman makes about the end of that conversation - but sadly, it is not a truth he can declare at the end of the story.

“In the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go.”

Neal Burns, the brother of Norman's wife in the story, is another example of a brother who needs help but doesn't accept it. In stark contrast to Paul, Neal is much less likeable, less adventurous, more preened ("Jessie's brother Neal stepped off the train trying to remember what a Davis Cup tennis player looked like") and, to Paul's disgust, fishes with worms (instead of flies). Yet like Paul, he is the subject of worry for those around him; Jessie's family hopes that fishing with the Macleans, the "preacher's sons," will correct Neal's morals, while "Old Rawhide," a horsewoman-turned-whore, thinks that she can help Neal ("He's my man," she keeps insisting).

The frustration and sadness Norman feels about his inability to help is eloquently voiced by both himself and his father:

"Tell me, why is it that people who want help do better without it - at least, no worse. Actually, that's what it is, no worse. They take all the help they can get, and are just the same as they always have been."

"So it is that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'Sorry, we are just out of that part.'"

Yet the moving beauty of such a relationship is this:

"But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.”

“Do you think I could have helped him?” Norman's father asks. “Do you think I could have helped him?” answers Norman in response. As he accurately remarks, How can a question be answered that asks a lifetime of questions? 

But sometimes, as Norman says, "Help doesn't have to be anything that big."

He asked me, "Do you think your mother helps him by buttering his roll?" 
"She might," I told him. "In fact, yes, I think she does."

Does Norman help Paul by taking him fishing? Yes, I think he does.

In the novel, Maclean also portrays a magical quality of the river, and the way it shapes not only rocks and geology, but also our stories and our lives. The water has a certain power over its fishermen ("Eventually, the watched joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river") as well as an inclusivity ("As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from my own life joining with them.")

Maclean uses the metaphor of a story to write about "reading the water," and how "it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy." It is thus fitting that he says, "stories of life are often more like rivers than books." For the river that he writes about, Big Blackfoot, was the family river that ran throughout his life, the medium that connected both him and his brother, the landscape in which he witnessed an artist at work, the place where the "Dance of Death" of a fish would foreshadow his brother's, the one place where came closest to understanding and helping Paul.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”

If I eventually do become an English teacher/professor, A River Runs Through It is a story I want to teach. It is at once humorous (the hilarious shock of seeing not two "bears," but two "bare asses") and poignant. This may sound childish, but I feel so joyous to have a beautiful short story I can call my all-time favourite.

“One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.”

“Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect.”

View all my reviews

Take her to the moon for me, Joy

Pixar and Disney have done it again. Inside Out is the best animated movie of the year (sorry, Minions). Innovative in concept, instantly loveable, hilarious and heartwarming, it is a timeless film for all ages.

"Ever wonder what goes inside your head?" is the question the movie asks and answers. The movie opens with a newborn baby, Riley, crying - and then takes us immediately inside her head, where we are introduced to Joy - Riley's first emotion. It's a lovely and optimistic (and very Disney) thought, that happiness is the first feeling a human being experiences. But the golden, brightly-dressed and sparkly-haired Joy is not alone, for she is quickly followed by the blue, plump and somber Sadness, the purple, lanky, jumpy Fear, the red, stout and thick-browed Anger, and the green, sassy and stylish Disgust. 

(Yes, they left out Surprise - Fear seemed to embody her role, though). 

This ensemble directs Riley's internal narrative from "HQ," the headquarters of her feelings (the limbic system?). True to Pixar and Disney, the whole film is fabulously imaginative - inside Riley's head, we watch an actual "train" of thought go speeding by, see how she is who she is because of her "islands of personality," and even understand how the most ridiculous songs get stuck in her head (they get sent up to HQ by the "Forgetters"). Riley's memories are captured in large, glowing marbles - most of which take on Joy's golden-hue - and the major ones become "core memories" that are safely stored away to form the bedrock of her personality. 

"I'm not really sure what Sadness does," Joy remarks at the beginning of the movie. Indeed, Joy takes the steering wheel throughout Riley's childhood. Whenever a sad moment threatens to appear, it is always Joy who saves the day, while Sadness is ushered to a side. It is only when Sadness and Joy are accidentally ejected from HQ that Joy begins to realize the importance of a tear, of a quiet moment, of sorrow.

Throughout the film, Joy always tries to help Sadness understand happiness ("we'll work on this when we get back to HQ," she says). However, it is Joy who needs to understand the power of sadness the most. When Riley's imaginary friend Bing Bong is upset, it isn't Joy's jokes that cheer him up, but rather Sadness's empathy that helps him pick himself up again. When Joy and Sadness are trying to wake up Riley, it isn't a bundle of laughs that jolts her awake, but Fear. You need sadness in your life - it is catharsis, relief, and - as one of Riley's core memories prove - a door to happiness. 

There is so much that this film gets right about emotions and the human brain. For starters, what Sadness says is spot on: "Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life's problems." On the train, Joy rightly remarks, "All these facts and opinions look the same. I can't tell them apart." 

Moreover, when we zoom into the parents' heads, we see that their emotions all seem to get along. For example, the father's "Joy" is all for "putting the foot down," something that is Anger's job. Inside mom's head, Sadness sits at the centre, although all emotions take part in decision-making. And finally, once Riley turns twelve, her HQ "upgrades" - her "emotional panel" expands so that all emotions have a say in what dials to turn. Her feelings become more complex, Anger now has access to all the swear words he likes, and there is a big "Puberty" button that will be pressed sooner or later. 

This is a film that will make you laugh and cry. Joy using a tower of Riley's imaginative boyfriends to get back to HQ is hilarious, as is what goes on inside the parents' heads ("Signal the husband!") And the most poignant moment of the film is undoubtedly Bing Bong's sacrifice, for this episode carries with it the sad truth that we do forget about parts of our childhood in order to grow up. 

There are going to be times in your life when Joy just isn't there (hopefully not lost in the maze of your long-term memory or trapped in your subconsciousness). Sometimes, that's just what you'll need - yet at the same time, Joy might be there all along, just on the others side of your marble or around the corner. Ah, emotions. They are complex, extensively researched and part of our mental network since day one. No matter what, it is always better to feel something - than nothing at all.

Now I need to RAVE about Lava. My heart melted. It is most lava-ly short I've ever, ever seen. I'd forgotten that mini animations precede every animated movie (I definitely had an "am I in the right room moment," though). I've already played the song on my uke and listened to it endlessly on Youtube. How precious and warm. Adorable, visually gorgeous, funny, brilliantly imaginative. Best pun ever. I didn't know I could feel so much empathy for an animated volcano. It's the perfect lullaby and lover's duet. I lava that short with all my heart.