Exodus

Year:2007
Director:Pang Ho-Cheung
Cast:Simon Yam Tat-Wah, Annie Liu, Nick Cheung Ka-Fai, Irene Wan Pik-Ha, Candy Yu On-On, Jim Chim Sui-Man, Tan Lap-Man, Gordon Lam Ka-Tung, GC Goo Bi, Siu Yam-Yam
Description:
Pang Ho-Cheung
is at it again. Hong Kong Cinema's naughtiest young
auteur returns to cinemas with Exodus, a slyly
subversive black comedy about a female conspiracy
to eliminate all men. Maybe. Simon Yam stars as Tsim
Kin-Yip, a low-level cop who stumbles upon what he
thinks could be a hidden crime ring. While taking
a profanity-laced statement from unbalanced loser
Kwan Ping-Man , who was apprehended for
peeping in a woman's bathroom, Tsim learns that a secret
cartel of women are out to kill men. Or so Kwan claims.
The accusation is outlandish,
and Tsim doesn't seem to think much of it at first,
spending more time listening to his pretty young wife
Ann grouse over the renovations to their
new flat. Tsim is also propositioned for a shady money
deal by his mother-in-law , plus his daily
life is the absolute boring pits. Yet Tsim trudges
on through his mundane existence with a seemingly
resigned acceptance. This is the life he's chosen,
for better or worse, so that's where he gives his
all - or maybe 60% of his all. Basically, it's your
standard "bloom is off the rose" marriage, and if
Yip doesn't have the seven year-itch yet, he's at
least halfway there.
But marital issues - or the
lack thereof - take a backseat when Kwan suddenly
changes his statement, requiring Tsim to take the profane
Kwan's statement again. Kwan's new statement is that
he's just a horny voyeur and that there's no man-killing
conspiracy afoot - a message he delivers in an unconvincing,
jittery manner. After YTsimip learns that Kwan's story
changed only after a visit from policewoman Fong , his interest is piqued. He begins to quietly
investigate Kwan's claims, first by tailing Kwan,
and then by annoying him with incessant questions.
After Kwan goes underground, he checks in with Kwan's
ex-wife, club girl Pun Siu-Yuen . After
repeated meetings, Tsim begins to spend perhaps too
much time with the leggy Siu-Yuen.
Tsim also reports his findings
by talking into his personal recorder, and spends
extra overtime at the library checking out news of
other men stricken with untimely deaths. What he discovers
is that yep, a lot of guys have died, a bunch of women
have survived, and the evidence is pretty circumstantial.
Hell, even Ann's father died in a rather strange manner,
a fact that Tsim brings up as a form of crappy pillow
talk to his increasingly frustrated wife. Tsim buries
himself in his new crusade, ignoring some of his normal
husband duties. Still, the investigation doesn't progress
as much as it does meander, and nobody seems to care
about Tsim's investigation beyond himself. Even though
his leads usually go nowhere, Tsim obsession becomes
greater - and everyone around him, from Madam Fong
to his wife, seems to be aware of it. Will the investigation
draw him into danger? Or is this secret cartel of
women just a figment of an overactive, middle-aged
mind?
Exodus starts with
a bravura opening shot, depicting a poor sap getting
beaten with hammers in what appears to be a police
station hallway - and his attackers are a bunch of
guys wearing swimsuits, diving masks, swim fins, and
snorkels. The shot begins on a portrait of Queen Elizabeth,
and slowly tracks back, revealing more of this absurd
scene, and the effect is darkly funny, inherently
disturbing, and immediately intriguing. This bizarre
scene asks the immediate question, namely "What the
Hell is going on?" The film is patient, not referring
to the scene until Exodus is practically over,
which pretty much tells us one thing: Pang Ho-Cheung
is in the house, and he's going to do things his way.
As Pang has demonstrated time and time again, he's
a director who's clever, detailed, and knows exactly
what he's doing. Nothing is extraneous in a Pang Ho-Cheung
movie.
Or maybe everything is extraneous
- an easy assessment, if one doesn't have much of
a taste for Pang's sometimes self-amused directorial
style. In the past, Pang's choices have sometimes
been obvious in their loaded meaning, but he changes
that up for Exodus. This is a opaque film;
the proceedings are rather inert, possessing very
little action, and showing Tsim's investigation in
a mundane, almost boring manner. He follows, he snoops,
some leads pop up, they usually go nowhere, and not
much gets resolved. Not helping matters is the fact
that Tsim is a lousy detective, leaving an obvious
trail for anyone to follow, and essentially putting
a massive target on his back for the man-killers to
zero in on him - that is, if the man-killers even
exist. Tsim's investigation doesn't bring him closer
to the truth as much as it proves that he's kind of
useless, and even pathetic in how he lets his investigation
derail into your standard midlife crisis management.
Basically, his intentions are good, but he lets his
flawed humanity get in the way of doing the right,
or brave thing. That could describe 80% of the people
in this world.
What is Pang is trying to
show us with his new film? Is he using this uninspiring
character to show us that that some men are stupid
and deserve to be killed? Or is he pushing a non-feminist
view that women are evil harridans out to rid the
world of useless people possessing XY chromosomes?
Or is he just screwing around? As usual with a Pang
Ho-Cheung film, the answer is: who the Hell really
knows? Pang is an exceptionally smart director, and
tells naughty, potentially off-color stories in a
manner unbefitting their likely sordid subject matter.
The heart of Exodus is absurd and patently
unbelievable, but since Pang reveals in opaque, observational,
deadpan serious style, the whole thing comes off as
funny and even strangely believable. If the man-killers
do exist in the film then they escape detection because
the very idea that they exist is nearly impossible
to believe. That's really the point behind Pang's
satire - which one character reveals explicitly -
that getting away with the unbelievable is possible
because no one will ever buy into something so outlandish.
Exodus is a blackly
funny meta-reference to this theme, playing up the
paranoid idea that something large and shadowy could
be happening just out of reach. Corruption, conspiracy
- those concepts exist everywhere, but they usually
don't affect people overtly, or we deny that they
exist because believing in them is too complicated
and troublesome. If those concepts were magnified
to absurd, grossly exaggerated extremes - and people
still don't want to bother confronting them - wouldn't
that be funny? With Exodus as evidence, the
answer is "yes", and Pang delivers his message with
tremendous artistry, depicting the ideas with deadpan
irony, and creating exaggerated, yet subdued characters.
Maggie Siu and Annie Liu exude an air of inscrutable
malevolence fitting for the film's subject matter,
and Nick Cheung is amusingly paranoid and irritable,
eliciting the film's largest laughs. Simon Yam looks
characteristically suave as Tsim, but his character
is not smart or clever at all, and in many ways he
gets what he deserves.
Or maybe Tsim doesn't deserve
his fate. Pang doesn't moralize with Exodus,
which is something the director has seemingly done
since his very first film: shy away from taking a
stand about serious issues and poke fun at the seriousness
with which others regard those things. The above thought
is a mouthful, so here it is bluntly: Pang likes to
make fun of stuff that most people usually don't -
and he does it in a way that's self-assured, to the
point of practically being self-congratulatory. What's
great about Exodus is that Pang loses the showy
cleverness of such films as Beyond Our Ken
and Isabella, affecting more through contemplative
style and wordless action than scenes loaded with
ironic, self-congratulatory meaning. Many of the scenes
in Exodus are exceptionally long, but the dialogue
and action contained within tell us
volumes about the characters and the world Pang has
created for them.
Pang resists payoffs or moments
of grand, telling emotion, letting most characters
make decisions silently, offscreen, or perhaps even
not at all. Eventually, he reveals all the answers
that the audience is asking for, but by then, there
is little drama left. The resolution of Exodus
is explanatory and ironic, serving to fill in the
blanks, and the detached manner in which it's all
revealed is remote, and bleakly, blackly funny. Some
of the laughs are obvious and overt, like Nick Cheung's
exaggerated use of profanity, but the comedy in Exodus
is largely cold stuff, and that icy, amused wit ultimately
creates the film's defining impression. The controlled
effort by Pang is appreciable, and the same kudos
extends to the technical personnel; Exodus
is remarkably produced, with excellent cinematography
and art direction, and a fine score from Gabriele
Roberto, the Italian composer responsible for the
score for Memories of Matsuko. From its judicious
pacing and well-established tone to its fine composition
and attention to detail, Exodus is an exacting,
well-produced effort that obviously had serious thought
put into it.
However, while all the above
is justification for Exodus receiving acclaim
from critics - as it did recently with 10 nominations
from the Golden Bauhinia Awards - it's also the very
reason that the film will likely turn off many audiences.
Pang's work here is accomplished, but the remote tone,
subdued wit, and lack of overt resolution means that
the film essentially stays on even footing for its
entire running time, never tipping its hand or leading
the audience in an obvious direction. The resulting
reward is a subtle one, but it's also a far cry from
the usual clever twist or knowing climax that Pang
has given audiences in the past. Exodus is
smart, uncommon stuff, but it's also something that
will not play to a crowd expecting some sort of a
payoff. Exodus is more art film than mass entertainment,
and could end up dividing audiences because it simply
doesn't give them the things many audiences may expect,
like action, overt conflict, or any sort of catharis.
There is an appropriateness to how things end in Exodus,
but if a payoff exists, then it's likely only an internal
one felt by an individual audience member, and not
something that can necessarily be shared with others.
Plainly speaking, Exodus isn't for everyone,
as it doesn't really work to make itself an enjoyable,
or even accessible experience. However, those who
do find themselves liking the film may end up liking
it a lot.