[quote=“Icon”]China has stooges to do its bidding? Color me surprised.
The movie is good, the story tight. As said, the cinematography -I have such respect for directors, camera people and, ehem, CGI folks here- is beautiful. It makes the environment another character.
Taiwan always looks so pretty in the movies. [/quote]
Sadly people are so busy making it not so in the real life…
Saw the movie today. Despite what the stooges of China say about how it corrupts Taiwan’s subjectivity, (what does that even mean?), I think it’s just a baseball movie, that’s all. The movie has nothing to do with sugar coating Japanese colonialism. It is about baseball, people who love the game of baseball, and how sports can transform a person, a group, a city and even a nation. As a baseball movie, it’s a great one. It’s not the best movie of the year or anything, but it’s one of the most exciting baseball movies I’ve seen, and as a rabid baseball fan I’ve seen a lot of baseball movies.
I don’t think there’s too much spoiler below, as I mostly talk about the film making aspect of the movie, so I’ll do away with the spoiler tags.
The main reason why I don’t think it’s one of the best movie this year has to do with the movie’s laggy tempo early on. In most sports movies, there’s a “building the team by finding all the right pieces” sequence. It’s not restricted to sports movies, think Oceans 11, when George Clooney and Brad Pitt are picking and recruiting the team. It is usually done with a snappy tempo, being humorous while showing the audience what these people can do, and why they belong on the team. I recognize Kano tried to have such a sequence, but the tempo is a bit choppy, and also doesn’t clearly show the audience that Coach Konto went to each of them and asked if they want to join. At the end of the sequence, Coach Konto is at Soo Tsìng-sing’s house waiting for Grandma Soo to ask for the gods permission. That is meant to show Coach Konto asked all the non-baseball students to join the team after seeing what they can do. But it just wasn’t executed well…
Soo Tsìng-sing, real life and in the movie
Another thing most sports movies must have is some douche bag trying to dissolve, unfund the team, like the owner of that Charlie Sheen Wild Thing movie trying to sell the team, or the parents in the original Bad News Bears wanting their kids to quit. I think Kano also tried to do it with the Konto asking for funds part. However it is never shown to us what the consequence would be if they don’t get the money, so like the recruitment sequence, it wasn’t very effective.
However, things got a lot better after that. The Koshien portion of the story was what made this movie one of the best baseball movies ever. The character stories and acting are top notch. The atmosphere and the scenery of the stadium is breath taking. More importantly, the level of baseball skills displayed on the screen is REAL. I mean this is not Tim Robbins as Nuke Laloosh in that Druham movie, or Thomas Ian Nicholas in that Rookie Rocket movie. There are no quick edits to hide the awkwardness of the actors, and there are no gimmicks. I seriously felt like I was watching a baseball game. I got pretty nervous and feel the pain of the players, clenching my fists when things gets tough even though I knew the story pretty well.
Before you non-baseball lovers mock that feeling like a real baseball game must mean the tempo was slow and sleep inducing, the tempo was just right. It was fast and snappy when the plays are going on, and just slow enough when it comes to developing the characters. I don’t think I had as intense of an experience watching other baseball movies. Rest assured, the “hide the ball to tag runner out at first” trick that seems mandatory in so many baseball movies isn’t in this one, thank baseball god…
There’s a theme of not giving up, setting a high goal for oneself, don’t expect to win, just give your darnedest not to lose even if the odds are stacked against you. In this sense, the movie echoed Seediq Bale, though without the soul crushing despair. If there’s anything else in this movie other than the game of baseball, it’s Wei De-sheng and Umin Boya wanting to remind the audience what that Taiwanese spirit means. Perhaps that’s what the stooges of China meant about the movie corrupting Taiwanese subjectivity, as they’ve worked so hard to induce a mass amnesia so people will forget the essence of being Taiwanese.