Update

I watched two black and white films about Second World War recently, one from Hungary, My Way Home (1965?); the other from Japan, Fire on the Plain (1959). Both depicted an attempt to return home of a soldier on the losing side at the end of the war, and in both cases, with sparse dialogues. What strikes me the most though was the landscape in them. Though in stark contrast with each other in terms of the tone and mood, they loomed large in the story as if they were doing the actual talking which were deprived of the skinny young soldiers.

I liked My Way Home in particular which remained me a lot of the Russian novels and films that I came across in school days. The way it related the 'natural' bond and growing friendship between two soldiers on the opposite sides of the war was subtle, effective and convincing. The way the character was portrayed reminded me of a Chinese film made in 1983 by the young Zhang Jundao, a 'Fifth Generation' director, called One and Eight. When One and Eight, shot by the budding cinematographer-turned-director Zhang Yimou, was on television, I had no patience for its slow pace and apparent lack of action, and struggled to understand its critical appeal. And now when I was watching two subtle films of similar subject and style, I seemed to be able to appreciate that Chinese film a little bit better.

Another film that left strong impact on me was Funny Games (1996, the original one). It started like an average film on a middle-class family, but two minutes after the credit sequence, the suspense was already built up and I found myself wanting to switch off the DVD because all seemed rather incredibly crazy. The first half an hour was possibly one of the best suspense/horror film I had ever watched, but after the boy returned to the house following a failed attempt to kill off their torturer, the film seemed to be repeating itself and offered nothing new any more. I finished watching it nevertheless because, as usual, I was also hoping that there would be a twist somewhere. Unable to understand the point of such a film, I turned to the interview in the special feature and found the director was aiming to tell a story about young people from well-to-do background who committed crime just for the sake of it. But if that was the case, then the film was obviously not too keen to make this explicit and had also lost a great opportunity to explore the social and psychological aspects of such criminals.

As to Buffalo Boy, it remained me of a lot of similiar films made in the 1990s in China following the international success of Zhang Yimou's Judo and Raise the Red Lantern. The cinematography was amazingly beautiful, but somehow, the film seemed too eager to conform to a steretypical image of a Vietnam of coloniel times.