Tag: reincarnation

White Snake (Baishe: Yuanqi)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Conceived as a prequel to China’s White Snake legend which has spawned numerous adaptations including Green Snake / Ching se (Tsui Hark, 1993), this computer animated Chinese epic concerns demon sisters Blanca and Verta (voiced by Zhang Zhe and Tang Xiaoxi) who look to all intents and purposes like beautiful women but are actually demon snakes in disguise – a white snake and a green snake as you might guess from their names. With her power and form enhanced by her sister’s gift of a green hairpin, Blanca leaves the demon world and visits ours for a showdown with a human General trying to prove his worth to the Emperor by dabbling in occult rituals involving snakes. When the showdown doesn’t go as planned, Blanca finds herself alone and suffering a complete loss of memory as to who (and indeed what) she is.

She awakes in a small, human, rural village where the local economy is built on catching snakes for the General. Local boy Sean (Yang Tianxiang) has no interest in catching snakes, spending his time instead sourcing toys for the local children or inventing things. Smitten with the amnesiac Blanca, Sean is astonished when by magic she rescues his dog Dudou from falling off a mountain ledge and by further magic gives the animal a human voice. Sean eagerly scrambles after Blanca as she flies up perilous mountain terrain, trying hard to look beyond her growing a snake’s tail when she does so, preferring to think of her as a woman rather than a demon.

It’s a strange and somehow very Chinese combination of creature feature, mythology and full on romance with the girl torn between the human and demon realms and the boy trying to justify his feelings for her. The physical effects work that Hong Kong would have been used 25 years ago is replaced by CGI which is generally of a higher standard than you would expect. As well as the two sisters, the snakes include a whole army of snake people whose cinematic origins go right back to Ray Harryhausen’s human-torsoed, snake-tailed Medusa in Clash Of The Titans (1981) and his similarly built, dancing girl in The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958). The snake people’s leader, much like the two sisters, switches between woman and snake, in her case an ethereal, yellow fire snake.

Equally inventive is the creature that pulls the General’s chariot, which looks like a crane with three heads. Other highlights include a spectacular firebird and malevolent black manifestations of the General’s dark magic. When Sean and Blanca reach the forge where the green hairpin was made, they meet another demon in the form of a woman with two faces, one human and, when she turns round, one fox.

The whole thing is beautifully paced with never a dull moment. Full blooded romantics will be struck by a memorable ending which throws into the mix Chinese concepts of reincarnation. Anyone who enjoyed the action movies coming out of Hong Kong in their halcyon days of the eighties and nineties prior to Hollywood’s co-opting such stunts for The Matrix (The Wachowski Brothers, 1999) will love this. Hong Kong did some amazing stunts using aerial wire work back then, but that will only get you so far and White Snake puts CGI to full and highly effective use, getting the most out of the medium and achieving things that would be near impossible in live action. So, to all intents and purposes an old school Hong Kong action fantasy redone as computer animation – and it works wonderfully. A joy.

White Snake played in the BFI London Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. On Amazon Prime from February (2021).

Hope Frozen

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Here’s a documentary with a difference about a family in Thailand. When their daughter Einz falls prey to brain cancer before her third birthday, her parents make the bold decision to have her cryonically frozen at death in the hope that she can, at some point in the future, perhaps in several hundred years’ time, be resuscitated and lead a normal life.

She has a devoted, older teenage brother Matrix who would do anything for her having waited over ten years for a sibling. Their dad Sahatorn is a working laser scientist who starts running experiments on his daughter’s cancer cells in an attempt to fund a cure before the condition kills her. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t find a cure. Eventually, he talks wife Nareerat and son round to the idea of having Einz cryonically frozen.

Upon Einz’ death, within 60 seconds her body has been frozen for delivery to a facility run by a company in Arizona called Alcor. We watch a representative of this company show the whole family round, which tour includes the cylinder at the bottom section of which Einz has been put into cryonic storage. For the family, it feels a lot like visiting a graveside. They’ll probably never see her alive again.

Matrix goes into a Buddhist monastery in order to try and come to terms with his sister’s death. When his parents later have another daughter Einz Einz, there’s speculation on the part of the wider family that Einz Einz is the reincarnation of Einz.

Much is made of the possibility of the human race overcoming death, but completely absent is any notion of income or cost. Clearly this kind of procedure is expensive because not everyone undertakes it. So well off people can be preserved while poorer people simply die. Yet without addressing any of that, this film presents its observations in an economic vacuum which is probably beyond the reach of most of us. That weakness aside, it’s a fascinating study of an area where science fiction is fast turning into science fact with huge philosophical, religious and socio-political implications for us all.

Hope Frozen plays in the BFI London Film Festival on Sun 6th and Mon 7th October (2019). On Netflix in September (2020).

A Dog’s Purpose

Posted on by victorfraga

Marred by controversy before it was even released, the odds were stacked against A Dog’s Purpose from the get-go. The film was supposed to be one of the biggest hits of the year, until a now debunked animal abuse controversy put a spanner in the works. As a result, the premiere was put back and the studio suffered from very bad publicity which has proven difficult to shake off. Now, an independent investigation has found that the video, which supposedly showed a dog being pushed into the water, had been edited to “mischaracterise” what actually happened during filming. However, the damage was already done and the news of the film’s absolution from any wrong-doing failed to pick up the same steam as the original story and went almost unnoticed.

Away from controversy, A Dog’s Purpose is the kind of film that will not only break hearts, but might even anger some for the way in which it manipulates its audience. Directed by Lasse Hallström – of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and Chocolat (2000) – and adapted by Cathryn Michon and W. Bruce Cameron from Cameron’s own 2010 best selling novel of the same name, A Dog’s Purpose is a nuts and bolts tale of one dog’s devotion to his human companion. The story spans several lifetimes in the life of a dog named Bailey (voiced by Josh Gad), who after his death goes on to be reincarnated several times without ever forgetting his original owner.

A dog is a human’s best companion, as you can see from this movie still.

As a child, Ethan (Bryce Gheisar, later played by K. J. Apa and Dennis Quaid) rescues a golden retriever puppy from certain death and is later allowed by his parents to keep the pooch which he names Bailey. The two go on to form one of the strongest bonds between a boy and his dog, a bond so strong that it manages to transcend even the dog’s natural life time. Years go by and Bailey is seen reincarnated into a number of dogs owned by several people, but none of them ever come close to replacing Ethan in Bailey’s eyes.

It would be hypocritical of me to pretend that I wasn’t deeply moved by this movie. Anyone who has ever owned a dog can relate to the agony that comes with losing one’s best friend. I would also be at a miss not to mention how upsetting this film could be for younger audiences, considering that it is mostly aimed at that very demographic. Having said all that, A Dog’s Purpose isn’t just a cute tearjerker of a film. It is also hopelessly optimistic in its content. Quaid as older Ethan is utterly brilliant as is the always excellent John Ortiz as a cop handling one of Bailey’s reincarnation as a police dog.

On the whole, the film may not have the most meaningful storylines of the year, but it is sure to move you to tears, and I will defy anyone not to shed a few. Hallström manages to inject some familiarity into the proceedings by making the film feel like a warm bath, or a lost old sweater. A genuinely moving tale, beautifully acted and thoroughly enjoyable despite the obvious over-sentimental nonsense.

A Dog’s Purpose is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, May 5th.