Johnnie To: Morning, Noon and Night

Again, it seems, I'm not blogging.  So here goes another blog about--not blogging.  I'm currently working on a little project (or at least it seemed little when I proposed it) looking at some of the films of Johnnie To.  The idea is that this will lead to a short article to be posted on one of the HK film websites.  For a director of his international stature, To has received precious little serious attention from those who write about cinema.  Even more interesting, most of that interest (at least in the West) is focused on those critical few years when Johnnie To was "discovered" by the West. (2000 - ca. 2004).  Yes, I know Stephen Teo has written a monograph on To(1), but have you read it?  It is--apparently--his dissertation cleaned up for publication.  If you're a product of academia (Sean, I know you're probably reading this), then you know how overstuffed, over theorized and over-thought it could be, and here you're right on every count.  If you're looking for a deeper understanding of what makes certain Johnnie To films indelible viewing experiences--you'll have to look somewhere else than to this book.  Characterizing To as an "uneven auteur", as if he has ever really fit the Cahiers du Cinema concept of an "auteur", really tells us nothing about the producer and director of a canon of works that has perceptibly changed the way the world views HK cinema.Another rather fascinating discovery has been the reception of Johnnie To's pictures in the West.  There is no consensus among academic writers as to which To pictures represent his seminal works.  One individual lauds A Hero Never Dies as a sly masterpiece that rewrites the Triad Brotherhood tropes established by John Woo, while the next decries it as indulging in the worst sort of Baroque excesses with no higher purpose in mind.  Reading these "opinions" is like watching the final shoot out in A Hero Never Dies--after the dust settles, there isn't a man left standing   For a totally different take on the same pictures, it is always fun to go over to Subway Cinema and see what Grady Hendrix and company have to say about the same films. They may resemble a group of overgrown fan boys, but they have watched with avid interest 100 times more Hong Kong and Asian films than any 3 academics rolled into one and bring a populist perspective to every movie they watch.One of the benefits of this project is that I get to rewatch in a more systematic fashion a number of Johnnie To films that I have seen in recent years, in no particular order, with no particular agenda in mind.   Now I'm also filling in the gaps between some of those pictures with some of the "lesser" movies (a concept I'm looking at very closely since I don't take anything an academic says at face value). When the finished piece is up, I'll post a link here.  If a couple of years ago you'd have told me I'd be working on this project, I would have wondered what you were smoking.  I didn't used to like gangster/Triad pictures or excessive screen violence.  That was before I was hopelessly seduced by Johnnie To. (1) Stephen Teo, Hong Kong University Press, 2007.