Most of us have never seen a film from China, and most of us never will. Whether it be that abnormal paranoia of non-dubbed films known as subtitlitis or whether it be the fact that you just don’t really care, you will never see a Chinese film. And, if The King of Masks is any indicator for films from its country (I highly doubt that it is), then you’re not missing much.
Although The King of Masks was a government-funded film made in China in 1996, it looks like it were made in China in 1956. I’m not just talking it being a period piece (it seems to take place around the 1930s)… the grain on the camera looks like it were cinema done for as cheap as possible. And, although this can be good if you are Soderburgh or Cassavettes, director Tian-Ming Wu is neither of these.
But enough of attacking the grain… Silence of the Lambs had terrible grain, and it was still a great film. Let’s deal with the movie.
The King of Masks concerns an old man who wants to teach his craft to an heir… sadly, however, he has no heir. After meeting with a high-profile transvestite, he is convinced that someone needs to learn the art of masks (the things this man does with switching masks is truly amazing, and the masks that he uses make Venetian mask artwork look like child’s play), and he goes to search for a son. He finds a “son” in Doggie, a boy that he buys at an auction house for second-children in the family. There’s just one problem… Doggie’s no boy.
From this revelation, the film heads down such ultra moralistic lines as the “why we fight” series by Frank Capra. Tian-Ming Wu makes it clear that the Nationalists really sucked, were extremely greedy schmucks, and that now that we’re all under Communism everything will be much better. Watching The King of Masks then becomes less a work of art and more the focus of an anti-sexist, anti-capitalist rant advocating traditional Chinese values about all… exactly the type of film that would be paraded by Deng Xioping’s post-Mao China. The dialogue (or at the least the translation) is highly contrived and the film is highly tedious, reiterating its point about how the nationalists suck to the point of insanity. At one point, the old man is thrown in prison simply because they need to pin someone with a series of kidnappings, the little girl attempts suicide to get attention, and we all go home feeling that we have learned a lesson we already knew.
Although it may be culturally interesting to watch propaganda films, The King of Masks is such an incredibly weak propaganda film that it offers nothing more than it’s politics. The acting is contrived, the message too clear cut, and the film so vapid of imagination that you just have the urge to become an enemy of the state by simply watching it.
So if you happen to be one of Deng’s followers, enjoy this excrement of your propaganda machine. Otherwise, avoid it.
The streets of 1930 s Sichuan set the stage for The King of Masks, an award-winning tale of hope and transformation in the face of poverty and lonelin...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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