Happy (Chinese) New Year.
From the opening scenes of A Writer’s Odyssey, you know this is going to be a cinematographic epic. Verdant mountains and deep valleys draw you into a sumptuously rendered world (thanks to Han Qiming).
One of the problems with translated films are the subtitles, you miss the subtleties of language and sometimes the actual subtitles because there’s a boofhead sitting in front of you. In A Writer’s Odyssey the visuals can distract you from reading the subtitles. A couple of times the script on screen wasn’t translated too. Conclusion: I don’t know how much I missed because of these things but I believe I understood the film.
Most of the film. The plot is not that complicated but there seems to be some unresolved issues. Not that I mind—I’m all for open-ended narratives. The film is based on award-winning Shuang Xuetao’s short story/novella of the same name. Lots of luck if you’re looking to read it in English, I couldn’t find it. Shuang Xuetao’s stories sound intriguing: multiple narratives, personal memories and parallel universes.
So the basic plot: Novelist Guan Ning (Lei Jiayin) is trying to find his daughter (Tangerine) who was kidnapped several years earlier. He ends up being co-opted by a large IT corporation (think Apple) with a megalomaniac head Li Mu (Yu Hewei) to murder Lu Kongwen (Dong Zijian) a young novelist. Said novelist is writing a fantasy story that is “killing” the megalomaniac. The fantasy story is being streamed online as it’s being written and is linked to the older novelist’s dreams – are you still with me? Two novelists, two parallel universes and one crazy CEO.
There is some violence but it’s that comic-book/gaming kind of violence. Cgi blood droplets and wire-fu. If you’re a bit squeamish, don’t worry, just sit back and embrace the spectacle.
Mandarin with English Subtitles, 130 minutes, M15+
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