Disturbing Beauty

I've continued my reading/movie watching habits on my days off while doing this rotation, and I should make mention of one of each here. It has been a trend of ugliness and disturbing topics packaged in an artistic manner:

1) Adib Khan's The Storyteller. I was amazed that this gentleman was actually a Bangladeshi national who, more surprisingly, wrote this book in Ballarat (one of the country towns in Victoria!). I picked it up randomly from the library, and I'm kind of glad I did.

Although it doesn't deal with anything pretty at all - the story follows the life and death of a horribly misshapen dwarf living in the slums of India amongst prostitutes and hijras (eunuchs) who makes his living as a thief and a storyteller - the writing was quite beautiful and the pictures were really vividly painted in your mind.

It deals with a few issues about religion, poverty but mainly loneliness and despair. I was surprised to find out that Mr. Khan started writing at the age of 40 - out of boredom because he found himself stuck doing a teaching job in a country town in Victoria. Man, if books come out of your midlife crises, then bring on my mid-life crisis now!

2) Fruit Chan's disturbing 'Dumplings', the whole movie (which was abridged and inserted into the Three...Extremes series).

The reason I watched this one was because I was initially hooked to the Three concept - Three was originally a series of three short horror movies inserted into one movie. There would be representation from Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong.

I know some of you avoid horror movies, and as I was sitting in that dark cinema all those years ago I was regretting my choice already - the Korean short came on first and it was pretty scary, but conventional scary. The Thai one just left me wishing I was somewhere else - not because it was frightening, but because it was just plain B-grade bad!

However, the last one in the series - which is called "Going Home" by Peter Chan Ho-Sun was an absolute masterpiece - shot in beautiful detail, and the storyline was amazing. It wasn't Nightmare on Elm Street scary, it was more Sixth Sense eerie, and this movie stayed with me for awhile.

Anyways, Dumplings was a highly disturbing watch as it tells the story of a lady who is seeking eternal youth and beauty by eating dumplings made from... I'm going to stop right there and throw up, actually. The cinematography was beautiful (Christopher Doyle is a godsend to Hong Kong cinema) and he is an Australian as well!

Wrapping the ugliness of the world in beautiful shots/words - is there a trend here?

If you had to decide between the two, I would recommend "Going Home" hands down - it was on Youtube for awhile but it has been removed due to copyright reasons.

Alternatively, if you like your viewing light and happy and you're looking for Asian cinema, the most delightful show I've ever seen is Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald - I watched it twice while it was screening in Malaysia. Don't even try to find it - it is impossible (although I'm sure eBay should be more than happy to oblige your curiosity!)

Worth hunting for, and worth keeping!