Final Blossay: How Should We Live Our Lives?

           Everyone has their own idea of what is important in life.  Steve Jobs’ opinion was, “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”  I happen to agree with these values but everyone is different and holds certain aspects of life closer to their hearts.  With everyone following different imperatives and having different morals, is there a right and wrong way to live life?  I say no.  I think the way you choose to live your life is part of what makes you, you.  I will look at a few different characters in the films we have watched this semester, including Noriko and Shukichi from Late Spring, Ho, Mark, and Kit from A Better Tomorrow, Sergeant Lee and Sergeant Oh from Joint Security Area, and Cuiqiao from Yellow Earth, to look at what was important to them and how this affected how they led their lives.

            In Late Spring, we watched the lives of Noriko and her father Shukichi, a modern middle class family in Japan.  The main plot of the film consists of determined efforts by a few people in Noriko’s life to get her to get married.  As a cultural and time period matter, women usually had their husbands picked out for them in an arranged marriage.  In the 1940s however, things were only just starting to change to a time when women could start to choose their own husbands.  Noriko seems to be stuck in this metamorphic time where tradition and modern expectations are being integrated.  She is very hesitant in the film to get married, saying that she is content where her life is, at home with her father.  Her aunt and her father however, are of a different generation and seeing Noriko getting older and still not married worries them.  Her father appears to want his daughter to have her own life and is concentrating on her happiness while her aunt seems occupied with the process of match-making. 

Something to notice is that Noriko is never told that she is getting married by her family.  Instead they plead with her and ask her to consider the man they picked out for her.  This is a big change from the traditional match-making and marriage process.  Besides her being content at home, Noriko also worried about what would happen to her father if she went off and got married.  In the end, Noriko likes the man her family has picked out for her and ends up marrying him, only under the impression that her father would also be remarrying.  After the wedding, her father is shown in their home alone, suddenly overcome with loneliness and sadness.  After the film, we realize what is important to Noriko and Shukichi.  It is not cultural norms or expectations that dictate their actions but love, family, and happiness.  Shukichi is looking out for his daughter’s happiness over his own.  Noriko got married not only for herself but because she thought it was what her father would want.

Early in the semester we observed the relationships between Ho, his best friend Mark, and Ho’s brother Kit in A Better Tomorrow.  Ho and Mark are prominent members of the Triad where they are literally partners in crime.  Although Ho has chosen the life of a criminal, he encourages his younger brother Kit, who he is very close with, to join the police force.  When a deal goes wrong, Ho is sent to prison while Mark is crippled in a gun fight and Kit and his father are attacked in an apartment.  Kit and Ho’s father is killed in the attack and reveals to Kit that Ho is does not have the cleanest track record.  When Ho gets out of prison, Kit wants revenge against him for their father’s death, blaming Ho and Mark is significantly lower in the hierarchy of the Triad.  Ho is stuck between his friend and his brother because he wants to become someone his brother can reconcile with but Mark wants Ho’s help in taking revenge on Shing.  In the end, he helps Mark, who is killed in the final fight, and turns himself in, giving himself to Kit so that Kit can take credit for arresting him and closing the case. 

Each of these characters had some intense choices that were made, but they were all made for each other.  Ho changes his life around after prison for his brother.  Kit gives his gun to Ho in the end so that Ho can kill Shing.  Mark turns the escape boat around to save both Ho and Kit and ends up being part of the reason why the brothers reconcile with each other in the end.  Although Mark is not Ho’s actually brother by blood, he is a brother through their friendship.  Kit and Ho realize how important family is in the end and all three men’s self-less acts are evidence that they lead their lives according to what is best for their family because that is what they hold dearest to them.

In Joint Security Area, we followed Major Jang as she tried to solve the case of how two North Korean soldiers were killed in the North Korean border station.  What we come to learn as the plot develops is that the two soldiers from the South Korean border befriended the two North Korean border soldiers through a series of events.  It all began when Sergeant Oh and Private Jeong save Sergeant Lee from a mine.  They get to know each other and eventually, Sergeant Lee brings in Private Nam into the friendship.  When they are caught together one night, all hell breaks loose.  Lee shoots the North Korean officer who discovers them, as well as Private Jeong.  Oh ends up finishing off the officer that walked in on them and lets Lee and Nam escape, coming up with a story that both sides must stick to in the investigation.  In the end, Nam attempts suicide and ends up in a coma and Lee steals a pistol from an officer and commits suicide.  What do we learn about these men from all of this?  I think that their story reveals that friendship means the most to them and they did the best they could to protect each other in a situation that was doomed from the beginning.  Lee commits suicide in the end because he cannot deal with the fact that he killed his friend and that his other friend tried to commit suicide because of something he did.  Oh helps Lee kill an officer and even has an outburst during the investigation when he sees that Lee is about to give himself up.  Nam so determined to protect their friendship jumps out a window to avoid a lie detector test.  For these men, friendship was what was meaningful in their lives and without it, they all fell apart.

In Yellow Earth, Cuiqiao’s life changes when Gu Qing comes to her village.  Gu is a soldier of the Eighth Route Army looking for folk songs to turn into communist songs.  He travels to Shaanxi and stays in Cuiqiao’s home along with her father and her brother Hanhan.  Cuiqiao, like all young girls her age, is expected to enter into an arranged marriage.  At the beginning of the film we see her fearfully watching a wedding procession of a young girl her age and an older man, knowing that she would suffer the same thing.  When Gu introduces Cuiqiao to the new thinking of the Eigth Route Army, such as women being able to join the army, Cuiqiao becomes hopeful and wants to join the army.  However, her father informs her that she will have to be married in order to afford a bride price for Hanhan.  Gu must return to the army and Cuiqiao begs him to take him with her but he tells her that once he gets permission for her to join that he will return for her.  But he doesn’t return fast enough because Cuiqiao gets married.  She decides to go to the army on her own and tries to cross the Yellow River at the time of its strongest current and disappears.  We are led to believe that she drowns in the river.  Unlike the characters form the other films, family is not necessarily what comes first for Cuiqiao.  For her, her personal freedom is what matters most to her, and she ran away trying to attain that.  If family was what mattered most, she would have stayed with her new husband for the sake of her family.  But Cuiqiao lived a hard life that she had no choices in and so it is not a surprise that her freedom was what she decided was most important.  It’s not to say that family was not important because she did go through with the wedding, probably for Hanhan’s sake.  It’s just that freedom was the choice she made for what she wanted for the rest of her life.

I think a lot of factors account for how someone chooses to live their life or what becomes most valuable to them.  The characters from the films are from all different time periods from all different countries.  The most common thread between them is family.  There is probably a good majority of people in this world that would also say that family is the most important thing to them.  Looking at all of these films together has revealed that the love and respect for one’s family is a universal element of how people choose to live their lives, whether it is protecting family or making sacrifices for family.  

The End Is Where We Start From: A Formal Analysis

             Within his collection of essays in Tsurezuregusa, Yoshida Kenko commenting on the lives of cherry blossoms wrote, “In all things, it is the beginnings and the ends that are interesting.”  I can definitely attest to Kenko’s view on the matter and have realized as the semester has progressed, that the beginnings and endings in the films we have seen have affected me the most, whether they have been my favorite or least favorite parts of the film.  I feel that the endings of a film certainly have a huge impact as they will offer one of two things: they will either give you all the answers in how the story ends or it will leave everything up in the air for the audience to decide.  Several factors come into play in the final scenes of a film such as cinematography and sound.  I will analyze and compare the finales of Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, and Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.

           The final scenes of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring feature a Buddhist monk who throughout the film we have watched live and learn through the different stages of his life.  The scene begins with the monk taking a statue of Buddha Maitreya out of a cabinet and tying the stone wheel the statue is supposed to be perched on, around his waist.  As the monk is tying the rope around the stone, music starts to play in the background.  The track is a traditional song called "Jeongseon Arirang" which features a lot of percussion and woodwind instrumentals and eerily beautiful vocals.  There is no dialogue for the rest of the film, only this underlying soundtrack, which I believe makes the scene all the more powerful.  The song starts off with only the instrumentals and softer vocals as the monk starts his journey with the statue, the stone dragging behind him.  As he approached the wall-less gates to the pond on which he lives, the vocal amplitude suddenly rises very passionately and as he crosses the threshold and then drops once he passes the gates.  I feel like his passing through those gates signifies a leg of his journey completed, and so the music reflects that in its rising and falling.

We know from watching the previous footage in the film that the monk dragging this stone behind him, in his struggle to get up the mountain is symbolic of a few things.  It is a reference to the animals he tortured as a young novice monk by tying a stone to them and watching them struggle to go on their way.  There are even a couple of flashbacks within the scene to these animals in their struggle with the stones.  This scene can also be taken as the monk moving on towards the next stage of his life, this hike being the passage or test to get there.  Like before as a child, he learned through carrying a stone on his own back, so now, he does it again.  As our protagonist makes his way up the mountain, we watch him fall and trip from all different camera angles, both looking down at him and looking up at him, as he bears the weight of the stone behind him.  The raspy and mournful voice belting out the song makes the audience sympathetic to his struggles even more.  When the monk reaches the top, the tempo of the song seems to pick up, as if going along with the monk’s success of reaching his destination.  Once at the top, the monk meditates and the vocals are no longer being belted out as if in struggle, but instead begin to soften and conclude the song.  The ending shot zooms in on the small temple on the frozen lake from a bird’s eye view and stops zooming as the song stops.  

This final sequence is significant because it effectively summarizes the monk’s struggles in life, what he has learned from them, and how he will ultimately overcome them.  The flashbacks to the animals as he climbs the mountain shows the similarity between what he did to them and what he is facing in the final scene.  At the end, he makes it to the top and we get a sense that he has finally been “enlightened” so to speak, and is ready to move forward with his life.  There is no dialogue in the entire finale so the monk’s toil is narrated by a powerful and expressive song that seems to mirror his efforts.

In the final scenes of Late Spring, Shukichi Somiya has just arrived home after seeing his newly-wed daughter off.  The house-keeper is at home waiting to greet him and leaves almost as soon as he arrives, leaving him quite alone.  He has a small smile on his face as he hangs up his coat in the empty house but soon the smile fades as he realizes just how alone he is.  Appearing almost tired, Shukichi meanders to a chair and takes a seat.  All the while, soft music plays in the background.  The soundtrack seems reflective and sad, imitating the feelings being evoked by the sad sight of lonely Shukichi.  He begins to peel an apple with a knife and succeeds in doing so without breaking the peel.  As he is keeping himself busy, the camera zooms in on the apple in his hands slowly rotating as he carefully peels it, and lets the peel just fall to the ground.  Now the camera angle has changed and we are looking at him from the side as he gazes at the apple in his hands.  Shukichi slowly lowers his head into a bow, and I get the impression that he is starting to understand that not having his daughter around will be hard and he might not be able to keep himself busy as easily as he had thought. 

As the song slows down, the scene fades from Shukichi sitting in his home into an ocean scene with rolling waves.  All of a sudden, the music starts to dramatically reel, loudly and crashing, mimicking the movement of the waves.  The sad tune seems to be heightened as the film comes to an end, the scene fading out.  We the audience, are left with all kinds of questions.  Does he regret making his daughter start her own life?  Will he be lonely for the remainder of his?  The story stops there and we can infer for ourselves what happens next, which is a beautiful thing about endings left open.  The camera angle of Shukichi is different from the camera angles of the monk in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.  In Late Spring, there is a theme of being at eye level with or lower than Shukichi and being in pretty close proximity to him.  In Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, we are always either looking up at, looking down at, or are looking from afar at the monk.  There is only one part where we are close to eye level with the monk and this is when he is meditating on the mountain top.  The soundtrack for this final scene is very different from the soundtrack of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring.  In Late Spring’s last song, it is a soft, conservative, string instrumental that picks up at the very end.  Perhaps the music starts out gentle to reflect Shukichi’s gloomy mood and then becomes roaring to match the waves and signify the end or give the audience hope that the ending can be a happy one.  In Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, the soundtrack reflects the monk’s journey and hard-ship as well as the culture.  They are similar in that both songs mirror the characters in the closing scenes.

The end of Ikiru proves to be something pretty unexpected.  In the film, we know that our main character, Kanji Watanabe, has cancer and so is in search for meaning in his life while he still can, as his death rapidly approaches.  What is unexpected is that he dies well before the end of the film.  Though this is strange for a film, it is actually very realistic because everybody dies and death does not wait until you are ready; it just happens when it does.  So since Watanabe dies before his story is over, the end consists of flashbacks of the people attending his wake.  In the flashback of the police that found Watanabe in the park, we see Watanabe sitting alone at night on a swing in the park that he made possible.  It is snowing and the only sound you hear is Watanabe’s deep, throaty voice singing "Gondola no Uta."  The first time he sings this song in the film it is very sad and affects everyone around him.  This time in the park, he seems at peace with what he has achieved with the park and his life.  I think the song still makes us sympathetic to Watanabe’s situation but it is in a more content way the second time around.  When we see him on the swing, the first few lines of the song we see him from the side through a jungle gym, making a very interesting perspective.  As the song progresses, the angle is of Watanabe from the front and the scene fades into the picture of Watanabe’s face that is on display at the wake.  I think the fading of the scene really reflects the softness and solemn emotion of the scene.

 In the very final scene of Ikiru, we see Watanabe’s co-worker looking down from a bridge at Watanabe’s playground.  The camera angle starts out by looking at the side of the co-worker’s face and then the shot slowly moves toward the playground in an almost spiral effect, and then cuts to being at ground-level with the playground.  On the playground we see children playing and two boys are called off the swings to go eat dinner.  They jump off their swings, which stay in motion once they are gone and the camera lingers on this for a moment.  Slowly the camera pans upward to see the silhouette of the co-worker looking down from the bridge.  The music is already playing at this point and it is non-other than Watanabe’s anthem: "Gondola no Uta."  No one sings the tune this time; it is only a lone flute playing the melody.  The co-worker slowly walks away on the bridge and the camera follows him until he walks off-screen.  All of a sudden the music roars as the scene fades out to black.  This song ending the film is very similar to that of “Late Spring,” in that a soft song suddenly ends in a big way.  Perhaps in the case of Ikiru, the song ends this way for a hopeful purpose, like Late Spring’s, except for this film, the hope is for the workers in the office to muster some courage for their conviction to do better in honor of Watanabe.  The camera angle is similar to that of Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring because first we are looking down at the playground, and then looking up at the co-worker. 

 The endings of these three films have a few things in common, whether it is the soundtrack or a similar theme of camera angles. But they are all very different stories and end way they do for a reason.  And to no surprise, each of the films left me with different feelings at the end.  For Late Spring, I felt sympathy for Shukichi.  For Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, I felt a sense of triumph.  For Ikiru, I felt reflective and solemn.  I think that without the elements specific to these films that I have discussed, I might not have felt the same way.

Red and Yellow: Gender Politics in Yellow Earth and Raise the Red Lantern

          After viewing a plethora of various Chinese films, two stuck out to me in particular.  Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth and Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern both drew my attention to the status of women in marriage, and therefore in society.  These films gave me the impression that women were essentially powerless in a patriarchal society and had no say in factors such as marriage.  Women were used as a commodity and valued only for reproduction and social politics.  I also noticed a theme of desire among the women in the films.  When the female characters desire something, they end up being punished in some way, whether it is by the cosmos or by man.  This only reinforces the idea of the wishes and thoughts of women to be unimportant and unvalued.
          Yellow Earth takes place in 1937 when the socialist revolution began in China.  An Eighth Route Army soldier, Gu Qing, is sent to still not-liberated and rural Shaanbei to collect folk songs to re-write as army songs.  Gu arrives at a village where a traditional marriage between a very young bride and a middle-aged man is taking place.  In this marriage sequence, we see the parade of musicians and gifts as the bride is carried in a palanquin to the groom’s village.  Upon arrival, the bride is taken from the red palanquin and forced to kneel with the groom before some kind of altar and then is taken to their bedroom. As this is happening, the camera cuts back and forth between the marriage ritual and a young girl who we come to know as Cui Ciao.  She has a look on her face that at first reads expressionless but after a few more shots seems to capture both worry and empathy.  After seeing the movie, I believe this scene foreshadows Cui Ciao's similar fate later on in the film.

The new bride and groom reemerge from the bedroom after some time and we see the bride’s face as she and her new husband are introduced to Gu.  The bride looks to be no older than 14 years old while the groom could be as old as his 40s.  The bride’s expression looks to be one of anger and sadness.  While Gu looks at her and her husband, you can see the disapproval and sympathy in his face.  Obviously this young girl did not choose her marriage but was forced into it to fulfill the needs of the village and her family.

Young Bride

Gu Qing is hosted in the home of a widower peasant living with his young daughter, Cui Ciao and son, Han Han. Gu Qing works in the fields with them and tells about the social changes brought by the revolution, such as women joining the army who have the chance to become literate and to have more freedom in matters such as marriage. Cui Ciao is intrigued by Gu Qing's stories about life in the army.  Later in the film, Han Han sings the bed-wetting marriage song to Gu. The song is about a woman marrying a boy too young for marriage and he wets the bed so she wets the bed too.  For me, this certainly reflects how limited women were in their freedoms.

 Cuiciao finds out that her father has accepted an arrangement for her betrothal. She must get married so Han Han can use the money for a bride price.  That is just one example of how sons take precedence over daughters.  Soon after, Gu announces that he must leave. Before he goes, Cui Ciao pleads with him to take her away with him to join the army. Gu Qing says that he can’t take her along because of public officers' rules but he promises to apply for her and come back to get her once she is accepted.   The relationship between Cui Ciao and her father and Cui Ciao and Gu are similar for different reasons.  When comparing Cui Ciao’s father’s exchange of her for the survival of the family and the revolutionaries' liberation of women for the advancement of their cause, they are both using women as tools. 

Shortly after Gu leaves, Cui Ciao is married to the middle-aged man that she was betrothed to.  We see an almost identical wedding sequence to the one that took place at the beginning of the film, only this time, Cui Ciao is the bride and Han Han takes her place as the spectator.  After the wedding ceremony, the film moves on to a scene where Cui Ciao is sitting in a bedroom with her red veil over her head.  We see a dark hand pull it off her face and an expression of horror crosses it.  This was upsetting for me to watch because by the look on her face and her quickened breathing, Cui Ciao is obviously scared and being forced into something she does not want and is probably not ready for.  Cui Ciao decides to run away to join the army and so takes a boat to cross the Yellow River.  As she is crossing, we hear her singing until all of a sudden she disappears and is quieted in mid-song.  This gives the audience the impression that she may not have made it across the strong currents of the river.  The assumed drowning of Cui Ciao can be seen as her desires being punished.  She is punished by patriarchy for leaving her marriage, for ignoring the public officers' regulation and leaving to join the army without permission, and for challenging the cosmos by crossing the Yellow River when the currents are strong.

Raise the Red Lantern begins the film with a powerful monologue by the main character, Songlian.  This first scene depicts Songlian talking to her off-screen step-mother, telling her that she shouldn’t worry anymore because she has decided to get married.  Her step mother asks her what type of man she will marry to which Songlian replies, “What sort of man? Is it up to me? You always speak of money. Why not marry a rich man?”  Her step-mother says that if she marries a rich man she will only be a concubine.  Songlian replies, “Let me be a concubine. Isn’t that a woman’s fate?”  Such a commanding opening monologue was definitely meant to set the tone for the movie.  As Songlian admits her decision to marry, you can see the tears build on her eye-lids and her stony face shows no trace of hope as she looks past the camera into nothingness.  With her father dead and left only with her step-mother, she can no longer afford to go to school and is now forced to get married.  In this time and place, it is acceptable in society for a man to have more than one wife.  I feel like the fact that this was allowed to happen only promotes the objectification of women.  Their only job is to please the master and produce a son.  Just as in Yellow Earth, sons are a preference.

Songlian marries a rich man and becomes the fourth mistress.  The compound is enclosed and isolated, almost like a prison.  This enhances the idea that the women are property and cut off from the outside world.  When Songlian first encounters the master, we do not see his face but rather we are looking at Songlian in the master’s point on view.  This camera angle choice seems to also adhere to the idea that women are an object. He orders her to stand up, to lift the lantern so he can admire her face, and then orders her into the bed.  She follows his orders without objection because she has to.  The way she has to obey him sickens me as a modern day woman but at the time, this was traditional behavior.  Throughout the film we never see the master’s face.  He represents the faceless patriarchal society.  It wouldn't have mattered if Songlian had married any other man because they are all the same and she is just an object to be had to all of them.  Everything is bound by tradition: the master as the head of the house, the multiple wives at his beck and call, the servants, the meals served in a certain way, and even the infamous red lanterns.

In the film, the red lanterns signify which wife the master will sleep with for the evening.  It is a sought after position by the wives because the wife chosen receives a foot rub.  Competition among the wives is inevitable, even more so for the younger wives as they have the opportunity to produce a son.  The rivalry isn’t limited to just the wives however.  Songlian’s maid, Yan’er, has had affairs with the master and is upset that she was not chosen to be the fourth wife.  All of the fighting that happens between the wives has a common root: the master.  He definitely influences their relationships because they are all fighting for his attentions, for his gifts.  This creates the image of a man being the center of their world.

            Towards the end of the film, Meishan, wife number three, is caught having an affair and so is hung by the master’s staff, which drives Songlian mad.  How is this behavior morally acceptable?  The master has four wives.  As if that isn’t enough, he also has affairs with the maids.  Yet, Meishan, limited to one husband, find happiness with another man and is murdered.  I’m not condoning adultery but I think in perspective, the master’s offenses clearly outweigh Meishan’s. And yet, the master’s offenses are not offenses at all, because his actions were traditionally conventional.  Also, Meishan and Songlian have desires in the film and they are both punished.  Meishan desires love and is hung for it.  Songlian desires to be the favorite and receive foot-rubs.  When she lies to achieve this, she is punished, also demonstrating a similar message from Yellow Earth that going against the current of institution only leads to their own demise.

Yellow Earth and Raise the Red Lantern both portray women as oppressed in a patriarchal society.  In both films, the female leads have no say in the matter of marriage.  Songlian and Cui Ciao are forced into marriage because of their financial situations, family situations, and tradition.  There is also an underlying taboo on desire.  When each of the women desires something for themselves, they are punished in some way.  One loses her mind, the other her life.  Though the circumstances seem appalling compared to the position of women today, these films show how powerful tradition and pressures of cultural and societal norms are.

Jackie Chan, Spiritual Kung Fu Review

         
          I recently watched the 1978 Hong Kong film Spiritual Kung Fu, directed by Lo Wei.  Jackie Chan stars as the protagonist of this action film.  Interestingly enough, Jackie Chan starred in another comedy-action film in 1978 as well called, Drunken Master.  Drunken Master was extremely popular in the box office while Spiritual Kung Fu on the other hand, did not come close to Drunken Master’s $6, 763,793.  There were many similarities between the two films but there were also a few subtle differences that may have led to the better receiving of Drunken Master.

          In Spiritual Kung Fu, Jackie Chan plays Yi Lang, a cheeky, young student of kung fu at a Shaolin Temple where he is constantly getting into mischief.  One evening, a mysterious thief steals the Seven Deadly Fists manual from the temple and gives it to Luk, whose father had the book stolen for Luk so that he might reclaim their family’s honor and become the next master of martial arts.  We learn from the elders of the temple that the only way to counter the Seven Deadly Fists is the Essence of the Five Fists which was lost centuries ago.  Unsuspecting Yi comes across five ghosts in a temple one day only to discover the hidden manual of the Five Fists.  Yi convinces the ghosts to teach him the Five Fists style (Dragon, Snake, Tiger, Crane, and Leopard), which is probably the most comedic part of the movie.  Meanwhile, a visiting Wudan master is found murdered on the Shaolin grounds and an innocent monk is blamed.  In the end, the murder mystery unravels through Yi’s final battle and defeat of Luk.

          When I first read the title and saw the opening scene set on temple grounds, I immediately thought this film was going to be deep, religiously spiritual, and quite the opposite of Drunken Master’s comic relief.  I turned out to be completely wrong.  Though the film is a lot less comedic than Drunken Master, it still had elements of comedy mixed with the impressive martial arts action of the movie.  Besides that, the spiritual part of the title referred to the ghost masters that help train Yi in the Essence of the Five Fists.  The ghosts themselves were meant to be a funny aspect in the movie because as they are introduced into the plot, they are playing, teasing, and fooling around with Yi before he gets them to agree to be his masters.  Not only are the ghosts jumping around, laughing, and playing tricks but they also look a little ridiculous too.  They have stark white skin, bodysuits, and tutus plus bright red hair that would make Ariel from The Little Mermaid look bland.  Also, the funky music that accompanies the five ghosts whenever they are on screen is very techno sounding which I found very contrasting to the rest of the film.  Though Spiritual Kung Fu seems to lack a lot of the comedy features that Drunken Master has, there is still some humor in Jackie Chan’s facial expressions, remarks, and his interactions with the ghosts.

          Another difference between the two films was the surprise twist ending in Spiritual Kung Fu.  Drunken Master was definitely more of an action-comedy film with lots of fighting accompanied by Jackie Chan’s snarky humor.  This film however, not only had the action of martial arts and Jackie Chan’s famous wit, but it also included elements of mystery. During the movie you suspect different people of being the killer and by the end, it turns out to be the one person who you thought couldn’t possibly have been the culprit.  There were also clues throughout the film that suddenly make sense when the murderer is revealed.  In my opinion, it adds a little extra something to the film and makes it even more exciting since you do not expect it.  It’s a unique combination of Scooby-doo, Bruce Lee, and Ghost Busters.

          There were a lot more similarities between Drunken Master and Spiritual Kung Fu than there were differences.  The first similarity I’ll address is the fact that Jackie Chan’s character, Yi, has an almost identical role to Chan’s Drunken Master character, Wong Fei-hung.  In the beginning, both are mischievous but comical youths who have some growing up to do.  They achieve this maturity though learning a specific, special style of marital arts that is long-forgotten or rare and use the lessons they learn along the way to help them defeat their final opponent in a fight which they win and the movie ends there.  Also, their masters who teach these unique styles are very unique themselves, almost bizarre in fact.

          During both films, there is one fight scene with an underestimated woman who fights Jackie Chan’s characters and he loses in both instances.  I thought this was an interesting parallel because in both films, Chan’s characters are being taught a lesson that is important to his overall learning experience: respect and to never underestimate your opponent.  In Drunken Master, Wong Fei-hung challenges a woman, who we later find out to be his aunt, to a duel and he embarrasses himself with his loss.  In Spiritual Kung Fu, Yi challenges the beautiful daughter of the murdered Wudan master and she not only beats him but insults his style, telling him that he looks like a teapot pouring tea.  Yi then goes back to his masters where he reenacts the fight for them and they explain what he did wrong.  I think both instances present women as strong, competent and generally underestimated by men.

          In Drunken Master, Wong Fei-hung is taught the Eight Drunken Immortals and there is a sequence of him in the film performing each drunkard’s style.  Very similarly, Yi is taught the Essence of the Five Fists, which he also demonstrates in a sequence in the film.  Technically, both characters are learning from some scripture or manual on top of that.  Also, both Yi and Wong both fight their ultimate opponent two times.  The first fight they lose but the second fight is the last fight in which they win.  Both of these points tie in with another correlating aspect of both films.  In the final fight scene of Drunken Master, Wong seems to recite every drunkard as he uses the style against his ultimate opponent in the second fight.  Parallel to that, in Spiritual Kung Fu, as Yi takes on Luk and later on his father, he says the name of each one of the five fists styles that he has learned.  I think this was meant to both summarize what was learned by his characters in the movies while also clarifying to the audience when he is using each style in the end because they are all important.  I know that if I was told to watch the movie and figure out the difference between each style, I would be unable to.  Both movies have a happy ending in which justice is served and Jackie Chan’s character has grown as a person and as a fighter.

          Since there are so many similarities between Drunken Master and Spiritual Kung Fu, perhaps that is why one was more popular than the other.  Drunken Master was released first and Spiritual Kung Fu followed it a little later that year.  It is conceivable that the public had just seen Drunken Master and so another film so similar so soon might have given Spiritual Kung Fu the short end of the stick.  Personally, I enjoyed both films equally and I think it was a timing issue.  If Lo Wei had waited another year to release the film, Hong Kong might have produced different results in the box office and in reviews.