Taiwanese IT tycoon Terry Gou’s (郭台銘) first foray into film funding, Empire of Silver (白銀帝國) has generated hype galore since shooting began in 2006. Three years, 46 locations and NT$400 million later, the period drama about an affluent banking family in Shanxi Province is a decent but less-than-impressive movie directed by Christina Yao (姚樹華), a Taiwan-born theater scholar, director and writer who has worked at theatrical companies and universities here and in the US.
The story centers on the powerful Kang family in late 19th-century China. Led by Lord Kang (China’s Zhang Tielin, 張鐵林), the family-run banking empire single-handedly built up what has come to be known as the Wall Street of imperial China through managing funds and issuing money orders.
Third Master (Aaron Kwok, 郭富城) is Lord Kang’s debauched and least favorite son. After his brothers meet with a series of tragic accidents, he becomes heir apparent to the clan’s mighty enterprise.
Aside from possessing neither the ambition nor the aptitude to become a money-driven businessman, Third Master’s conflict with his father involves his young Western-educated stepmother, Madam Kang (Hao Lei, 郝蕾), a diplomat’s daughter. She taught Third Master English and the two fell deeply in love before Lord Kang stepped in and stole the fair maiden.
The son embarks on a self-imposed exile in the desert, only to return upon hearing the news of his stepmother’s death. Meanwhile, as foreign intervention and civil war weakens the tottering Qing Dynasty, the economic meltdown that ensues forces Third Master to take the reins and lead his family.
Honed by some of China’s top filmmaking professionals, including artistic consultants William Chang (張叔平) and Yee Chung-man (奚仲文), cinematographer Anthony Pun (潘耀明) and editor Liao Ching-sung (廖慶松), the film has an immaculately polished look and shows unforgiving attention to the smallest detail in its profile of the affluent family. Reams of research went into the art direction — all of the antiques and artifacts used in the film are reported to be genuine.
The period’s banking operations are revealed in an early scene in which branch managers from across China gather in Lord Kang’s courtyard, waiting for their yearly shares to be announced after a ceremony that involves rows of abacuses. The Kang family’s luxurious lifestyle is eloquently painted and contrasted with the destitute world inhabited by the poor and the sick outside the clan compound’s stone walls.
Inside, a familial war is played out in silence between Lord Kang, the autocratic patriarch, Third Master, the conflicted son, and Madam Kang, the wife who goes as far as to mutilate her genitals as an act of rebellion. Such sober human drama recalls Zhang Yimou’s (張藝謀) 1991 masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern (大紅燈籠高高掛) and its focus on the repression of women.
Yet Empire of Silver fails to become a contemporarily relevant and absorbing story. Based on Chinese writer Cheng Yi’s (成一) three-volume novel The Silver Valley (白銀谷), the epic tale spans from late imperial to early Republican China and takes in the Boxer Rebellion (義和團) along the way. But unlike the tumultuous backdrop, the world of early banking proves to be barren ground for drama.
None of the characters is fully explored. The film’s story lines and themes vie for the audience’s attention and end up obscuring the narrative. On the one hand, there is the ideological clash between Confucian teachings and profit-driven pragmatism. On the other, we have the son experiencing a coming-of-age adventure in the Gobi Desert that involves a pack of wolves. Towards the end of the film, when their characters bid farewell to each other, the two romantic leads, Kwok and Hao, turn in stiff performances that are more soap opera than movie magic, and appear to read their lines from a teleprompter.
Cameos by Hollywood actress Jennifer Tilly and Taiwanese veterans Chin Shih-jie (金士傑) and Tien Niu (恬妞) merely add confusion to the dramatically incoherent film. And rather than smooth over the narrative blips, the recurrent and punctuated musical leitmotifs become annoying.
Before the recall election drowned out other news, CNN last month became the latest in a long line of media organs to report on abuses of migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing fleet. After a brief flare of interest, the news media moved on. The migrant worker issues, however, did not. CNN’s stinging title, “Taiwan is held up as a bastion of liberal values. But migrant workers report abuse, injury and death in its fishing industry,” was widely quoted, including by the Fisheries Agency in its response. It obviously hurt. The Fisheries Agency was not slow to convey a classic government
It was on his honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur, looking out of his hotel window at the silvery points of the world’s tallest twin skyscrapers, that Frank decided it was time to become taller. He had recently confessed to his new wife how much his height had bothered him since he was a teenager. As a man dedicated to self-improvement, Frank wanted to take action. He picked up the phone, called a clinic in Turkey that specializes in leg lengthening surgery — and made a booking. “I had a lot of second thoughts — at the end of the day, someone’s going
It turns out many Americans aren’t great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change. A study recently published by the National Academy of Sciences found that when asked to rank actions, such as swapping a car that uses gasoline for an electric one, carpooling or reducing food waste, participants weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change, which is caused mostly by the release of greenhouse gases that happen when fuels like gasoline, oil and coal are burned. “People over-assign impact to actually pretty low-impact actions such as recycling, and underestimate the actual carbon
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
RSS