Na yeh ling san, ngoh choh seung liu Wong Gok hoi mong Dai Bou dik hung Van
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DIRECTED BY: Fruit Chan
FEATURING: Wong You-nam, Janice Man, Simon Yam, Kara Hui
PLOT: A bus from Mong kok to Tai Po arrives at its destination to find a neighborhood rendered empty by some unknown catastrophe, and the passengers are left to unravel the mystery of what happened, and what might happen to them.
COMMENTS: If a credit alone could catapult a film onto the Apocrypha, then “Based on the Novel by Pizza” would be a strong contender, even more so when you learn that this particular novel debuted in serialized form on an internet forum. Alas, this is not the first wonderfully weird credit we’ve come across around here, so I guess we’ll have to rely on Pizza’s ideas to judge whether this movie merits inclusion. Indeed, there are some offbeat notions at the heart of The Midnight After, but they are all in service to a greater mystery that is only inconsistently the story’s main focus.
Chan smartly kicks things off in the hyperkinetic atmosphere of modern Hong Kong, with a lively sequence in which the various personalities find their way onto the van. The city is energized, with joyful revelers, anxious workers, and quarreling lovers all populating the opening sequence in a way that gives the city its own character while establishing a contrast with the abandoned landscape we will soon enter. That contrast also gives us our first glimpse into the kaleidoscope of tonal shifts that Chan will employ throughout the course of the film. We’ll soon be treated to wistful romance, snarky comedy, surreal music videos, gritty justice, and disturbing horror. The Midnight After gets your attention, but once it has it, it quickly changes the game.
As we are introduced to the individual backstories of the passengers—the married couple who loves English football, the low-level gangster who has alienated his family, the junkie who never seems to realize what is going on—it starts to feel like the story would be better served as a TV series. One series in particular, in fact: “Lost,” the turn-of-the-millennium puzzle-box American series that thrived on unveiling mysteries with the promise of answers somewhere down the line. Like that show, Midnight assembles an unusually diverse collection of characters whose personal motivations and conflicting interactions make up the story’s drama. Also like “Lost,” new mysteries and complications keep getting thrown into the mix, including a cadre of hazmat-suited Japanese soldiers, a round of vigilante justice against a sex criminal, and a coded signal that seems to be transmitting the lyrics to “Space Oddity.” Unlike the series, The Midnight After attempts to deliver all of this in roughly two hours, as opposed to the six years afforded to the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815. The compressed time frame is acutely felt, with more stories than Chan could possibly hope to resolve. Supposedly an unrealized sequel would have brought some closure, but wrapping things up seems to be far from anyone’s goal.
Cultural elements are necessarily lost on an outsider like myself. For those in the know, The Midnight After is a metaphor for the impending handover of control of Hong Kong to the Chinese government, with the stranger-in-a-familiar-land vibe of the bus passengers’ predicament mirroring that of Hong Kong residents who find themselves absorbed into an entirely new political and cultural environment. You’ll also find references to Sino-Japanese relations, the uneasy alliance between capitalism and faith, the ongoing threat of aerial pandemic, and multiple genre parodies. Ultimately, it’s that stew of ideas that becomes the weirdest thing about the film. The basic mystery – “Where’d everybody go?” – is pretty straightforward. It’s the sheer mass of the additional ornamentation that throws you off.
All that The Midnight After could have been is captured in its final image, a beautiful tracking shot in which the camera pulls through the bus and shows the faces of people who are trying to take in the scope of all that they have lost. It’s a potent vision, but also one that highlights the open-ended nature of the tale. They don’t know where they’re headed, and neither do we. It’s an unusual approach to storytelling, but also a deeply unsatisfying one.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
“Blithely unconcerned with subtlety, coherence or the Chinese market, the film sizzles with untranslatable colloquial wisecracks, trenchant social satire, and an ensemble cast of character actors and young up-and-comers at their freaky best. A mercurial ride that is decidedly outside the mainstream, it should nonetheless delight genre aficionados and bonafide fans of Hong Kong cinema… Dream sequences and spooky visions further add to the surreal atmosphere…”-– Maggie Lee, Variety (festival screening)
(This movie was nominated for review by Dean. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
