李大傻
2 weeks ago was my week(end) of cultural immersion... with 周杰伦's
不能說的.秘密 and
Toy Factory's 李大傻 with my parents. It was really quite enjoyable. It isn't often that I indulge in so much 'chinese-ness' consecutively. The latter made the fact that I cannot speak cantonese so much more apparent. Cos at least 50% of it was in Cantonese.
Ok, a review on
不能說的.秘密 first. 3 things that I really liked about the show:
Content wise...1) The innocence of
young love. U know, when ur young enough to feel v strongly abt someone, yet not old enough to be bogged down by pre conceived notions, worries etc. Life was simple. Just study/be gd at what you're supposed to do. Ok, I suppose u could say it's unrealistic...tt it never happens in real life. But i guess looking at beautiful ideals once in a while is ok. I suppose to me, the dialogue that arose from their 'courting stage' was super cute. Funny cos some of it reflects quite closely the cheeky banter that Shane and I have. Heh.
2) The
piano playing. Ok, most of you might not know this, but I play the piano. But, unlike most happening pple who can play, I've been classically trained with lousy creativity. I.e. I cannot improvise. Which is why I can't play pop, which is why I don't like to play now cos I need to read the
tao geys. And even then, it takes too much effort just to play it well.
So anyway. I admire pple who play the piano well. Guess I have a soft spot for talented musicians. There's just tons of piano playing scenes in this movie. Feast for my eyes sia. There was a scene where Jay Chou and the girl played a duet... the way it was filmed depicted their immense chemistry and love for music in a really beautiful way. They 'connected' through the song. Also done in a lighthearted and playful way.
Filming techniques/Cinematography etc (I cannot rem the actual defns of these terms btw..but it's one of them la).
3) It's a really
beautiful movie in general. All the scenes are all really 美美. The close ups, the angles...all make for beautiful hallmark moment types. Guess this came along with his use of nostalgia. The entire film has tons of nostalgic elements. Which makes it beautiful la I guess. Yeah.
So I guess in general, the storyline is also interesting. Altho after the 2nd time I watched, I discovered a huge loophole in the twist =_= So sad. But, to borrow Wayne's words... the build up to it was good. :D So yeah. If u haven't watched it, u shld. Esp if u like music..more specifically piano playing.
Okay. So now about
李大傻Twas an extremely moving play. In summary, it was abt "the life story of legendary radio broadcaster, Mr Lei Dai Soh. He was a well-loved Cantonese storyteller on Rediffusion from the 1940’s to 80’s and it was a tribute to an extraordinary man who had dedicated his entire radio broadcasting career to the people of Singapore and the region." (extracted and modified frm Sistic website) Apparently, he had the gift of captivating listeners just by his stories about chinese classics. My parents rem tt whenever his show was on, everyone just stopped what they were doing to listen. It was the form of entertainment during their time. But with the increasing popularity of TV, radio started to phase out. The speak mandarin campaign also forbade local media to have programmes in any other dialect but mandarin. So 李大傻 also got phased out.
Quite a waste, given his passion for telling gd stories, imparting gd morals through the classics... and his gift for inspiring and entertaining many. His life was also kinda tragic...in the sense tt his wife was mentally ill when he married her. So he had to deal with his personal life too. Had 3 thoughts abt this too...
1) Legendary Icon, yet not remembered?Having been such an icon for 40 yrs, I'm really surprised that he is not remembered today. Tons of pple would stop what they were doing to listen to his stories, from Singapore to many parts of Malaysia. He was part of the 'poor people's' entertainment. Yet he seemed to be phased out so easily with the
Speak Mandarin Campaign through which they tried to eradicate the use of all dialects, and the rise of the TV. In the end, he had to repackage himself to do tape recordings... but of course, the reach was more limited. Think it's really sad that such cultural icons were not remembered for their contributions. My generation has never even heard of him!
2) Mandarin vs DialectI guess, one of the issues which really moved me was how the zheng hu tried to eradicate the use of all dialects and force pple to use Mandarin. On a personal level, I'd always wondered why I couldn't speak cantonese...why I had to learn mandarin in sch, since no one in my family spoke it! I feel, although we are all chinese, the different dialects have differing traditions which are beautiful and unique to our specific dialect. It is such a waste that all this will be forgotten once the older generation passes on. Other than what my mom can rem, I have no ties at all with tradition. And will prob never have because I've never 'lived' in it, and no one is able to tell me abt it. And although I don't know much abt our country's history and what really happened during the mandarin campaign, I'm still not sure whether the introduction of this language has really helped to unify the chinese. Did we not previously already learn to live together? Wouldn't that have made our culture so much more diverse and interesting? Wouldn't we still be able to communicate with the old folks of today (instead of feeling damn bloody inept when we try to talk to them abt stuff?)
3) Chinese theatre in SingaporeThe actors were very well cast, and I was especially impressed with the main star 李大傻 himself. Think the actor's name was Jeffrey Low. Singaporean guy based in HK. His cantonese is damn gd!! He played the character so well, all the way from young guy to old man. Fantastic. Then of course there was Nelson Chia... one of my favs since he taught us acting in NUS. Oh, but what really struck me after the show was that I'd really enjoyed it so much. It's been a while since I was so intensely affected by a play... and what's more, a play which was mostly in cantonese!(of which I had to furiously try and read all the surtitles). I've kinda concluded that the quality of chinese theatre in Singapore is really much better than some of the angmoh crap I've seen. Or maybe more specifically with regard to Toy Factory's chinese theatre. The other time I was so moved was when I watched
The Legend of the Mad Phoenix. That was mostly in mandarin, and Nelson was the star. He was amazing. Maybe they're just very good at telling stories of legendary icons etc. But why can't English theatre do some of this and stop venturing so much into the avant garde so that we have the opportunity to listen to/watch some really gd story-telling taking place?
Also recently watched
天冷就回来 with Joanna Dong in it. It's good so u shld go watch. But I'll prob blog abt it another time.
