Wu Qingyuan (2006) Reviews

• The life of Go master Wu Qingyan

  rasecz2007-04-24

  The life of Go master Wu Qingyan who came to Japan from China in the 1930's (?) to train at a Go academy. The narrative spans the time from those early beginnings, through the invasion of China by Japan, Japan's defeat to the US, the difficult post-war years, and ending with Wu suffering an accident that terminated his career playing in Go competitions. If those tumultuous times were not enough, Wu had to cope with a pernicious case of TB. You don't need to know the rules of Go, but even to a neophyte player, the moves and board positions depicted throughout look real. Contrast this to the brain-dead depiction of chess playing you see in many movies. Credit goes to a Dan-5 (Go player's rating) consultant. Whether you understand the game or not, you marvel first at the utter simplicity of the empty board, the curved black and white stones, the satisfying sound they make when smacked into position, and then at the complex patterns of black and white covering the board during the end game. To that aesthetic add the great decorum and unhurried ceremony of the games between grandmasters. It fits perfectly with the narrative, acting, and camera work: formal and beautiful. An element of the story escaped me at first: the nature of Wu's faith. I must have missed something early in the film, but near the end it is made clear that the religious sect he belongs to is Jiko. The film is dedicated to master Wu and his wife (Kasuko?). The opening scene is shot in Odawara (?) in 2004, presumably showing the real Wu.

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• A visual poem about an ancient game of competition and the pursuit of faith

  Chris Knipp2006-09-29

  Wu Qingyuan was born in China but has lived most of his life in Japan. Perhaps the greatest twentieth-century player of Go, the chess-like (but simpler and more ancient) territorial game of lenticular black and white stones on the grid square of a big wooden board. Wu was a Go prodigy, and his early victories led him to Japan at the age of fourteen. He dominated the game for over a quarter-century. This beautiful, sedately-paced film is based on his autobiography. Tian's film is very Zen. You will learn nothing about Go from it and little about Wu (known as Go Seigen in Japan; curiously as "Go-sa"—it makes him sound like "Mr. Go"). What you will get is a meditative but at times noisy visual poem starring the young Taiwanese actor Chang Chen, male lead of Hou Hsiau-hsien's Three Times, focused on a stoical, restrained, silent man who with quiet devotion pursued the game of Go and Faith, those two goals of competition and the spiritual quest, and little else, all of his life, among all the physical and mental challenges he faced and all the events of a turbulent century. The stern, clean-faced Chang's coolly intense performance, which rivets our attention at the film's center at all times, is a milestone in his career and shows him to be one of the strongest new Chinese film actors today. Chang knew a little Japanese prior to filming but for Tian this project imposed the discipline of shooting in a language of which he knew nothing. But Tian had Japanese assistant directors and production assistants he trusted and as he said in an interview, "Go players don't talk very much anyway." Nonetheless he acknowledges this was "very hard," similar to the problems faced by Hou in making Café Lumiere in Japan. Tian contemplated this project for a long time, and read Wu's autobiography shortly after returning to film-making following the nine-year break that followed The Blue Kite. Tian knows his own hardships. The realistic portrayal of the long period of the Cultural Revolution, its prelude and aftermath in the richly detailed Kite led to his being barred from film-making for years by the Chinese authorities. Wu lived in Japan during the unstable and violent Thirties and Forties. He was playing a tournament on Hiroshima when it was bombed. According to the film, the referee instructs the players to play on in the wrecked room. Wu suffered periodically from tuberculosis. Its residual effects exempted him from military service. He married a Japanese woman named Kazuko, who's still with him (we glimpse the ninety-something, still vigorous Wu himself briefly at the film's opening). Wu's alive and well now, but in 1955 he was in a motor accident that caused him to stop playing. In his autobiography he wrote of this event that the God of competition abandoned him. Yet he still studies Go with passion. The film is punctuated with titles denoting major events in Wu's life, along with a statement from his autobiography. Wu's pursuit of faith and search for relief from the intense mental stress of Go tournaments led him to join several religious cults, which are depicted in the film. After Tian returned to film-making his first work was the relatively apolitical, Ibsenesque Springtime in Another Town. The Go Master might be a safe way of returning to politics and history, by approaching it through an apolitical man who lived in another country. But Tian never was never a stranger to controversy. His own vicissitudes and his growing maturity may simply have led him to respect a man devoted to the pursuit of inner goals.

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• A biopic that admirers of Master Wu Qingyuan may not be happy about

  harry_tk_yung2007-04-05

  That this movie is a biopic paying tribute to go master Wu Qingyuan is made very clear at the start with a brief sketch of Master Wu, at the age of 92, entertaining friends at home in China. In his minimalist and sometimes stoic style, director Tian Zhuangzhuang tells the life story of Master Wu: learning the game from his Japanese teacher, early competition, marriage, entanglement with a mystical sect, surviving WW II in Japan, birth of his baby, furthering of his career, a traffic accident that is not fatal but damaging, and finally his retirement. Wu is well known, and even a godlike figure to some, for one and only one reason – his supreme excellence with the game. This biopic, however, seems to focus a lot more on Wu the man than Wu the go master. The titanic battles throughout his career are rarely depicted with more than one or two brief fast shots, if at all. They are reflected in various points in the movie almost as if they were an afterthought. On the other hand, we have detailed portrayals of him as a weak and gullible man sucked in by a sect reeking mysticism. That he was finally able to free himself of the hypnotic effect was due more to the determination of his sensible wife than his own wisdom. It is difficult to reconcile this persona with the godlike go master that we invariably perceive Wu as. But then the master, by personally appearing at the beginning, implicitly endorses this project. After being banned in China for 9 years since his "The blue kite", director Tian comes out of the deep freeze in 2002 with a remake of "Springtime in a small town", the original, 1948 version of which has been considered by many as the best Chinese movie ever. It is understandable that against the bigger-than-life reputation of the original, Tian version will have a hard time holding its own. Having watched both, I would suggest that Tian's version does not suffer in comparison in any way. In "the go master", we see some of Tian's style in "Springtime" even though the subject matters are entirely different. There are the subtle tones and nuances that take communication beyond the dialogue, of which we have few. The mood of the hue of the photography, particularly what might have been blue filters, are perceptible. One more thing and I'm done, and it's about the game of go. It is misleading to characterize it as "chess-like but simpler". The rules of the game are certainly simpler but if we follow the same logic of using the wrong criteria to assess certain things, we may as well say that bridge is a simpler game compared with rock-paper-cissors because the latter requires making your move simultaneously with the opponent while in bridge you make it after your opponent; or that the NFL playbooks are simpler than a guide to skipping ropes because a rope can be made into different shapes while a football cannot! Simple rules notwithstanding, the permutations and combinations in a go game are astronomical. While computer program "deep blue" beat world chess champion a decade ago, best computer programs on playing go routinely lose to talented children. For further references on the game, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28board_game%29

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• The go master of all times was illustrated as a person.

  michaelyik2007-04-03

  The director Tian deliberately portrayed the human side of the all conquering master of all masters in the history of the game, Wu Qingyuan. His victories and exploits were only briefly mentioned in the subtitles while his sufferings made up most parts of the film. His decision to apply for citizenship greatly tormented him. On the outbreak of the war, he sought refuge in religion. He was shattered when it turned out to be nothing but a hoax. His winning streak ended after a traffic accident and he took it very badly. But by then he was almost 50, way past his prime. A delightful find was Sylvia Chang, playing Wu's mother. The spirit of the game was most dramatically displayed: not even the atom bomb at Hiroshima could stop a championship game played right there in the city. The greatness of Master Wu was subtly illustrated in the first and last game of go. In a game of go, the junior or lower ranking player always takes black and has the first move. In the first game, Wu, the young master played the first three stones in an unprecedented opening, especially the third, at the center of the board, a taboo shunned by any player but firmed established himself as an innovator. In the last, an exhibition game to celebrate Wu's retirement, his young pretender played the first stone at the center of the board, copying him and bringing Wu's game into the future.

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• A bore

  thebucketrider2007-12-14

  This film offers a very dull chronicle of the biography of a legendary Go player. The main character appears very flat: his life is dedicated entirely to the game of Go and to his religious faith. Since neither of these is presented in any detail, it is hard for a viewer who is not familiar with them beforehand to understand what he's about. His interactions with the film's love interest, whom he ends up marrying, are as flat as the rest of it; reading a note elicits some emotion from him but her presence does not. The film has a very episodic feel, leaping from one scene and context to the next without much continuity. It sometimes feels like the historical /political events of the period command more attention than the protagonist but they are not explained or narrated as they would be in a documentary. The film boasts good photography and a few scenes of interest but I found it consistently vapid on the whole.

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