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THE
MAD PHOENIX
AKA:
Legend Of Mad Phoenix
Year:
1997 Reviewer: Andrew
Saroch
The
successful team of director Clifton Ko and screenwriter
Raymond To notched up a surprise hit with the sentimental
biopic 'I Have A Date With Spring' in 1994. Three years later,
the pair turn their attention to the tempestuous life of
Cantonese Opera playwright Kiang Yu-Kou, an award-winning turn
by renowned actor Tse Kwan Ho.
The
son of a wealthy bigamist, Kiang Yu-Kou is a precocious child
whose intellect is only matched by his arrogance. As he
matures, Kiang spends his evenings watching traditional
Cantonese Opera and writing his own inventive variations of
them, confident that he will soon be working in the artistic
field. Eventually the opportunity he waits for finally comes
and the young writer quickly establishes a reputation as a temperamental
genius. After a moment of self-sacrifice sees Kiang end his
fruitful partnership with his gifted protégé, the quietly
vulnerable artist's career is shattered by the Japanese
invasion of Shanghai. Kiang struggles to adapt to life under
occupation and his integrity means he squanders the chance to
become a screenwriter for his actress niece. What follows is
the once-revered craftsman's gradual descent into poverty and
mental breakdown, while his past friends find the help they
offer to be of little lasting benefit.
There
is unquestionably something tragic about seeing a genius in a
certain field succumb to mental illness due to the sheer
pressure they put themselves under; despite its very glossy
veneer, 'A Beautiful Mind' was a periodically accurate example
of acumen pushed beyond its limits. The heart of 'The Mad
Phoenix' is the said virtuoso who certainly has the poignancy
within his life to enable an effective work of cinema to be
created. Unfortunately, Clifton Ko's unsteady, wasteful
direction means that this is a potentially emotional
examination that is squandered by its execution.
To
appeal to a wider audience - and one that isn't especially
savvy with Cantonese Opera - Clifton Ko needed to show what
made his lead such an outstanding artisan and what set him
apart from his envious contemporaries. Ko and his writer
Raymond To never flesh out this sense of achievement and we
never appreciate just how different Kiang's work is from his
rivals - by ignoring the exposition of such information, Ko
renders this a parochial work at best. Even when our fragile
anti-hero does ascend to the heights of fame, there is rarely
a sense that he is really being showered with glory by his
adoring public. Apart from a few comments by supporting
characters, Ko does not infuse the narrative with a real sense
of Kiang's status at his height. Such short-sightedness means
that his eventual fall from grace lacks a definite impact.
Though
the first half of 'The Mad Phoenix' suffers from such
problems, the second fifty minutes is even more guilty of
expressing the skills of a director better suited to comedy
and melodrama than such a tragic story. Kiang's descent into a
total breakdown should be piteous, but it is only the final
shots of his death that have any emotional weight. The mental
illness that blights the genius is handled in a half-comic way
that lends more to the similar scenes in 'Tai Chi Master'
rather than a proper examination of the troubles. It's a real
shame that a condition so often misrepresented on screen is
once again cliché-ridden - Tse Kwan Ho is a performer well
capable of achieving the needed balance, but still comes
across like a cruel parody in certain scenes.
'The
Mad Phoenix' has moments that offer the kind of promise that
make the finished product all the more disappointing. A few
early scenes show a captivating mixture of reality, fantasy
and nostalgia that would have benefited the overall effect of
Ko's work. Nevertheless, such moments are gradually swept
under the carpet in favour of the more mundane; it would be
very interesting to see Riley Ip's handling of such material
given his past triumphs with such themes. It is only the
closing shots of the homeless on the streets of Hong Kong that
demonstrate that Clifton Ko can put pathos in his material
without lurching into melodrama or misplaced humour. Such
moments, though, are too few for 'The Mad Phoenix' to shine.
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