"Year of the Dragon"
Director - Michael Cimino
In an interview with the Paris Review in 1981 Tennessee Williams spoke of the difficulty of dealing with racism on the stage: "In the theatre you hardly dare use the word Jew, and it's really a detriment to a very fine people that they're so frightened of any criticism whatsoever, although after the Holocaust they certainly have reason to be frightened. I have no feelings of anti-Semitism, but those feelings do exist in other people, and it's difficult to present a picture of the world as it truly is without on occasion allowing a voice to those sentiments."
As if to prove his words, an attempt in Germany to stage a play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder on the subject of anti-Semitism was halted by Jewish organisations angry at his representation of the Rich Jew. Of this play Fassbinder once stated: "The really terrible thing about oppression is that you can't show it without showing the person who's being oppressed and who also has his faults. For example, you can't talk about the German treatment of the Jewish minorities without evoking the Jew's rapport with money, but when you do this it seems as if you're explaining or accounting for this oppression." Later in the same interview he said: "I stand firmly behind this thought: you must show the victim with his qualities and faults, his strengths and his weaknesses, his mistakes. And for this I've been called an anti-Semite !!!"
Given the reception that Year of the Dragon has met with in many quarters, these are probably sentiments with which Michael Cimino would identify, and it's dispiriting to have to defend the film from charges of racism, largely because racism is itself a major theme of the work. Contrary to the assumptions of many of the film's detractors, Year of the Dragon is not primarily about Chinatown, although it is set there; it is about the immigrant experience in America, about that country's present growing conservatism, and - most centrally - about the redemption of one individual.
This individual, Stanley White, is - the film makes clear - a racist, a man who has turned his back on his own immigrant ancestry, a man who is frequently selfish and unfeeling. Michael Cimino has had the courage to give us an unsympathetic protagonist who develops through the film to become aware of his own limitations, limitations that he acknowledges in the film's final line to Tracey Tzu: "You're right, I'm wrong. Sorry. I'd like to be a nice man. l would. I just don't know how to be nice.'
The saddest thing about responses to Cimino's film that fall to take this into account is that they would seek to limit the potential of cinema. They assume that a less than perfect hero necessarily represents the director's own world-view rather than a desire to stand back from that character and represent him in all his flawed complexity. Attacks on Year of the Dragon frequently reveal a misunderstanding of the nature of drama. It is almost a truism that the more complex, and even flawed the central figure, the greater the work of art. We accept this in theatre or literature, but in the cinema many still want heroes and villains to be clearly delineated. Many accept Dirty Harry and Rambo, reactionary though these films are, because it is clear to them who is meant to be the hero. On the other hand, in an obviously greater work like Shakespeare's 'King Lear' we see that the protagonist is a vain, foolish and naggingly senile old man, and yet we still sympathize and share his tragedy. Few watching the play would be so naive as to assume that the character of Lear represented Shakespeare's own temperament or world-view.
Michael Cimino has made a film that, as serious art must, moves beyond the customary one-dimensionality of most current American mainstream cinema. It is unfortunate that many have become so used to such superficiality in the Hollywood film that they are now unable to look deeper. European films are usually judged with more critical acumen; few would assume that Istvan Szabo, for instance, approved wholeheartedly of the central character of Mephisto. One can only hope that in future, affected by criticisms of Year of the Dragon, Cimino does not turn to simplicity and present a policeman who is liberal, understanding, all-compassionate, and yet as courageous as Rambo. In reality few policeman fit that description.
Does Cimino in fact share the racism of his central character? True, Year of the Dragon shows us the seamy side of Chinatown. a side that even the film's detractors should acknowledge to exist; hut it does also show us the positive side of the Chinese community in America: Tracey Tzu is a professional television journalist whose father - we are told - is a successful and honest businessman; Herbert Wong is a dedicated, though inexperienced, policeman who becomes a martyr in White's attempt to refight the Vietnam war and win; and Tony Ho is an honest man who informs the police about the bodies of two dead youths and - in the film's most poignant scene - attends the funeral of White's wife. Even Stanley White acknowledges that Tony Ho represents much of what is good in Chinatown.
But what of White himself ? He is a Pole who has turned away from his heritage, changing his name from Wyzcinski in a bid to become more American. Part of his dislike of the people of Chinatown comes from the fact that, unlike him, they have retained a separate cultural identity. His dislike of Asians in general has been intensified by his experience in Vietnam. Like Rambo, he tells himself that only politics lost that war, and he clearly states that in Chinatown he intends to refight it and win. Yet he has a grudging respect for the people he claims to hate. As his colleague, Lou Bukowski, states: 'He's got a thing about Chinks.'
The schizophrenic nature of White's attitude towards Asians is revealed most clearly in his relationship with Tracey Tzu, which is presented in some ways as a process of sexual and racial colonisation: their first sexual encounter is almost a rape, while later on he literally takes over (or colonises) her apartment. Ironically though, she is perhaps more American and more modern than he is, particularly with regard to sex: 'What year are you living in ?', she asks him at one point when he tries to force sex with her, 'You don't have to get your money's worth.'
Even before his first meeting with Tracey, White is obsessed with her, although he himself does not know why. He identifies her, in some way, with the enemy, and tells her so in one confrontation in her apartment. Yet despite that he feels that only she can help him. Talking to her in this confrontation he walks into the water of her sunken bath, an action which echoes his walking into water during the earlier examination of the bodies in the bean-sprout basement and his meeting with Tony Ho. In that scene he saw both positive and negative aspects of Chinatown. Now Cimino echoes that encounter in purely formal terms. At this point, White's racist beliefs are crumbling. Emotionally, he speaks of how hopeless a Vietnamese parade was, and goes on to say: 'But then you'd come at us from fifteen different directions.' Racism, respect, and confusion, all in one line. At this moment, White is a man whose long-held beliefs are disintegrating.
Such changes are shrewdly observed throughout the film, and frequently revealed in visual rather than verbal terms. For this reason, many miss them entirely. One striking example of this is the funeral of White's wife, Connie, which Tony Ho attends. White's grief at her death is compounded by the fact that only shortly beforehand did he realise how unhappy he had made her. Guilt is added to his grief. Because of this, Joey Tai's hired assassins have hurt him in a way more profound than they could have suspected, and this would normally fuel the racist sentiments within him. Yet the presence of Tony Ho at the funeral, his genuine sympathy at the death, and his stand against the gangs, affect White deeply. Mickey Rourke gives a fine performance throughout the film, but this is his strongest moment. His confusion at Tony Ho's actions is made visually - though not verbally -explicit; a speech would in any case be out of place. Cimino's choice of music here also intimates the change in Stanley White: he uses Mahler's s Resurrection Symphony, (the titles and lyrics themselves revealing), a piece which is repeated at the end of the film when White acknowledges not only his limitations but also his desire to become, with Tracey's help, a better human being. Many have missed this, but to disregard the function of music and the purely visual in a Cimino film does the director and the film medium itself, a disservice.
Whereas hardly a scene passes without revealing some unpleasant aspect of White's character, Joey Tai is frequently shown in a more sympathetic light. He is a family man, whereas White is not really willing to give his wife a child; he sends a girl through college; and he rescues an old acquaintance from death in Thailand. We are even encouraged to fear for his safety when he meets Ban Sung's men at the river in Thailand. To be sure, Tai can be as ruthless as Stanley White, but his ruthlessness is born of ambition (frequently a by-product of the American Dream), while White's is born of his personal demons, his obsessions. As he revealed in Scarface, scriptwriter Oliver Stone does have an interest in the dark side of the American Dream. In that film, chasing the dream is equated with selling cocaine. In this film, Stanley White actually refers to Joey Tai as someone who has chased the dream successfully.
Part of the reason that White despises Joey Tai so much is that, despite himself, he begins to identify with him. His savage attack on Tai after the undercover policeman, Herbert Wong, is shot is motivated partly by anger at himself. 'I am not going to kill myself for you Captain,' Wong had told him. And yet he does die, leaving White aware that his hand, as well as Tai's, was on the gun that killed him. Ultimately Joey Tai also - in one way - kills himself for White, in a scene which makes the theme of self-confrontation even clearer. Tai and White meet on a bridge (a symbol in itself). Both men are lit almost identically, so that as they run at one another it is difficult to tell them apart. Tai has turned to confront White because he knows the policeman will hound him until he does so. But Tai's death does not provide the resolution that White had expected. He is forced to an awareness of his victim as a human being, and even allows him to kill himself. Before he gives the gun to Tai he kneels, watching uncomprehendingly but with a new respect.
Throughout the film White hopes that Tai's death will enable him to exorcise his personal demons, and the people around him are largely aware of this. His colleagues berate him for wanting to refight Vietnam, and are aware that - as the film's conclusion reveals - he will not succeed. The film ends as it began, with a death and a funeral, but White has not really 'cleaned up' Chinatown. For this reason, it's ironic that Year of the Dragon has been compared to Rambo, precisely because the film is a critique of Rambo. In a racist film, we are not made uncomfortably aware of the protagonist's racism, and this is very much the case with Stallone's film. It is also ironic that Rambo attracted little of the criticism that was levelled at Year of the Dragon. Ironic and sad. Because this implies that Rambo is a better film, a more thoughtful film and it is not. White does speak like Stallone's hero, he even says some of the same lines, and he also wants to refight the war. But again and again he is told he is wrong, and he eventually admits it himself. There may have never before been a film in which so many characters have criticised the protagonist. Yet many reviewers, while noticing the arrogance and obsessiveness of Stanley White, have failed to see that Cimino does not exonerate it. In fact, he comes dangerously close to straining credibility at times to belittle White and present the Chinese case more clearly: White himself, Tracey Tzu, Herbert Wong, and - in a way - Tony Ho, all either tell us or reveal by their actions how unfairly Chinese, like other immigrants, have often been treated in 'the Land of the Free'.
Much has been made of the idea that Cimino 'exaggerates' the violence in Chinatown, but the point is clearly made in the film that the violence exists precisely because of the machinations of Joey Tai and Stanley White's attempt to refight a lost war. A bombing of a Chinese restaurant in London, the Seattle massacre, the murder of a Chinese businessman (uncle of a friend of mine) by triads in Glasgow, would suggest that Chinatown gangsters are violent when the need arises. Cimino has done his research well, and much of the film's plot is based on police opinions or police records. Fenton Bresler's book: Trail of the Triads is one source that quotes police as saying that, yes, the youth gangs are used as front-runners by the triads, that the triads in the States are dealing with the Mafia, and that there is much triad influence in many of the Chinatown 'benevolent associations'. Triads are not, as many Hong Kong films like to suggest, heroes or a courageous band of brothers. They are also not humorous or 'cute' to their victims. They kill people if they have to. Time and time again, the Hong Kong cinema has ignored or evaded that fact. It's likely that some of the anger against Year of the Dragon comes from its criticism and destruction of a much-accepted cinematic myth.
Year of the Dragon shows Chinese in America as people who have adopted various strategies, sometimes criminal, to survive in a country that has rarely welcomed them with open arms. Stanley White's listing of the social evils of Chinatown to Tracey Tzu is not merely a criticism of Chinese insularity, but also of America's image of itself as a non-racist, fair, and just society. Cimino is not blaming only the gangsters for the high tuberculosis rates, the overcrowding, or the dispossessed youngsters who - filled with a heroic triad myth - are exploited by organised criminals masquerading as businessmen or patriots. As well as making these points, Cimino has given us a human, complex, and flawed protagonist, and one who accurately represents the mood of much of America at this time. He has also given us one of the most thought-provoking and critical films in recent American cinema. This is not to say that the film is perfect: Tracey's character is a little too sketchy, for instance, and'- as many have noted - the triad leaders are portrayed in an almost humorous way influenced - I suspect - by Wayne Wang's Dim Sum) which lessens their credibility. All the same one can only despair that most reactions to the film have not been worthy of Cimino's talent.
Whatever its weaknesses, and I do not count racism among them, I believe that Year of the Dragon was one of the most ambitious and worthwhile American mainstream films of the eighties, and one which unerringly captured and attacked the sense of neo-Conservatism and almost xenophobia from which much of that country so frequently suffers.
Gary
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