THE SOONG SISTERS (1997)
"Love is a kind of revolution, and revolution is a kind of love."
3.5 out of ****
Starring Maggie Cheung, Vivian Wu, Michelle Khan, Winston Chao, Kuo Chiu Wu Directed by Mabel Cheung Written by Alex Law Cinematography by Arthur Wong
Who were the Soong sisters? I can tell you quite a lot about them after watching Mabel Cheung's biopic. They were born around the turn of the century, in China, the daughters of Charlie Soong, a friend and ally of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen when he founded the Republic of China. Ai-Ling, the eldest, married the wealthiest man in China. Ching-Ling married Sun Yat-Sen and continued his legacy after his death. May-Ling, the youngest, married Kai-Shek Chiang, who became the leader of the Nationalist Party. They're all dead now.
Their fortunes were inextricably bound up in the colossal political and military struggles that have beset China throughout this century. I do not particularly believe in the idea of fate, but this film gave me pause, because it shows three women who seemed destined to "live in interesting times," as the proverb would have it, from the moment of their birth onward. Their story begged to be made into an epic, and an epic is what THE SOONG SISTERS is, in the best sense of the word. It's got it all: majestic cinematography, multiple stories played out against a vast backdrop, breathless narrative momentum, and great stars.
The stars include two of Hong Kong's leading women: Maggie Cheung (IRMA VEP, CHINESE BOX) plays Ching-Ling and Ai-Ling is played by Michelle Khan (aka Michelle Yeoh, of SUPERCOP and TOMORROW NEVER DIES). THE PILLOW BOOK's Vivian Wu is May-Ling. None of the performances are outstanding, but each actress brings the necessary charisma and presence to the part. They look the way famous women should look in a big-budget, glossy epic.
But who were these famous women, really? What were they like, in their everyday lives? That I can't tell you, because THE SOONG SISTERS isn't interested in that. It is interested in these women as vital figures in China's tempestuous 20th century upheavals, and as representatives of the extraordinary, frightening, operatic emotions that can occur in any country at war with itself. The film uses Ai-Ling, Ching-Ling, and May-Ling as focal points to show us over five decades of Chinese history, from the beginning of this century till after the "liberation" by the People's Army, and to give us some sense of what it might have been like to live through such times.
If any of this sounds like FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE to you, well, it does to me too. The structure and intentions of both films are remarkably similar; THE SOONG SISTERS plays, to some extent, like a Hong Kong remake of Chen Kaige's masterpiece. Both movies are visually superb, both are emotionally-charged melodramas, both use a triad of conflicting characters as the central focus of hugely ambitious narratives, and both films ran into trouble with the Chinese censors (18 minutes were cut from SISTERS for this reason).
But there are telling differences. In FAREWELL, history is the backdrop to a personal story: namely, the loyalties and conflicts that divide the two opera singers and the prostitute who marries one of them. In SISTERS, history is both the backdrop and the personal story, because the three sisters are all involved in the making of history. This difference, ultimately, is what makes SISTERS the lesser of the two movies. The personal, intimate details of their lives are sacrificed in favour of extravagant gestures; the sisters seem to interact only at moments of intense emotion: in love and in war, during death-bed scenes, angry confrontations, tearful farewells. This is immensely pleasing on the level of story and spectacle, but in the end I would have preferred less excess and more subtlety.
Ai-Ling is a pragmatist, Ching-Ling a pro-Communist idealist, and May-Ling an important player in the Nationalist Party, and these three traits essentially define each character: they become types, not individuals. I can't say I blame the filmmakers for treating the sisters in this light, because their story is so astounding, so larger-than-life, that these women, for all that they are modern, historical figures, take on the potency of myth. Besides, while each sister may be one-dimensional, when you put them together you have three dimensions--which is one more than you need to make a movie.
Some Chinese reviewers feel that the movie sacrifices the complexities of Chinese history in favour of reductive simplicities. I imagine they are right; I'm not really qualified to comment, since all I know of Chinese history is probably reductive simplicities. But to accuse THE SOONG SISTERS of trivializing Chinese history by giving it the Hollywood treatment ignores a significant distinction: in Hollywood movies, fate is usually an ally of the hero, while in most Chinese movies (certainly in this one) fate is the enemy, implacable and omnipotent. The sisters may be shown as one-dimensional romanticized types, but they're still ultimately treated no differently from many Chinese people, famous and obscure, in this century--victims of an unkind destiny they could neither choose nor avoid.
A Review by David Dalgleish (June 28/98)
dgd@intouch.bc.ca
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