Opens: Friday, May 23 (Sony Pictures Classics)
Full of incident but nearly devoid of dramatic tension, "The Children of Huang Shi" is a based-on-fact saga that has lost much of its power on the long road to the screen.
The story of an unlikely British hero in 1930s China clearly was a huge undertaking on Chinese locations and backlots, but director Roger Spottiswoode only occasionally achieves the historical sweep and intimate romance for which he strives. The China-Australia-Germany production finally is more admirable than affecting. Despite its big-screen beauty, this Art House entry is not destined to carve out an epic profile at the boxoffice.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is effective, if lacking in heft, in the underwritten role of George Hogg. Seeking adventure, the young British reporter arrives in 1937 Shanghai to cover the Sino-Japanese War and ends up leading 60-odd orphans on an arduous trek to safety. His exploits begin when, after sneaking into Nanjing with a colleague (David Wenham), he witnesses a massacre of civilians by the occupying Japanese and is caught with a camera full of photographic evidence.
In their images of war's devastation, these early scenes bear a timeless poignancy, Zhao Xiaoding's eloquent lens prowling the shadows of production designer Steven Jones-Evans' rubble-strewn streets. But the emotional impact is dulled by mechanical, choppy storytelling. Most audiences might not have an immediate grasp of the period, but the history lessons are all too thinly disguised as dialogue.
Providing some of that helpful background info is Chow Yun Fat, underused as Chen, a West Point-educated engineer who leads a group of Communist rebels and saves Hogg from execution by the Japanese. He also puts him in the care of Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell), an American Red Cross nurse who suggests that the wounded Brit hole up in the remote northwestern village of Huang Shi.
Chen wants Hogg to learn Mandarin so he can be of more help to the cause; Lee wants him to oversee a boys' orphanage. Over a vague passage of time, he does both, in the process falling for the tough but haunted Lee. In Hogg's mission to refurbish the dilapidated orphanage, he finds an ally in an elegant businesswoman (a slim role for Michelle Yeoh). Like most of what transpires onscreen, Hogg's growing bond with the children, even a recalcitrant teen (Guang Li) is suggested rather than felt.
To protect his charges from the advancing Japanese and the Nationalists, who view all boys as potential soldiers, Hogg plans a daring 700-mile journey, and the story regains its footing, and a pulse. But it can't fully recover its dissipated energy.
Too often the script -- credited to James MacManus (whose 1985 Daily Telegraph article on Hogg brought his story to light in the West) and Jane Hawksley -- feels cobbled together from stock moments. Hogg, as written, is too transparent and uncomplicated a hero to inspire much audience involvement; the true emotional anchor is Mitchell's convincingly complex nurse. Her performance and the handsome widescreen camerawork by Zhao ("House of Flying Daggers") are the most potent elements of a less-than-potent mix.
Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, David Wenham, Guang Li. Director: Roger Spottiswoode. Screenwriters: James MacManus, Jane Hawksley. Executive producers: Taylor Thomson, Lillian Birnbaum. Rated R, 125 minutes.
Full of incident but nearly devoid of dramatic tension, "The Children of Huang Shi" is a based-on-fact saga that has lost much of its power on the long road to the screen.
The story of an unlikely British hero in 1930s China clearly was a huge undertaking on Chinese locations and backlots, but director Roger Spottiswoode only occasionally achieves the historical sweep and intimate romance for which he strives. The China-Australia-Germany production finally is more admirable than affecting. Despite its big-screen beauty, this Art House entry is not destined to carve out an epic profile at the boxoffice.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers is effective, if lacking in heft, in the underwritten role of George Hogg. Seeking adventure, the young British reporter arrives in 1937 Shanghai to cover the Sino-Japanese War and ends up leading 60-odd orphans on an arduous trek to safety. His exploits begin when, after sneaking into Nanjing with a colleague (David Wenham), he witnesses a massacre of civilians by the occupying Japanese and is caught with a camera full of photographic evidence.
In their images of war's devastation, these early scenes bear a timeless poignancy, Zhao Xiaoding's eloquent lens prowling the shadows of production designer Steven Jones-Evans' rubble-strewn streets. But the emotional impact is dulled by mechanical, choppy storytelling. Most audiences might not have an immediate grasp of the period, but the history lessons are all too thinly disguised as dialogue.
Providing some of that helpful background info is Chow Yun Fat, underused as Chen, a West Point-educated engineer who leads a group of Communist rebels and saves Hogg from execution by the Japanese. He also puts him in the care of Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell), an American Red Cross nurse who suggests that the wounded Brit hole up in the remote northwestern village of Huang Shi.
Chen wants Hogg to learn Mandarin so he can be of more help to the cause; Lee wants him to oversee a boys' orphanage. Over a vague passage of time, he does both, in the process falling for the tough but haunted Lee. In Hogg's mission to refurbish the dilapidated orphanage, he finds an ally in an elegant businesswoman (a slim role for Michelle Yeoh). Like most of what transpires onscreen, Hogg's growing bond with the children, even a recalcitrant teen (Guang Li) is suggested rather than felt.
To protect his charges from the advancing Japanese and the Nationalists, who view all boys as potential soldiers, Hogg plans a daring 700-mile journey, and the story regains its footing, and a pulse. But it can't fully recover its dissipated energy.
Too often the script -- credited to James MacManus (whose 1985 Daily Telegraph article on Hogg brought his story to light in the West) and Jane Hawksley -- feels cobbled together from stock moments. Hogg, as written, is too transparent and uncomplicated a hero to inspire much audience involvement; the true emotional anchor is Mitchell's convincingly complex nurse. Her performance and the handsome widescreen camerawork by Zhao ("House of Flying Daggers") are the most potent elements of a less-than-potent mix.
Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun Fat, Michelle Yeoh, David Wenham, Guang Li. Director: Roger Spottiswoode. Screenwriters: James MacManus, Jane Hawksley. Executive producers: Taylor Thomson, Lillian Birnbaum. Rated R, 125 minutes.
- 5/22/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A deserved hit with film festival audiences, "Central Station" takes potentially predictable subject matter -- a lonely older woman and a young boy, who has just lost his mother, search for the father he never knew -- and infuses it with a jolt of bracing originality and quiet power.
Yes, the reluctant odd couple will ultimately form a bond in spite of themselves. Yes, each will ultimately have a profound influence on the other. But impressive filmmaker Walter Salles ("Foreign Land"), working from an original concept richly fleshed out by first-time screenwriters Joao Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein, displays both a visual virtuosity and a tremendous rapport with his two remarkable leads.
Destined to be nominated for the foreign-language film Oscar, the Arthur Cohn production could also generate considerable traffic beyond the usual art house destinations.
Respected Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro puts in a masterful, fearless performance as the world-weary Dora, a lonely, cynical, far-from-pleasant former schoolteacher who meets rent for her depressing little flat by writing letters dictated by commuters who pass through Rio de Janeiro's Central Station.
But rather than mailing those letters, Dora takes them home and has fun reading them to her neighbor, Irene (Marilia Pera), before either ripping them up or stuffing them into a drawer.
Nice person.
One of those would-be correspondents -- a woman with a 9-year-old boy who just dictated a note to her son's long-absent father -- is killed by a bus, leaving the child, Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) to fend for himself in the busy terminal.
Ultimately, after a couple of bad starts (at one juncture Dora "sells" Josue to a shady adoption racket, using some of her cash to buy a new remote-control TV), the stubborn twosome hit the road in search of the Josue's dad, with Dora ending up finding some long-lost feelings along the way.
Montenegro, who won the Silver Bear for best actress at this year's Berlin Film Festival for her warts-and-all performance, never stoops to caricature in her portrayal of a hardened woman who spent a good chunk of her adult life in self-imposed emotional exile.
Equally impressive is her traveling companion, de Oliveira, a former Rio airport shoeshine boy who never acted prior to his demanding, extraordinarily focused and moving work here.
Not only does Salles coax greatness from his leads, he also directs with a stirring visual sense. Working in tandem with director of photography Walter Carvalho, Salles deftly choreographs sequence after sequence -- Josue attempting to run after a departing train, Dora looking for Josue in the midst of a massive, candle-lit religious service -- that vividly underscore the film's themes of alienation and misplaced identity.
CENTRAL STATION
Sony Pictures Classics
An Arthur Cohn production
A film by Walter Salles
Director: Walter Salles
Producers: Arthur Cohn, Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre
Executive producers: Elisa Tolomelli, Lillian Birnbaum, Donald Ranvaud
Screenwriters: Joao Emanuel Carneiro, Marcos Bernstein
Based on an original idea by Walter Salles
Director of photography: Walter Carvalho
Production designers: Cassio Amarante, Carla Caffe
Editors: Isabelle Rathery, Felipe Lacerda
Costume designer: Cristina Camargo
Music: Antonio Pinto, Jaques Morelembaum
Color/stereo
Cast:
Dora: Fernanda Montenegro
Irene: Marilia Pera
Josue: Vinicius de Oliveira
Ana: Soia Lira
Cesar: Othon Bastos
Pedrao: Otavio Augusto
Isaias: Matheus Nachtergaele
Moises: Caio Junqueira
Running time -- 115 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Yes, the reluctant odd couple will ultimately form a bond in spite of themselves. Yes, each will ultimately have a profound influence on the other. But impressive filmmaker Walter Salles ("Foreign Land"), working from an original concept richly fleshed out by first-time screenwriters Joao Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein, displays both a visual virtuosity and a tremendous rapport with his two remarkable leads.
Destined to be nominated for the foreign-language film Oscar, the Arthur Cohn production could also generate considerable traffic beyond the usual art house destinations.
Respected Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro puts in a masterful, fearless performance as the world-weary Dora, a lonely, cynical, far-from-pleasant former schoolteacher who meets rent for her depressing little flat by writing letters dictated by commuters who pass through Rio de Janeiro's Central Station.
But rather than mailing those letters, Dora takes them home and has fun reading them to her neighbor, Irene (Marilia Pera), before either ripping them up or stuffing them into a drawer.
Nice person.
One of those would-be correspondents -- a woman with a 9-year-old boy who just dictated a note to her son's long-absent father -- is killed by a bus, leaving the child, Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) to fend for himself in the busy terminal.
Ultimately, after a couple of bad starts (at one juncture Dora "sells" Josue to a shady adoption racket, using some of her cash to buy a new remote-control TV), the stubborn twosome hit the road in search of the Josue's dad, with Dora ending up finding some long-lost feelings along the way.
Montenegro, who won the Silver Bear for best actress at this year's Berlin Film Festival for her warts-and-all performance, never stoops to caricature in her portrayal of a hardened woman who spent a good chunk of her adult life in self-imposed emotional exile.
Equally impressive is her traveling companion, de Oliveira, a former Rio airport shoeshine boy who never acted prior to his demanding, extraordinarily focused and moving work here.
Not only does Salles coax greatness from his leads, he also directs with a stirring visual sense. Working in tandem with director of photography Walter Carvalho, Salles deftly choreographs sequence after sequence -- Josue attempting to run after a departing train, Dora looking for Josue in the midst of a massive, candle-lit religious service -- that vividly underscore the film's themes of alienation and misplaced identity.
CENTRAL STATION
Sony Pictures Classics
An Arthur Cohn production
A film by Walter Salles
Director: Walter Salles
Producers: Arthur Cohn, Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre
Executive producers: Elisa Tolomelli, Lillian Birnbaum, Donald Ranvaud
Screenwriters: Joao Emanuel Carneiro, Marcos Bernstein
Based on an original idea by Walter Salles
Director of photography: Walter Carvalho
Production designers: Cassio Amarante, Carla Caffe
Editors: Isabelle Rathery, Felipe Lacerda
Costume designer: Cristina Camargo
Music: Antonio Pinto, Jaques Morelembaum
Color/stereo
Cast:
Dora: Fernanda Montenegro
Irene: Marilia Pera
Josue: Vinicius de Oliveira
Ana: Soia Lira
Cesar: Othon Bastos
Pedrao: Otavio Augusto
Isaias: Matheus Nachtergaele
Moises: Caio Junqueira
Running time -- 115 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 11/18/1998
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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