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History’s Subtle Shadows
Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Puppet Master
By Peggy Chiao Hsiung-ping

In an interview punctuated with her comments and analysis, Peggy Chiao points out that Hou’s works make up a cultural history of Taiwan of the kind not found in history books.

What made you think of making a film about Li Tien-luk?
When I was making Dust in the Wind someone recommended him to me. We worked well together; his role in that film was quite a substantial one. After that I used him in all my films. He is my good friend, my ‘Ah Kong’ (an affectionate term meaning ‘Grandfather’). He is every bit a traditionalist. His whole life cannot be divorced from xiqu (a Chinese term to denote performing arts in the traditional theatre, usually referring to opera). He is not a self-conscious artist, someone who can reorganized and change traditional drama to fit modern tastes. In fact, he completely accepts tradition. He preserves the values of traditional drama within himself. What do we mean by the values of traditional drama? It is the value system of Chinese philosophy that has evolved from the three pillars of Chinese thinking - Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Through forms such as Peking Opera, regional operas and puppetry, these values have been disseminated to the people and integrated into their daily lives. I feel that Chinese tradition encompasses a beauty which I have always wanted to explore - something spiritual and dream-like; we can perceive these qualities in Li Tien-luk,. He embodies values such as filial piety, loyalty and frugality; he shows how the Chinese people express their emotions. Li’s life experience is a rich source of material for a film, but if I were to make a documentary about him, it would take up too much time. That’s why I decided to make a fiction film.

Your films have consistently dealt with aspects of Taiwan’s history and lifestyle. Is it a conscious decision or something that came about by chance?
I have lived in Taiwan for over forty years, but only when I made A City of Sadness did I begin to learn about Taiwan’s history. I read a lot of books on Taiwan, delving consciously into its history. Making a movie is a process of learning about history, people and life itself. The Puppet Master is a report card of my learning process. It also forms the first part of my projected “Taiwan Trilogy”, covering the period from Taiwan under Japanese occupation to Japan’s surrender. The second part - from the Japanese surrender to the ‘2.28 Incident’ (the massacre of Taiwanese by government troops on February 28th, 1947) - is A City of Sadness which, of course, I have already made. The third film, Once Upon a Time There Was a Man Called Urashima Taro, will deal with the present and will tell the story of a political prisoner, incarcerated in the aftermath of the 2.28 Incident, and released only after the lifting of martial law in the 80s. The society that he faces is materialistic and totally alien to him. He is like Urashima Taro, a mythic character from a Japanese legend, a fisherman who rescues a sea turtle and is rewarded by the Dragon King for his deed. The king invites Urashima to spend a day in his Dragon palace, which actually represents a cycle of sixty years on earth. When the fisherman returns to his village, he cannot recognize it any more. This is the Japanese fable I use to describe the feelings of my character.

I had always wanted to film Li Tien-luk as a subject because I feel that he is like a living encyclopaedia of Chinese tradition. In filming him, it is as if I am flicking through the pages of this encyclopaedia. He is different from our generation, has none of the modern penchant for rationalization, none of our setbacks or negative qualities, or our pain. People from that age would tackle problems with flexibility but from a strong principled position. Life and death and social relationships to them are straightforward propositions. Simply put, I see in Li Tien-luk the ardent self-confidence of the Chinese and their generosity of heart. In modern Taiwan, these qualities have all but vanished. Ever since the end of the Ching era, the Chinese people have completely lost their sense of national self-confidence. The May 4th Movement exerted some good influence, but it also made a fetish of the West and created an attitude that rejected tradition.

Taiwan has inherited a legacy of influences from Japanese culture - we had 50 years of existence as a Japanese colony after all. During the Korean War, we drew closer to America and imbibed its culture and influence. I feel our generation has a responsibility to conserve the beauty of our own traditions, and to disseminate them using he tools of our age and from our own perspective. In this way, the best and most worthwhile of our traditions will be passed on to the next generation.

The works of Hou Hsiao-hsien make up a cultural history of Taiwan. This might not have been apparent in the past, but it is now a clearly established fact. His trilogy on Taiwan’s history comprises The Puppetmaster, which is set in the period of the Japanese colonial occupation; A City of Sadness, which deals with the early period of Taiwan’s restoration of Chinese rule and the ‘2.23 Incident’; and lastly, Once Upon a Time There Was a Man Called Urashima Taro, which deals with a political prisoner, incarcerated as a result of the ‘2.28 Incident’, who is released after the lifting of martial law in 1987 into a city that is now alien to him - modern Taipei. The forty-year period between the ‘2.28 Incident’ and 1987 is covered by Hou’s previous films (in the chronological order of the periods in which the stories are set): The Time to Live and the Time to Die; Dust in the Wind; The Boys From Fengkuei; A Summer at Grandpa’s; and Daughter of the Nile. The stories and events depicted in these films constitute Taiwan’s development in the forty years that the political prisoner was in jail. However, films are films and not history books. Hence, there is no haggling over veracity, no attempt to be classically faithful; there would inevitably be changes and embellishments in the period and events depicted. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s starting point is humanity. It is clear that Hou hopes to see everything from the angle of a human being, to explore the lifestyles of different people. In contrasting the two films which have been realized in the trilogy, A City of Sadness is focused on the family while The Puppetmaster is focused on the individual. The former film takes place against a sensitive political background (the 2.28 Incident). In such a setting, Hou looks at the situations faced by different sectors of Taiwanese society - its intellectuals, its lowly and disreputable citizens, its housewives. The Puppetmaster covers a time span of over 30 years and describes a lifestyle that is very much related to ordinary people during the period of Japanese colonial occupation. Apart from the Japanese surrender, the film does not depict any other earthshaking events.

What is the relevance of making a film about ordinary people and their lives? What is so special about Li Tien-luk that Hou chose to make a film about him? The common theme that relates to both questions can be summarized in one word: China (readers are asked not to regard the word ‘China’ from a political viewpoint). That history is relevant to the modern age is completely due to its links with present society. If we were to say that Hou’s reason for making A City of Sadness was to restore a sense of dignity for the Taiwanese and to show how they maintained their strength in the face of adversity, then The Puppetmaster is Hou’s quest for old China, old traditions in the person of an old performing artist. Hou is searching for the value system embedded in the Chinese and their way of life.

To put it simply, Hou is going against the grain of our materialistic times when money means everything, to sing the praises of the old and to foster an attitude of a lifestyle reduced to its purest essence. He could be likened to Don Quixote, lifting the standard of traditional culture, charging against the windmills of the social-industrial complex, and challenging the values of rampant Westernization. This is the message which lies hidden in The Puppetmaster, and one that sheds an important light on the life of Li Tien-luk. In the first half of his life, we see that Li is nothing more than an ordinary bloke leading a mundane life (it was only in the last ten years that he was recognized as a ‘national treasure’). He transcends nationality, locality and ideology. We see in has life the model of a lifestyle which has prevailed among ordinary people for thousands of years.

Why did you adopt the method of having Li Tien-luk speak directly to the camera?
Li Tien-luk has been performing all his life. He is proficient in Peking Opera, puppetry and other forms of drama. If he didn’t speak for himself, the film wouldn’t be interesting. We recorded his life story fist, arranging the details as a screenplay. Then we started to shoot the script, but I also asked Li to talk about himself. This process proved to be very interesting: what he said was invariably different from what I had in mind - from what I wanted to shoot. There was a kind of dichotomy. Ah Kong’s memory is very good but he tended to ramble on so that in a ten-minute reel of film, or a thousand feet of footage, he still wouldn’t get to the point. I have used perhaps about one-third of his monologue.

Hence, the film has really three points of view - one is that of Li Tien-luk, second is my own perspective about Chinese drama, and the third is the inserted footage of performances and theatre, including Peking Opera, musical skits, puppetry and propaganda plays written for the Japanese. They are a direct representation of Chinese tradition and its values. I am very happy with the process because I am still developing, and I still want to show my thoughts about traditional Chinese society. My focal point is becoming clearer. I am increasingly aware that what I am searching for is an attitude or a certain lifestyle of a Chinese, and I am greatly moved by this. Previously I couldn’t understand the Chinese classics, but now when I read something like Liaozhai Zhiyi (translated into English as ‘Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio’), I am engrossed. And that’s because from Li Tien-luk, I understand how the Chinese have lived all these thousands of years.

If Andre Bazin were still alive today, he might have been pleasantly shocked by the realist strength of The Puppetmaster. The film has easily opened up new ground lying in the zone between the documentary and the fiction film. It is not a pure documentary film, nor is it a pure fiction film. It shows the first half of Li Tien-luk’s own monologue spoken directly to the camera; Hou’s own representations of Li’s life; and performances that show Li’s art (including Peking Opera, musical skits, puppetry and propaganda plays performed for the Japanese). The three perspectives are complementary; sometimes there is a connection, at other times they are mutually exclusive, even contradictory. The repetition and comparison of the three perspectives are really an artistic, ‘fictional’ intervention. It outlines the inherent cinematic nature of The Puppet Master which, like A City of Sadness, springs forth to the foreground. Life is drama, drama is life. Each event and episode I recreated through the image; the narration utilized different texts to reconstruct the existence of real people. Its dynamics and uncertain precision cause people to consider the corresponding relationships.

Such a forward-looking artistic conceit is also an extreme form of respecting the objectivity of the documentary. It does not prejudice itself with any ideological position. On the contrary, it subscribes to an objective text that is reminiscent of the style of writer Shen Tsung-wen, calmly leafing through fragile reminiscences which may soon vanish like smoke.

How did you condense Li Tien-luk’s many life experiences into a movie? We have noticed how economical you have become.
The film is two hours and twenty-two minutes long, but the background spans a period of more than thirty years. My production method was carried out in three stages. The first stage was the scripting in which I made everything clear, including the relationships between my characters. The second stage was to shoot according to actual circumstances because three is no way you can change the surroundings to suit your ideal specifications. There are some things you can’t shoot or which may not be what you had planned. I was in China for three months. During all that time, I refused to look at rushes; I waited until I had wrapped up the shoot and only then did I review everything I had shot. This was a departure from all normal practice. I felt that my material had assumed a life of its own; I let objectivity ‘speak’ to me. I rejected a lot of footage which was not well shot and searched for a new structure with its own logic.

How did a structure come about? I thought about it and finally found an answer in my own home. At that time, my daughter was going through a rebellious phase. Every morning I awoke to the sound of arguments between my daughter and her mother. On the other hand, I have a friend who has a four-year old daughter who sticks to her mother like glue. Wherever the mother went, there the daughter would be, even in the toilet. Hence, I got to thinking, when she was young, my daughter also went through this stage. Between the ages of four and fourteen, I could extract a section, and omit everything else. Things would still be clear. The problem is that the section you use must be rich and brimming over with material. It’s like a piece of rope which you dip in oil. You only want to use one portion of it but the whole rope must still be soaked. This is what is meant by “the part showing the whole”. This type of structure is like our ancient Chinese theatre. It simply gives you a scene without much of a clear narrative, unlike Western drama where all the elements must be put in place. Ellipsis and other indirect narrative methods are, ironically, more clear-cut and to the point. It all depends on how you master these methods.

In this, I have been influenced by Godard’s Breathless, by his free-style structure and methods. If you get your surrounding right and check the tension, you can jump about freely as on a trampoline. You don’t have to be restrained by the perspective of traditional drama. It was only after I had completed shooting the film that I was totally freed of the restraints of drama, to attain a kind of freedom. This is like a Chinese painter who paints a plum blossom. He doesn’t need to paint the whole tree, just a twig, and it would be enough to leave an impression, not only in terms of its fidelity to the subject but also the feelings it conveys. It asks the viewer to use his own powers of imagination, to join in the pleasures of looking with the artist, and to embark on the process of interpretation.

Making The Puppetmaster was a different process from making A City of Sadness. The latter film is a work of fiction, a work of drama, utilizing symbolism and such like, for example in the delineation of characters into intellectuals, drifters, etc. The Puppet Master is much more accessible, with far fewer characters. It is too complicated to talk about it now but I wanted to impart a dream-like effect, like a wonderland. I hoped to bring my audience to a state of imagination which they could themselves conjure up; to face problems and emotions in a community atmosphere, with a cleansing effect. In the beginning, this structure posed some headaches for my editor, Liao Ch’ing-sung. I told him that his problems were like a cloud hovering above him, once it drifts past, so would his problems. But h insisted on following the rhythm of his work in A City of Sadness. We talked for a long time and I had to wait for two months before he could do what I wanted. My structure allowed for a strange insertion in the middle - it wasn’t entirely a dramatic idea but one based on emotion, something that expressed concern for the Chinese people and a gratitude for life. After two months, Liao proceeded to cut everything smoothly, but we didn’t have time to re-cut what we had done previously.

Did you ever feel anxious about whether or not your audience would accept your structure?
I have always been searching for a particularly Chinese style and method of expressing feelings. The Chinese people have always gone about a tortuous and roundabout route in expressing emotions. Like my wife, for instance. I bought her a watch. Her first reaction was to ask, “How much did it cost?” I replied, forty thousand Taiwanese dollars, and she scolded me, “You’ve gone off your head!” But then, she immediately went to the kitchen and cooked me some nice dishes to eat. This is how the Chinese express emotion. I feel that my movie are very much like me. When I talk or make friends, how much I am accepted depends on them. I got a lot out of making The Puppetmaster, but I am still exploring. In future, I will certainly be able to find a suitable model which the Chinese people will accept. Just as is the case with Chinese theatre which has been around a long time an imparted a set of values. As for the present, I only want to guide my audience into a situation where, hopefully, they can discover themselves and others; that what is shown on the screen may cause them to reflect deeply about human lives.

Almost like an established custom, a new picture by Hou Hsiao-hsien is always greeted with a sense of astonishment. He offers a new set of aesthetics, a new perception of his art and subject, which clash against normal dramatic conventions generally accepted by the audience. Because the audience is not used to it, or has not adjusted itself to the new rhythm and methods of the film, quite a few people will be alienated or lose patience. Reactions to a Hou Hsiao-hsien film are therefore often polarized. The cinematically literate and those among ordinary audiences who have no hang-ups will benefit. It is the middle-class urban intellectuals and theorists fond of looking for literary significance in a cinematic work, who are easily dislocated from their viewpoints and positions.

Hou Hsiao-hsien has almost totally rejected the theories and rules of Western drama which have become established, including the construction of plot, climax, conflict and resolution, and the narrative methods of story-telling. Hou himself has inherited such conventions, elements of which are seen in A City of Sadness, hence the narration, symbolism and allegory make up a complex text filled with manifold meanings. The density of the ‘language’ was quite impressive. However, The Puppetmaster has advanced one step further towards an austere and pure cinema (Western interviewers have likened Hou to Bresson and Straub). Because there is a rich flavor of drama, the problem of Hou’s new aesthetics is difficult to pinpoint, and difficult to describe in words.

For instance, the elliptical economy of its structure is in total contrast to the Western understanding of aesthetics. Invariably, the audience is in a state of confusion in the beginning, not knowing cause and effect. It is only when the narration makes it clear and when Li Tien-luk’s monologue occurs that the audience suddenly recovers its sense of comprehension, and can retrieve the meaning of what had transpire before. As an example, the film’s ending, starting from the sequence of Taiwanese families being evacuated due to American air raids to the sense of a family stricken by the malaria epidemic, illustrates the whole disorienting structure of ellipsis and the method of oral-flashback narration. We first see Ah Luk (played by Lin Chiang) having dinner with his family; suddenly the lights go out as the warning siren sounds. In the next scene a Japanese, Kawakami, is saying farewell to Ah Luk. Next, without any explanation or lead, we see two long shots of Ah Luk and his family carrying their things and walking away. The audience is left in the dark about their reason for leaving. Following this, we see a coffin shop. Momentarily, the voice of Li Tien-luk is heard explaining that his family was evacuated because of enemy air raids. Upon reaching their place of evacuation, they were informed that Japan had surrendered, but since they were unable to buy tickets to get home, they stayed on and fell victim to malaria spreading in the locality.

Such a structure is different from the more concentrated plotting and settings of Western drama. The audience is forced to recapitulate the previous scenes. The whole experience of watching the film is a continuous process of exchange - a communication with the film itself. The burden it imposes is of course something that many audiences would find hard to accept.

There seems to be more reliance on an immobile camera and long takes in The Puppetmaster, more so than in your previous works.
Each place has its own style of expression. I make one movie at a time, and each time the development of my style becomes clearer. There aren’t very many professional actors in Taiwan. When I began making movies, I was fond of getting close friends to act in them. Because they were inexperienced, I had to explain the situations clearly.

I let them use what they were familiar with - their usual habits and gestures - so that they need not ‘act’: for example, having a meal or smoking under the sun, and so forth. In order not to make them nervous, I would deliberately put the camera quite a long distance away and not move it. Hence, I had to find the right angle for every scene so that the camera could take in as much of the incidents and people a I wanted. Because of this decision, I am very respectful of the objective space I am shooting. My focal point has to be clear and concentrated so that my actors could enter a certain state, a certain space. As I go along, I feel that this style is very interesting. In other words, the limitations of original space have given me an even bigger space, and I am much freer for it.

Sometimes my actors would leave the frame, but I still won’t change my shot, hence you get an empty shot on the screen. Here, I am using a concept from Chinese Painting - ‘Liu-pai’ (literally, ‘to leave a whiteness’) which means that even after a character has left the frame, or even when you have an unexplained space outside the frame - though it is empty and imagined - the audience must join together with me to complete the shot.

My long takes have a precision now. When I get to the set, I let the location talk to me. It’s an instinct, a sort of good fortune, rather than the subjective determinism of the creator. When I was in Japan, I had a talk with Kosho Yamada, the sculptor. He and I share the same idea. Before he started to sculpt, he would look at the stone, observe it thoroughly to honor its integrity. After that, he would draw a few sketches of his idea based on the original shape of the stone. Objectivity has a life of its own. The creator must follow objectivity to create and to bring out the inherent beauty which is embedded in objectivity. Therefore, what appears on the surface to be an imperfect industrial practice or a lack of professional standards has become for me a great opportunity - because of this limitation I have gained my freedom.

Your use of light and depth of focus is also very definite. A lot of lights banging from ceilings, and shadowy interiors. The chambers of ancient Chinese houses are endowed with lighting of multi-leveled spaces.
The ceiling lights are a result of conforming with the structures of old Chinese houses in the south. When I was on location in China, I would enter an old house and memories from my childhood about those old houses would come flooding back. The interiors are dark and still; you can sense that it is old and lonely, like an antique. The source of light for such houses comes from the ceiling, or a skylight on the roof. I designed my lighting accordingly hoping to convey a mood of old China, its melancholia, its intimacy an density; its long history and sense of tradition. Behind this ancient tradition is a strong life force, emitting the true characteristics of life. As for light becoming part of the design, that is mainly because I need a focal point. Often in a scene, I would have only one set-up and from there I would compose the scene using the architectural structure of the interior and the available lighting. All sorts of odd, unnecessary things inside that space would be jettisoned.

One of the consistent themes in any discussion of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s works is his use of long takes to bring about a high degree of reality. The concept of reality stems from the urge to respect the objective world. According to the Western perception of reality, the long shot preserves the integrity of objective space and does not let any subjective interference influence its presentation.

According to Hou’s own words, the aesthetics of the long shot comes from the fact that Taiwan lacks a professional environment. However, in the process of making The Puppetmaster, Hou has unconsciously moved towards the traditional aesthetics of China, gradually breaking away from the mainstream of Western perceptions of reality established by Bazin. Hou has once again emphasized his own realist precepts: “o construct shape according to the even, follow the master to endow likeness.”(See the Introduction to Anthology of Classical and Modern Drama by Meng Mu-chu). The emphasis is on the creative artist not counting on his won subjectivity to determine objectivity, but letting objectivity freely unfold.

As for Hou’s economy of style, it is in line with the concept of ‘liu-pai’ in traditional painting. This is illustrated by Hou’s utilization of space, sound and events that assume even more importance outside the frame than inside it. The audience is made to participate and imagine. The method is one where reality and the imagination mutually feed on each other, as in the phrase, “A state is born from outside the image, inside the boundary we see a limitless frontier.”

The composition of space in Hou’s lighting design follows the dictum of Tsung Pai-hua in which space is used to compose and organize the separation, division and connection of a scene. This enlarges the feeling of space in the audience - a feeling that is similar to the aesthetics of a traditional garden.

Hou Hsiao-hsien has probably not read Ts’ung Pai-hua or Meng Mu-chu. We should rather say that his perceptions reflect his own long-held perspectives about the Chinese way of life and its aesthetics; and that through the beneficial influence of Li Tien-luk, he has immersed himself in the realm of Chinese drama and theatre.

In Farewell to My Concubine, Leslie Cheung, who plays a famous Peking Opera star, performs for the Japanese and is spat upon by his partner, played by Chang Feing-yi. Cheung is castigated for not possessing a nationalist consciousness. After the war, Cheung is prosecuted as a traitor and stands trial. In contrast, in The Puppetmaster, Li Tien-luk performs propaganda plays for the Japanese, and isn’t criticized for this. Why is there this difference?
During the anti-Japanese war, China was invaded by the Japanese, hence it would be a serious matter if you became a traitor. However, in Taiwan’s case, it was cede as a territory to Japan. For the fifty years under Japanese rule, you can’t expect the Taiwanese to tighten their belts and not eat, in order to oppose the Japanese. Li Tien-luk is an actor. In the old days in China, his profession was looked down upon. People had to think primarily of survival and making a living. During the Japanese occupation, relations between the Japanese and Taiwanese were actually quite ambiguous. Even today, you still have people waxing nostalgic about the days under Japan! I think Chinese people are very pragmatic, adopting the attitude of “if you are good to me, I’ll be good to you”. What the Japanese built and planned in Taiwan during their fifty years of occupation is quite apparent. Nationalism, when seen through a political frame of mind, probably bears no relationship to the conditions of life at the time. When I make a film, my starting point is humanity. I know ‘Ah Kong’ very well, his character is very like mine, but with less of the burden. He would reject doing propaganda that was asking too much. On the other hand, his character is such that his friends would not exploit him for doing propaganda. The Janpanization of Taiwan was actually carried out step by step. In 1937, they saw that Chinese theatre was disseminating traditional values and concepts of filial piety and loyalty and that it was an indivisible part of Chinese society. So they banned these performances. Luckily for us, their rule lasted only fifty years. If it had lasted longer, who can say what would have happened? However, I think for the past forty years, Taiwan has been affected to a far greater extent by Western culture. Today, we have to add Hong Kong culture too. Our generation is almost wholly affected by Western culture (or American culture). That’s why, with a sense of urgency, I am exploring the values of traditional culture which we have lost, particularly at this juncture of our existence in an inflated materialist and technological age. We have distanced ourselves from nature and man has become like a puppet - he has lost his power to be his own master. It’s so different from the simplicity of Li Tien-luk’s time when to survive meant living in harmony with nature.

The New Taiwan Cinema has been taking shape over the past ten years. As one of its most important representatives, can you tell us what is the significance of The Puppetmaster? Also, can you comment on the recent rise of Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese films on the international stage?
The wave ebbs and flows. There are only a few of us left in the present New Taiwan Cinema who are still making films. Over the last ten years, new and younger directors were constrained by us. They are beginning to find their own creative space. The Puppetmaster is only one process in my creativity. It represents the lament which I feel for the loss of our culture.

Why is it that over the past ten years, international audiences have sat up and taken note of Chinese cinema? The most important reason is that the atmosphere has changed in Taiwan and China. In Taiwan, martial law was lifted in 1987. Our minds were opened and local consciousness got a big lift. It was the same in China, but to a different degree. The economic boom brought along some political changes. It’s like spring has come and a hundred flowers can’t but bloom. If you have been shut up for a long period, you can’t help bursting out with your feelings, and using different media, like the movies, to do so. You are like a newborn baby, full of energy and vitality. I believe that in the next ten years, the Asian region - with China as its center - will become a vital source of new cinematic developments that will rival Hollywood.

Translated from the original Chinese by Stephen Teo

Note: The passages in italics are comments by the interviewer.

From Cinemaya 21/1993, p.4-11