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Drummer (The)
R1 - America - Film Movement Review written by and copyright: Ethan Stevenson (11th March 2010). |
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The Film
 For those who don’t know, the Film Movement Series is a DVD of the Month Club that specializes in bringing award winning, foreign, “festival” type films to home video. Usually their choices are a little obscure, almost definitely “artsy” and generally too outside the norm to see regular (widespread) distribution in the States. “The Drummer” (also known as “Zhan. gu”) is one of the latest releases from the Film Movement people, but unlike, say, Shane Meadows’ “Somers Town” (2008) which just by being in black-and-white and running little over an hour in length slips outside the box enough to be understandably part of the collection, I find the inclusion of Kenneth Bi’s film to be a bit of a puzzler. In fact, the picture, which really is little more than a tale of gangster types, set in Hong Kong and Taiwan, is (aside from it’s subtitles) pretty mainstream and has genuine marketability. It’s the type of foreign film that I could see Mark Cuban releasing in the States under his Magnolia Pictures or Magnet banners, and not something that necessarily belongs in the Film Movement stable. Sid (Jaycee Chan) is a stubborn, stuck-up brat. At twenty years old he still hasn’t quite matured, and does whatever he wants, no matter the consciences. He thinks (too) highly of himself and walks all over people. Of course, none of this is exactly out of character for someone whose father is one of the biggest crime bosses in all of Hong Kong. When he ends up sleeping, and getting caught, with the wrong woman (Hei-Yi Cheng), the lover of a local “businessman” named Stepthen Ma (Kenneth Tsang) – one of the few people in the city who has more influence and power than Sid’s father… well, let’s just say that Ma is displeased. Given the choice of chopping off his son’s hands or–nope that’s it, Kwan (Tony Leung Ka Fai) agrees to do the deed. After all, he’d rather see Sid maimed, but alive, than to fall to any of the other non-options given to him. Kwan, like any good gangster-father actually doesn’t do what he was going to and instead sends Sid off to Taiwan with his uncle (Roy Cheung), and only pretends to have chopped off his offending offspring’s hand-parts, passing off some random thugs meat appendages as proof to Ma that he did what he was asked. In Taiwan Sid discovers a monastic drum group. Instead of sitting around bored out of his mind, or in the back of a classroom learning self-help methods of bettering one’s condition like his uncle, the young troublemaker asks to join the troupe, but is quickly brushed aside. He insists and haughtily auditions right then and there, thinking himself too good to be turned down. Sid bombs the impromptu tryout but is taken in on a trial basis, because he shows some promise according to an elder. The Masters, Sifu (Chin-chun Huang) and Lan Jie (Ruo-yu Liu), teach Sid patience, spiritual awareness, and the art of “drumming without drumming.” It’s here at this mountain top camp for the Zen drummers that the film feels special. Set against strong, breathtaking visuals and a naturally beautiful countryside, the films deeper message about growing up, righting past wrong, developing a powerful conscience and the realization that family can more than just those related to you through blood, is a little more poignant than the previous gangster-origins suggested. Kenneth Bi’s direction, shooting mostly in a vérité style, is solid and gives the film a realistic, intriguing truth to the whole experience. Jaycee Chan, son of world famous movie star Jackie Chan, hasn’t made too much of a cinematic impact in the US, but on the Hong Kong scene he is apparently quite a star. He gives a great performance, channeling both an angsty, rude and careless youth in the early scenes, and a seasoned Zen master towards the finale. The rhythmic, hypnotic drum choreography, performed by the real U Theatre Zen Drummers (who’s members play themselves in many roles) is a sight to behold. Truly the middle of the film is a masterpiece. But, “The Drummer” is too wildly inconsistent in its tone, delivery, message and cinematic identity for me to bestow great praise on it without hesitation. The film doesn’t know if it wants to be a gangster film, philosophical message picture, or a drama about the truth of family and life. One minute it’s a gritty look at the Hong Kong mafia, then it’s a family quibble and a dialogue on domestic abuse, next it’s off to Taiwan, waxing metaphysical theory, and then back to gunning people down in alley’s. It’s borderline schizophrenic, and definitely troubling. I don’t think the script does a bad job of juggling the differences; it’s just that the seedy crime aspect is so commercial and ordinary. It weakens the film and I must say the final twist, and death of a key character in the last fifteen minutes seems so contrived and utterly pointless that I have to wonder why it was included at all. The answer is obvious, because it’s the sort of thing that people want to see in a crime-drama… but why does “The Drummer” need to be a crime-drama at all? Had the film ended fifteen minutes sooner, which would still have left the runtime clocking in at a more than acceptable hundred or so minutes, I wouldn’t have felt cheated in the slightest. In fact, the movie might have taken on a stronger tone. In the end, I feel that “The Drummer” is only a halfway exceptional film; part of it is wonderful, the other part is disappointingly ordinary.
Video
“The Drummer” arrives to DVD with a relatively attractive 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, opened up slightly from the original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1. The difference in composition is nil; image loss (or gained) would be less than the amount of cropping one is bound to find with the average type of overscan. Shot on a mix of 35mm film, using Arri cameras, and HD video, “The Drummer” was passed through a digital intermediate, color graded and finally output back to film for theatrical exhibition and transfer to home video. Film grain is finely rendered, detail is strong, and colors are crisp and bold. Contrast is natural and bright in daylight scenes, and blacks are deep and pure during night shots. Overall, this is a good-looking standard def disc.
Audio
Unfortunately “The Drummer” is saddled with a plain Cantonese/Mandarin Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix (48kHz/224kbps). I say unfortunately because the drum-heavy musically influenced soundtrack could have greatly benefited from dedicated LFE, and gunfire and the more action-oriented material would have been perfectly at home in a pair of rear speakers. As it is, this is still a reasonably strong track with clean dynamics and solid separations between layers in the mix. However, of all the films I’ve watched from Film Movement I think “The Drummer” is the one I’m most disappointed in for being available only in stereo. Optional English subtitles are included.
Extras
“The Drummer” actually has a little more to offer in the supplements department compared to most other discs in the Film Movement series. Yes, there’s the standard selection of trailers, the monthly short film and a handful of text based features (i.e. bios of the cast and crew) but the DVD has a little more than the usual. Also included is an intriguing 25-minute making-of featurette. Seven text-based biographies are included for the films main cast and director: - Kenneth Bi (Writer/Director) - Jaycee Chan (Sid) - Tony Leung Ka Fai (Kwan); 2 pages. - Lee Sinje AKA Angelica Lee (Hong Dou) - Roy Cheung (Ah Chiu) - Josie Ho (Sina) - U Theatre Zen Drummers; 3 pages. “The Drummer” theatrical trailer; runs 2 minutes 11 seconds, in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. Well this is a surprise. Unlike many other Film Movement DVD's we actually get a behind-the-scenes look via “The Making of ‘The Drummer’”, a rather in-depth featurette that looks at the origins and production of the film. Director Kenneth Bi, actor Jaycee Chan, and many others discuss the project, accompanied by extensive B-roll footage and later-recorded interviews. Bi talks about how he originally wrote the lead as a 30-something, but realized in late pre-production that the character’s story was too boring because he was too old for the transformation to be meaningful. The only downside to this otherwise interesting piece is that there’s an awful lot of plot recap (or spoilers if you like to do things backward and watched the making of first) and the overall aesthetic is generally EPK-ish. But, I don’t discount the amount of insight that a video package like this is able to provide compared to text-based extras. 23 minutes 9 seconds, in 4x3 full-frame. “Also Available from Film Movement” is a simple page of text that lists all of the series’ Year Seven films up until July’s “The Drummer”, including Bohdan Slâma’s “The Country Teacher” and Fernando Eimbcke’s “Lake Tahoe.” This month’s short film, titled “Love and War” (2006) was written and directed by Fredrik Emilson of Sweden. It’s the standard tale of a woman falling in love with a man, only for their love to be interrupted by total war. The woman, a nurse, longs for and worries about her sweetie, a fighter pilot in the heat of battle. Oh yeah, it’s also stop motion, with animal puppets in place of humans and, wait for it, it’s an opera – yep, you read that right. 14 minutes 26 seconds of pure delirium, in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with English/Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo (48kbps/224kbps) audio and forced English subtitles. “About Film Movement” includes a short text-based description of the DVD series and features a short trailer advertising the company. The self-explanatory “Trailers from the Film Movement Catalogue” rounds off the bonus material found on this DVD. Bonus trailers include: - "Film Movement" spot which runs for 30 seconds. - “The Window” which runs for 1 minute 21 seconds. - “Munyurangabo” which runs for 3 minutes 22 seconds.
Packaging
A clear plastic amaray case houses a single disc. The interior of the case also includes two short essays – one from the filmmaker and one from the disc publisher. “The Drummer” is film seven of year seven.
Overall
“The Drummer” certainly wasn’t the film I expected going into it, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In the end I’d say it was a decent movie, but not a great one. Film Movement’s DVD is a mixed bag with exceptional-for-standard-def video, passable but disappointing audio and some interesting but too few extras.
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