new vid - "Red Cliff" - movie vid
Red Cliff
Fandom: Red Cliff (John Woo 2008/2009)
Song/Artist: State of Divinity theme song by Richie Ren
Duration: 3:05 minutes
Summary: Introduction to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Spoilers: whole film (both films in Chinese release)
Premiered at vividcon 2009 Challenge show (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations).
Click to view沧海笑 滔滔两岸潮
Laughter at the sea, with rolling waves on both banks
浮沉随浪记今朝
I follow the waves whether sinking or floating, and I remember today
苍天笑 纷纷世上潮
The skies laugh at the ups and downs of the world
谁负谁胜出天知晓
Only the sky knows who loses and who wins out in the end
江山笑 烟雨遥
Rivers and mountains laugh, smoke and rain are faraway
涛浪淘尽红尘俗事知多少
After the waves cease, how much does one know about mundane life on this red earth
清风笑 竟惹寂寥
The breeze laughs, somehow making me melancholy
豪情还剩 一襟晚照
My heroic feelings remain with the evening sun on my robes
苍生笑 不再寂寥
The world laughs, no longer melancholy
豪情仍在痴痴笑笑
My heroic feelings remain, and I laugh in a daze
Forgive the shitty translation. The writing style is reasonably classic, which made it appropriate for the source but also made it a bitch to translate. A degree of artistic licence was used.
The song is <<沧海一声笑>> One Laugh at the Sea(?) by 任贤齐 Richie Ren, the theme to one particular TV adaptation of well-known wuxia novel <<笑傲江湖>>, often literally translated as Laughing Proud Warrior. As both translations seem to verge on the ridiculous, I have opted to use a lesser-known translation, State of Divinity.
Warning: rambling ahead. While I obviously can't speak for all Chinese people, the opinions expressed here just feel fundamentally true for me. I'm very interested in hearing whether this inordinate visceral love of Three Kingdoms also the case for other people with Chinese heritage.
The Battle of Red Cliff is a significant event in the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history. People and events from this tumultuous period of time have been immortalised in the semi-fictional novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
The key thing to understand about stories from the Three Kingdoms era is that it is to the Chinese consciousness what King Arthur or Robin Hood or possibly even the Bible is to the western consciousness. It doesn’t matter whether you’re well versed in it or how much you believe it; what matters is that you were born into these stories, you were raised with them, and they are so steeped into your psyche that most of the time you’re not even aware of how deeply you resonate with these stories on a fundamental level.
Without that starting point, it’s hard to explain what the Battle of Red Cliff represents (to me, at the very least). However embellished and partisan, it is history rather than pure fiction, and it is very deeply rooted history to boot. For me, this is an incredibly crucial point that sets this film apart from the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hero, House of Flying Daggers etc. This wasn't a particularly great film, but it pushes some incredibly specific cultural buttons. Cultural and historical context might not be everything for this film/vid, but it sure accounts for a lot. Based on that, I had much thinkies about both the good elements and the inherent limitations of the notion of IDIC, but I sound too much like a dick putting it all down in writing, so take from that what you will.
By the by, I think I'm going to a special Chinese hell for shipping Zhu-Ge Liang and Zhou Yu, least of which because the former managed to literally frustrate the latter to death only a little later in the novel. (In a completely non-sexual way, alas.)
Three Kingdoms eventually ends with the victory of the antagonists while all the characters that we love die in deep sorrow and regret. That's why I never really got into the story when I was younger. But watching this film, I've come to realise that Three Kingdoms is not about the ending. It's about the glory and passion and sheer joy in the heyday of our heroes, their figures still towering over us today and immediately recognisable in the mind of every Chinese person. That sense of unbridled joy was the key thing that I wanted to convey with this vid.
To add to the joy, have a mini Takeshi Kaneshiro picspam. I'm often fannish about characters and very rarely fannish about celebrities, but one look at that face and I'm a swooning 16 year old schoolgirl again.
