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+---- Thread: Project Gutenberg (2018) by Felix Chong (/showthread.php?tid=6764)
Project Gutenberg (2018) by Felix Chong - cranefly - 01-09-2022
(seen on Kanopy)
Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) is an artist. Yuen Man (Zhang Jingchu) is an artist. They are lovers. But while Yuen Man is the new creative darling of the art world, Lee Man is dismissed as a mere copier, as everything he does is derivative of other artists.
But Lee Man catches the eye of a stylish gangster known as the Painter (Choy Yun-Fat) who runs a big counterfeiting syndicate. The Painter greatly appreciates Lee Man's abilities and recruits him to copy new high-denomination U.S. bills claimed to be counterfeit-proof.
Lee Man likes the pay but is disturbed by the Painter's ruthless ways. He also continues to pine for his former girlfriend, Yuen Man, who is soon to marry another.
That's the main thrust.
This movie gets high ratings on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes and cleaned up at the Hong Kong film awards. But I found it rather disorienting. Both Aaron Kwok and Choy Yun-fat play against type. Kwok is bespectacled and ever-cowering, a far cry from the Monkey King he is most famous for playing. I kept wanting him to bust out some moves, but he never does. As for Choy Yun-fat, he is villainous here, and while that shouldn't prevent him from elevating the role with his usual charisma, somehow it just doesn't happen. Part of the problem is that he plays an athletic young man. In CTHD he looked middle-aged (with a roundish face), because he was. But here he looks so much younger, with black hair and a slimmed-down figure and face. "Was this really made in 2018?" I kept asking myself. Well, yep. And Choy Yun-fat is 63 here. I suspect he had on more foundation and mascara than a Viking.
The movie is disorienting in another way. It's just so bloody complicated. So many twists and turns, mistaken identities, and what-not <SPOILER ALERT!>not to mention an unreliable narrator<END SPOILER ALERT!> that distract you from the core drama. But it is really good at showing the complexity of counterfeiting, and how counterfeiters are often better off robbing the paper, or especially the ink, used for the bills rather than trying to duplicate them.
Hesitant to recommend. But everyone else seems to laud it.
RE: Project Gutenberg (2018) by Felix Chong - Drunk Monk - 01-09-2022
This has been in my queue like forever (well, since before the pandemic and that feels like forever now). I remember it received a lot of good buzz when it came out, but it strikes me as one of those films you just gotta be in the right mood for to enjoy.