Viewed long ago and reviewed only now (part 7) There are almost no failures in Zhang Yimou’s filmography, the only one of them is the unsuccessful remake of the Coen brothers’ film “Just Blood”, a masterpiece tragicomic thriller, which was impossible to beat in principle (another failure is the very curious “Great Wall” with Matt Damon, about which there is nothing to say). However, Imou does not try to do this, working in the vulgar register of Asian comedies with exaggerated acting (which, however, did not cut his eyes in his good films “Happiness for an hour” and “Keep calm”) in the spirit of Kitano’s crafts “Kikujiro”, Virviglaz coloristic, illogical for Chinese cinema plot moves. “A Simple Noodle Story” is really a hack, which is all the more inexcusable because its author “Live” and “Light the Red Lantern” filmed it.
The only truly spectacular scene is the preparation of noodles, which required acrobatics, plasticity and dance skills from the actors. Years later, only she is remembered, everything else is completely forgotten, including the twists and turns of the plot. It must be admitted that flirting with genres has never distinguished high-quality cinema of the same Imou and Kaige, it has always been purely dramatic, even tragic, showed historical cataclysms, human destinies against their background, has always been epic in the best sense of the word. Against their background, “The Simple Story of Noodles” looks not just a hack, but a postmodern parody of the Coen film, which is itself a parody.
Thus, before us is the seventh water on quichela, a parody of parody, all the more unfortunate that the excessiveness of emotions, illogicality and pictorial kitsch in it goes off the scale. It is hard to believe that Imou himself, a master of cinematic proportions, plot elegance and visual sophistication, shot this picture in which the sense of taste is completely absent. One can, of course, assume that he shot it, like many of his other paintings, for the West (his frankly commercial “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers” did not hesitate to exploit Asian exoticism, but did it carefully and delicately). But in this case, it is simply disrespectful to Western sinophiles who love his cinema and awarded him at festivals.
In order to like it, if you are already famous, you need to keep the brand, meet your level, and not slide down. Fortunately, except for the “Simple Noodle Story”, only “The Great Wall” is the same slut in his filmography. Yimou wants to be more than just a local filmmaker, albeit a great one, he is tormented by the ambitions of a globalist commercial guru in the spirit of Spielberg and Cameron. Unsurprisingly, “A Simple Noodle Story” has almost never been watched or reviewed. Who needs it? No one would have seen it if it wasn’t for Yimou and the reputation of the Coen remake. The conclusion is simple: if you want to be a commercial director of a world format, you should never cheat – the rule is equally fair, both for mass cinema and for author and arthouse cinema.
