Fearless

Fearless is a pretty good movie that has unfulfilled ambitions of greatness. The movie is based on the real life figure of Huo Yuanjia, a martial artist in China who founded a prestigious and international martial arts academy and captured the public imagination as an advocate for restoring national strength against Western and Japanese interests in the early 20th century. The movie incorporates elements of martial arts movies, biopics, sports films, and historical romances. These disparate styles wouldn't work together except for the unmistakable star power of Jet Li as Huo – easily his most appealing and intimate performance since 1994's Fist of Legend.

The story is broken down into three, clearly-identifiable acts in the traditional bildungsroman structure. In act one, Huo is the son of a martial arts instructor who spreads the reputation of his school through public matches in the town square. When Huo's father loses, Huo makes a personal commitment to become the champion fighter of the province. He fights fiercely, with reckless abandon and easily becomes famous throughout the land. A feud with a rival school escalates into tragedy, though, and the conflict ends with the rival master and Huo's family dead. In act two, Huo flees to the countryside and live in self-exile with a rice-farming peasant community for several years. His return to a simple and traditional lifestyle enlightens Huo about the need to restore pride in Chinese identity and to foster brotherhood rather than rivalry. Act three brings Huo back to the big cities of China where he becomes an outspoken figure in national pride. The markets are full of foreign investors who compare China's weak national markets to a physical infirmity. Huo fights foreign challengers in the boxing ring to demonstrate the strength of the Chinese. The movie's climactic finale takes place at a rigged tournament where Huo succeeds in establishing national pride in Chinese identity, but loses his life through treachery.

Although Huo is a historical figure, he has the reputation of a legend, and stories of his life are hazy and contradictory. The parts of Huo's life shown in Fearless are obviously ahistorical (for example, Huo is presented as childless after act one, but the real man was survived by several children) and gives the movie a feeling of being a tall tale. This impression is only further served by the physics-defying fights, choreographed by the great Yuen Woping. The dizzying wire-work creates unbelievable stunts that undermine the historical significance of the story.

While the second act is the beautiful soul of the film, it is also dishonest in its presentation of the rural utopian village. The peasants are always healthy and clean, the crops never fail, there is always enough food, and the beautiful and kind blind girl who loves Huo always has an apropos proverb to demonstrate their simple, traditional Chinese wisdom. The nationalism is so strong that there isn't a single white character in the whole of the movie who isn't portrayed as a grunting, dishonorable brute. A Japanese judo master is the lone foreigner presented with any sympathy.

In its rush to become a historical epic, the film also loses track of its most important relationship, that of Huo and his childhood friend Nong Jinsun. Huo's jock attitude and Nong's bookish responsibility develop into an unlikely friendship. By the end of the brisk and moving first act their friendship is rendered almost certainly irreparable by Huo's selfish actions. In the third act, however, poor Nong is relegated to sidekick status. Huo has achieved enlightenment on his own and only needs Nong's finances as startup funds for his academy.

As a martial arts film, it delivers the goods, perhaps to excess. But as a historical epic, it's unwillingness to play fair with facts and all-too willingness to uncritically celebrate Chinese values and demonize foreigners limits its importance. I was struck with a great sadness throughout the whole movie at how Jet Li, so charismatic in Fearless, has been misused as a dramatic actor in the past decade. The film's problems aside, it is truly a joy to watch one of the world's great international film stars at the top of his game.

Worlds of the Imperium - Keith Laumer

I received a recommendation for Keith Laumer's Imperium novels, and so I decided to follow up on it. There's a new omnibus edition collecting all three Imperium novels, but it's currently only available in hardcover. Since this is my first encounter with Laumer's writing, I opted for the cheap way and bought a slightly beat-up used copy of the first book in the series for about two bucks and gave it a try.

Laumer's hero, Brion Bayard, is an American diplomat from our world who is kidnapped and dragged into a parallel dimension by the Imperium. The basic idea is that there are many parallel universes that all differ from their neighbors by some tiny amounts. The Imperium is made up of many of these parallel Earths who are so close in continuity that traveling between them is easy and government and commerce flourish. Separated by an expansive barrens (parallel universes that failed in an evolutionary sense) is our universe, and one other. This other, "evil" universe is like ours, except the cold war escalated and modern civilization collapsed. Brion's counterpart in this universe is the supreme dictator of Earth, so the Imperium, fearing invasion by this "evil" universe, wants Brion to infiltrate the capital, kill his counterpart, and assume control of the government.

It's a pretty clever idea, except Laumer's writing is too sparse. The elaborate concept works solely to get Brion to his adventure on the "evil" Earth. The Imperium itself hardly appears at all in the story. Brion, though he is professionally a diplomat, is more of an action hero and never exhibits any of the tact or strategy one would expect. Laumer also made his most famous hero, Retief, a diplomat, so clearly he likes the idea, but for all purposes, Brion could have been a fireman or an accountant for all it mattered in this story. The depiction of the underground resistance on the "evil" Earth is particularly effective, as well as the intriguing twist Laumer injects into his story when Brion finally meets his counterpart. However, most of the book is written in a hurried style that never lingers too long on any one idea or character. It's not a bad book, just an unsophisticated one.

My copy includes two bonus short stories, unrelated to Imperium. "The War against the Yukks" is dreadful. It's the kind of chauvinistic junk that was common during the male-oriented bad-old-days of science fiction. Two idiots find an archaeological relic which turns out to be a spaceship and travel to a planet with 700 nubile women where they are given the arduous duty repopulating the whole planet. Ugh.

Much better is "Worldmaster" in which the admiral of the U.S.'s space fleet, as controller of the most powerful military force in the solar system, has decided to turn his military power back on the Earth and declare himself supreme dictator. The story's protagonist must take information of the coup to the president who may be able to stop the plot. The story is nothing more than an extended chase scene through a futuristic Washington D.C., but it was tight and quite enjoyable. I mention it because I enjoyed this one quote, which I find as applicable in today's political climate as it was in the 60s when Laumer wrote it. "Theories are beautiful things–simple and precise as cut glass–as long as they're only theories. When you find in your hand the power to make them come true...suddenly, it's not so simple."

Topper - Thorne Smith

There is a scene in Topper of such beauty that it has stayed with me in the weeks since I finished reading it. Cosmo Topper is an upper-middle class banker with a mundane life of routine. In an attempt to break free from his life of regularity (some might call this a mid-life crisis) he buys a sports car. The car was previously owned by a young couple with a reputation for hard partying and fast living. That lifestyle caught up with them, and they both died after wrecking the car. The car is lovingly restored and Topper begins driving it despite its reputation. The car, of course, is haunted by the ghosts of the young couple, George and Marion Kerby, and after getting over his initial shock at being haunted, Topper strikes up a friendship with the pair. In my favorite scene, Topper and George have found a case of whiskey and gotten good and thoroughly drunk, and Topper has finally started to loosen up.

  "This Scotch is delicious. Do you feel like dancing?"
  Kerby quickly looked up from his drink. Mr. Topper appeared to be perfectly normal. He was sitting solidly on his box and gazing into the fireplace.
  "Do I feel like what?" Kerby demanded.
  "Dancing, George," replied Mr. Topper in a reasonable voice. "Dancing or singing."
  "Certainly not," said Kerby, shortly.
  "That's odd," replied Mr. Topper. "I seem to."
  "Well, don't do it," Kerby commanded. "You'll spoil everything."
...
  "Listen, George," [Topper] asked humbly, "if I just sit quietly here by the fire and feel like dancing it will be all right, won't it?"

I found something beautiful, funny, and sad about a man so meted out, so worn down by his routine, that he had to ask permission to feel like dancing.

Eventually Topper and Marion (who no longer considers herself married to Kerby since death did them part) run off together for an affair which is anything but physical. The book is mostly a sequence of delightfully written set pieces of slapstick humor. Particularly outrageous are the Kerbys haunting Topper's trial for public intoxication and disturbing the peace, as well as a restaurant scene involving a partially materialized ghost dog. (I'll let you figure out which half of the dog was visible.)

Topper was written in the 1920s, and is full of references to prohibition. The Kerby's continual inebriation must have been shocking to contemporary readers, but even to a modern reader they drink to excess. There is something different in the way a modern reader interprets how the Kerbys died while driving under the influence, compared to a contemporary reader, for whom sports cars must have seemed a novelty or impractical luxury. The story also includes a few scenes of ribaldry which are tame by today's standard. Instead of seeming quaint, they lend a kind of timeless charm to the whole affair. The idea of an invisible naked woman sharing a room with a married man is enough to delight without being overly explicit.

There is a movie version of Topper, which is generally inferior to the book. It is perhaps most famous for being one of Cary Grant's early movies, and one of his very few supporting roles. The movie version adapts most of the book's best scenes and captures a lot of the slapstick comedy in the book. Roland Young is magnificent as Topper, but other than his nuanced performance, very little of the movie evokes the rich poignancy that runs throughout the story in Thorne Smith's book. If I just sit here and remember this book and laugh quietly to myself, it will be all right, won't it?

Agent of Chaos - Norman Spinrad

My copy of Agent of Chaos includes an introductory note by Rex Weiner who praises the book for its revolutionary premise and underground status, and explains that it is a cult favorite among prisoners in the U.S. corrections system. I have a hard time believing that this book – firmly rooted in space opera genre conventions and also a dreadfully dull lecture on political philosophy – would be enjoyed by anyone. The 1960s produced so many good revolutionary novels and works of political ideas. Agent of Chaos is not one of them.

In Agent a central government, the Hegemony of Sol, rules over all human colonies throughout our solar system. The standard of living of the average human in the Hegemony is generally good, sacrificing some individual liberties for stability and harmony. There are two rival organizations: the Democratic League, which seeks to replace the authoritarian Hegemony with a more representative democratic government; and the Brotherhood of Assassins, a shadowy secret group committed to following the teachings in a manuscript describing the role of Chaos in the natural order of the universe. There is a plot about assassinations and interplanetary coups that allows thinly-written characters to engage in pro-forma debates about the benefits of various forms of government. The ratio of lecturing to action in this book is about 10 to 1.

As explicitly stated and restated, these three organizations fall into the three archetypical forms of governance: establishment, loyal opposition, and counter-establishment. The opposition challenges the policies of the establishment government, but supports the general framework of governance. Consider the role of the Democratic Party in the present-day U.S. Republicans control all three branches of government. Democrats form an opposition to the Republican policies, but they are essentially seeking to replace Republicans in positions of power with members of their own party. Politicians of the opposition may use the language of revolution, but they are, in practice, counter-revolutionaries. In the book, the followers of Chaos are not anarchists opposed to any system of governance, but they oppose regularity and predictability. They perform the role of injecting randomness into a system to dislodge it from its evolutionary dead-end. It is ironic that they follow this theory in a disciplined and even religious fashion, but I don’t see evidence that Spinrad intended this irony.

The book is not long, but it continues on long past the point the reader has grasped its facile premise and ceased to care about its cardboard characters and rote plot. Spinrad followed this debut novel with some ground-breaking novels, but none of his later genius is on display here. I was especially reminded of Robert Anton Wilson’s hallucinogenic Illuminatus trilogy, especially in the way the followers of Chaos in Wilson’s series follow a mysterious bible of discord and chaos. Agent lacks any of Illuminatus’s humor, wit, and even the plausibility of that absurd book. Rex Weiner says that this book inspired him to form Pie-Kill Unlimited, that group of jokers who throw meringue pies at powerful people. This book sure could have used some pies.

The Girl in the Glass - Jeffrey Ford

The Girl in the Glass is a book about conmen, conspiracies, crackpots, and carneys. The story follows three conmen who work on Long Island during the Great Depression putting on fake seances for the rich and powerful. During a botched seance, the leader of the group, a wise and experienced grifter called Schell, sees a vision of the ghost of a young girl in a pane of glass. Schell discovers that the girl is the kidnapped daughter of a millionaire and decides to use his knowledge of human nature and powers of observation to find the girl under the pretense of his psychic powers. Diego, a 17 year old illegal Mexican adopted by Schell and trained to pretend as an Indian swami, narrates the case as his own coming-of-age story. Girl in the Glass is very clever, very funny, and very exciting.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, but I kept expecting it to be something it wasn't. I've been a fan of Jeffrey Ford's since his debut novel, The Physionomy, was published. His previous novels are weird fantasies that toy with perception, identity, and the relationship between narrator, story and audience. As a result, each of his novels have a feverish dreamlike quality, none more so than his masterful The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque. In Charbuque, a painter is offered a large sum of money to paint an accurate portrait of a woman he can speak with but never see directly. The novel, set in turn-of-the-20th-century New York, must have whet Ford's appetite for historical fiction and set up the idea for Girl in the Glass. Although Girl includes the weird and fantastic, the perspective is always from backstage where the reader can see the trickery and slight-of-hand exposed. This is Ford's turn into the literary mainstream, and although it is a straightforward mystery novel (if mysteries can ever be considered straightforward), on its own merits it is a very fine book.

The book's narrator, Diego, is Ford's most appealing character from any of his books, and in fact, all of the principal characters here are strong and likeable enough to serve in sequels, should Ford decide to ever revisit the idea of conmen as psychic detectives. There are some profoundly memorable sequences as well, such as the carnival side-show funeral and the first passage into Schell's bugatorium, an indoor garden devoted to raising and breeding butterflies of all types. The butterfly serves as the novel's central metaphor, a transitional creature emerging from the chrysalis. On its own, the symbolism is somewhat facile, but Ford adds his own sense of irony, giving the characters a chance to explain their own interpretations of the meaning of butterflies, but in doing so, Ford rejects each of them in turn for a deeper meaning. The butterfly is a creature that cannot be seen for all that it is at once. It is always only a part of its self, and that is the deeper meaning of the con, visible only in parts.

The Boy Who Couldn't Die - William Sleator

William Sleator has written some fantastic books over the years. His career is mostly made up of science fiction and fantasy thrillers for a young adult audience, but his books never insult the intelligence of his readers. Sleator's best novels – House of Stairs, The Green Futures of Tycho, and Interstellar Pig – meld mundane experiences with fantastic occurrences, always taking the time to develop the characters and create a pervasive sense of suspense and mood. There are many similarities between Sleator's stories: a teenage protagonist (usually male) falls victim to some interesting challenge caused by a scientific principal or magical phenomenon and must think his way out of the puzzle, usually with the help of an exotic, and highly intelligent, girl, encountering several twists and complications along the way. In fact, that pretty much sums up The Boy Who Couldn't Die, a recent novel which can be read enjoyably in one sitting, but isn't one of Sleator's more memorable works.

Sleator's protagonist, Ken, is grieving for the death of his best friend, who died in a plane crash. Ken learns of a voodoo practice for granting immortality, and decides to visit a spiritualist who can help Ken avoid the fate of his departed friend. The ritual separates Ken from his soul, turning him into an invulnerable astral zombie. What sounds perfectly corny in summary works surprisingly well through Ken's living dead narration. Liberated from fear and risk, Ken also can no longer experience the joy and sweetness of life. Ken becomes a thrill seeker, and travels to the Caribbean to swim with sharks. While there, he learns of the true consequences of his bargain, and decides to regain his soul, whatever the cost.

The book is always interesting, but the roller coaster plot relies far too strongly on coincidence and logical fallacy to maintain a suspension of disbelief. Ken's family is almost limitlessly wealthy, and although a long passage of the book deals with how Ken will finance his quest to find his soul, the outcome is rarely in doubt. Far more interesting are the off-beat Cheri Buttercup, the stretch pant-wearing spiritualist, and Sabine, a poor island girl who joins Ken in his quest. Long passages describing SCUBA diving most likely reflect Sleator's interest in the activity, rather than adding anything meaningful to the plot.

The Boy Who Couldn't Die is fun and short – the one probably a factor in the other – and the subject matter is interesting and interestingly presented. However, the book can't quite compare to some of Sleator's better novels. It is possible that I simply found the magical aspects of the story less plausible than the scientific and science fiction ideas he usually puts in his story. I am looking forward to reading his next book, The Last Universe, which deals with quantum physics.

Polymorph - Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is experiencing something of a career resurrection lately, thanks to his wildly popular young adult novels. His first career, as a writer of character-driven science fiction for grownups is largely forgotten. Before Uglies, Midnighters, Peeps and So Yesterday Westerfeld turned out some very fine novels. The ideas and themes that make his young adult novels so engaging are vividly on display in Polymorph, Westerfeld's debut novel.

Polymorph's protagonist, who sometimes calls herself Lee, is capable of shifting her structure to take on any appearance. Her talent, and her fear of being exposed as a freak, has enabled Lee to live a life of public anonymity, slinking through life on the path of least resistance and leaving the least impression. Her solitary life is disturbed when she meets another polymorph. The two are first lovers, then enemies, as they are unable to reconcile their own ambitions. In their game of cat-and-mouse, Lee struggles not to become the mouse.

The novel works many of the same themes and ideas that Westerfeld explores in his other novel, especially the relationship between appearance and identity that shows up in the Uglies books. Westerfeld creates a parallel examination of this idea through Lee's one friend, Freddie, who has a job working as an online actor, taking on personas to stimulate conversation between a chat service's paying customers. Westerfeld also intelligently examines the need for social belonging and intimacy. Lee takes on many lovers, but her talent allows her to disappear and avoid any emotional connection. The explicitness of her sexual encounters (which will be shocking to readers familiar only with Westerfeld's youth-oriented books) demonstrates the evolution of intimacy, trust, and control in Lee's character through the book.

The action in Polymorph moves along swiftly, as Westerfeld wisely opts to keep the plot fairly simple. Each character and scene in the book is memorable. There are many more issues Westerfeld could have addressed, but the depiction of Lee's journey of self-discovery is economical and effective, and the action is exciting. Westerfeld only makes a misstep in the novel's denouement, where a brief passage suggests that the ending is not quite what it seems. Whether Westerfeld intended to leave the story open for a sequel, or he succumbed to the temptation to put an unnecessary and confounding twist in his narrative, it sours what is otherwise a very entertaining novel.