TRIAD ELECTION

The director of TRIAD ELECTION, Johnnie To, hails from the Golden Age of the Hong Kong New Wave, a free-wheeling, frenetic, hyper-styled and, above all, exceedingly violent influx of films in the mid 80s and early 90s that formed a genre unto itself and for Western audiences seemed to come out of nowhere. It was during this brief, bountiful period that HK’s regional cinema moved away from the martial arts and period melodramas it had been known for on American shores up until that time to virtually unclassifiable works of artistry that quickly became the most exciting foreign releases to grace domestic screens since the 1970s. Although the groundwork for these films had already been laid decades earlier – with the international recognition of the Shaw Brothers’ studio films ignited by the Cannes Film Festival’s 1972 screening of King Hu’s masterpiece of that period, TOUCH OF ZEN – the dissolution of the old Hong Kong studio system marked a distinct break from the past, blossoming into a very different kind of contemporary, non-traditional filmmaking style that would have been unimaginable in earlier decades.

At first glance, this newfound cinema bore little resemblance to the previous generation of Hong Kong films. An emerging crop of eager and talented directors took their inspiration not from the annals of the Peking Opera and the Chinese military, but from the modern-day toils of the then-British colony. Their stories were rife with social issues and political critiques, which manifested themselves in hard-hitting genres like cop procedurals, prison and crime films. They also drew their influences from a vast wealth of international cinema, including, but not limited to, the West. But Johnnie To’s films, made at the peak of the movement, always stood apart from the deluge of John Woo knock-offs, Chow Yun-fat vehicles and Jackie Chan stunt show cases. Notable for their introspective, brooding tone, To’s work approached a level of subtlety and realism that was lost on many, if not most, of the other young Hong Kong hopefuls.

Johnnie To’s early successes – ALL ABOUT AH LONG, THE MISSION, and HEROIC TRIO – were notable not only for their distinct visual sense, but for their psychological underpinning and emphasis on character in a sea of commercial action pictures. All this came to an abrupt end, however, following the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. Many filmmakers abandoned the region rather than risk the stifling political environment and censorship which would inevitably be exacted on its homegrown artists. Johnnie To, however, who owns his own production company and is now one of the most respected and prolific filmmakers in the region, was in a special position to continue to make his personal and political films despite the risk of censorship. Though his most recent movie, TRIAD ELECTION (the second in what has been dubbed his “Election Cycle”) harkens back to that earlier era of Hong Kong cinema with its epic set pieces of gangland warfare worthy of the Shaw Brothers at their peak, it nonetheless alludes to a number of cultural crises facing the citizens of Hong Kong today.

It is evidence of Johnnie To’s cosmopolitan tastes as a filmmaker that one cannot watch TRIAD ELECTION without recalling a decidedly Western antecedent – Francis Ford Coppola’s THE GODFATHER. While that film undoubtedly was on his mind during the making of his new film, and may well have inspired its genesis, TRIAD ELECTION is less an homage than a personal reflection and reworking of its themes. The Triads have always been part of the social fabric of Hong Kong, and unlike the so-called “Mob” in the West, were instrumental in the production of Hong Kong filmmaking during the era of the ‘New Wave.’ The subtext of the film, ostensibly a story about how a centuries-old society of criminals comes to deal with the dawn of a new age, clearly has more to do with the problems endemic to all the citizens of this “one country, two systems” society.

The fear and paranoia felt by the people of Hong Kong at this time in history is clearly reflected in this stark rendering of a maturing criminal’s unsuccessful efforts to go straight in Triad Society. The inescapability of the main subject’s predicament, in which the Chinese government seeks to absorb the Triads using his ties to the corporate sector, becomes further complicated in the rapidly expanding economy that China has become – one of the most, if not the most, powerful in the modern world. Their iron-like grip on the recently orphaned country manifests itself in the eager power plays of Jimmy (played by Louis Koo, a staple of To’s recent films), who tries desperately to cut his ties to the underworld while coming up against a governing power that only wants to exploit his Triad connections for its own aims. The political autonomy offered to him and the citizens of Hong Kong by the Chinese government turns out to be, like so many promises offered by current governments and regimes, a sham.

Despite the fact that the cast of TRIAD ELECTION numbers in the hundreds (who, thanks to the director’s deft sense of choreography and staging, are often brought together in the same frame), To chooses to keep the film focused on the Kafkaesque nightmare surrounding Johnny’s daily existence and his earnest attempt to redeem himself in the midst of unimaginable bloodletting and cruelty. Greed and loyalty are notions he wrestles with often on his journey, and, not surprisingly, there seems to be an endless supply of the former and a relative dearth of the latter. Countless shades of grey exist within between Jimmy’s precarious relationships with white-collar businessmen, corrupt government officials and bribe-taking law enforcement officers. So much so that after a while, from the CEOs and the politicians they control on down, all of them come to resemble gangsters, to lesser or greater degrees. No matter how high he climbs, Jimmy finds himself dealing with the same old cutthroats. The only real difference between them and the criminals is that instead of carrying guns and knives, these thugs get by on their credentials.

TRIAD ELECTION premiered at Cannes 2006 as a follow-up to his mob epic, ELECTION, which won Best Picture and Best Director Awards at the 2006 Hong Kong Film Awards.

– Jameson West, Associate Programmer, Austin Film Society