Cultural Text Review of Echoes of the Rainbow《歲月神偷》
The story of Echoes of the Rainbow is mainly about a 1960’s core family in Hong Kong. The film is set in 1960s British Hong Kong and was shot on the historical Wing Lee Street in Sheung Wan. It was a typical core family who has eight-year-old Jin-Er lives with his parents and his sixteen-year-old talented brother Jin-Yi in a shoe shop on Wing Lee Street in late 1960s Hong Kong. This film was launched in 2010 and it got many awards such as The 29th Hong Kong film awards and 60th Berlin international festival - Crystal Bear for the Best Film in the Children’s Jury "Generation Kplus". The main theme of this film not only depict the 1960’s Hong Kong family situation but also reviewed poverty in the year of 1960, it showed a affection, love, neighborhood’s love during this poor years. It is a representation of a family to face different challenges of life, but still bite the bullet and suffer. Also this is a collective memory in many Hong Kong people’s mind.
The film genres can be defined as comedy, drama and romance. This small family story, in fact, is epitome of a time when many people's lives in 1960s. The film depicts many grass-root daily lives such as how to operate a shoe shop, the relationship between neighborhoods that they used to have dinner together in street. Each character carries different characteristic. For the father, he do not have so much screen, but he always appear as a seriously look who need to take up the family livelihood. For the mother, she present as a typical love child mother. She will responsible for the family housework and all family stuffs. The actor Sandra Ng made some humor in the character. Apart from the parent, the two brothers also is the main plot in this film, especially the big one. The biggest brother Jin-Yi who is a champion runner at the local high school, earns top grades, is a talented musician, and is very popular. In contrast, his younger brother Jin-Er is not as good as his biggest brother.
In this film, it depicts a love story between Jin-Yi and his girlfriend who comes from a wealthy family, and whose family moves away to the United States to escape the "lawless" situation in Hong Kong. And some of the inequalities in Hong Kong society, both through interactions with a cocky British policeman who extorts money from his father in exchange for letting them keep their shop and through his first time seeing the inside of his girlfriend’s family's mansion. It shows the difficulties in 1960s Hong Kong.
All in all, as the director Law Kai Yui said “Even though 1960s Hong Kong was poor, but we all work hard, have a sense of direction. But now the negative power is too big, only through the film before the spirit of the Hong Kong people and the old scene to live forever, as collective memories.
BY WU KI YAN, BETTY (10418415/ 20862259)
“Echoes of the Rainbow” is a representative local movie with many easily identified cultural symbols (which made it a popular text for analysis). You have examined the main protagonists and major plot of the film, with a brief discussion on the kind of “collective memory” and “Hong Kong spirit” shared among many Hong Kong people.
ReplyDeleteYou may wish to cite some memorable scenes depicting the sense of localness (e.g., types of family relationship, living/working environment) and situate them in the larger social context. This helps explore the collective experience and emotions of people growing up in the 60s, and the functions of “selling” this invaluable and unforgettable memory to audiences nowadays.