Monga is probably the most exciting, commercial and well-made movie out of Taiwan in the history of Taiwanese cinema as I know it. Arguably The Wedding Banquet was another Taiwanese movie that was both artistically and commercially successful. Cape No. 7 truly escaped me. I tried watching Cape No. 7 five times and every time I fell asleep at the 30-minute mark. Cape No. 7 proved there was little audience beyond the eclectic Taiwanese audience that braced its local box office gross to an amazing USD$14 million.
First off, I generally hate gangster flicks, especially Chinese gangster flicks. I would only grudgingly watch them once in a blue moon in hope of catching up with Asian pop culture. So when I first heard about Monga, I had very little interest. In fact, I was drinking in a Taipei karaoke room with directors Doze Niu and Teddy Chen one night during the Golden Horse Film Festival 2009 with little knowledge that Doze directed Monga. When I was back in Hong Kong a couple weeks ago, another friend recommended the film so I decided to buy the DVD to take a look.
During a an early jetlag night back in Los Angeles, I popped Monga into my player and was immediately impressed with the filmmaking from the first shot on. Through the eyes of our main protagonist, Monga tells the story of Monk—played by hearthrob Ethan Juan—whom we first meets as a teen who gets bullied in high school and dares to fight back in a hilariously choreographed sequence. Monk's craftiness catches the eyes of Dragon, the son of a mafia boss, who takes him under his wings and initiates him into his elite gang who guards the titular district of Taipei.
Set in the 80s, Monga is an exceptional epic on all technical fronts from art and costume to cinematograhy and action choreography. The homosocial (thanks to the late Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick who coined this term) friendships and world between the five gangster youths are so finely and emotionally portrayed to a surprisingly poetic yet violent conclusion. And yet another thing I appreciate about Monga, setting it aside from its genre, is that the violence is necessary and creatively executed with good taste. The violence does not feel gratutious. It's the kind of cool violence that we go to the movies for. And that's why Monga is cinematic.
Technically, the film is close to flawless. The one extended fight sequence where the five uniformed school kids transform into full-fleged young gangsters kicking asses and getting their asses kicked is jawdropping in the synthesis of cinematography and action choreography. But what's most amazing about the film is that these kids are humanely and emotionally portrayed as young adults who are neither heroes nor antiheroes. They are violent and mean at the same time they are scared and vulnerable.
To give an example of Noze's attention to details, I am not spoiling the film for you because the scene is in the trailer. Monk gets to meet Dragon's father for the first time over a casual meal. As Monk is about to chopstick a piece of meat, he reaches over and catches a glimpse of a severed finger right at the spot below where Dragon's father is eating. Monk keeps quiet and the gang dines on.
Perhaps Taiwanse cinema has already passed the world by, but Monga is a gem and discovery. It was selected as the official Oscar entry for Taiwan in 2010.
Comments