Filmmakers rarely watch their own work. I think this must be true to some extent, since we production people would be preoccupied with projects all the time. By the way, we'd probably knew how the final product would turn out to be. Of course, there's also this thing called pre-view. Nope, I was too busy myself even if I have access to the nice fellas at post production (;p).
And so, yesterday (or so I remembered) I took some time out of sleeplessness to watch an episode of AOG at NTV7's webbie. It was the 13th episode (I last watched was epi 4). Everything that I wrote in the previous post about AOG turns out as I've expected. Now Rose (Yu Lan) is a prominent performer at Nan Yuan and she has Chen Mei as her maid, plus now they met the oh-so-lovely-that-I-must-mention-with-oh-so-quote-unquote future songbird Shu Juan. Interesting too was the fact that the rest of the leading males has all appeared here; Ah Sheng (the trishaw fella), Mr. Fang (the boss at Jetty), his henchman (played by Justin Choo), Wang Cai (the aunty killer), and Bao Sheng (the guy that got robbed in the rain). The protagonists are up to something too. So now the stage is more or less settled. From now onwards, its going to be cheesy till infinity and beyond!
Speaking of cheesy, I wasn't expecting that AOG could be THAT cheesy. Heck, given its length, it could be cheesier than West Side Story (that's a famous musical/film, you kids). SPOILER - One main character died the same way too - END OF SPOILER. I suddenly realized AOG was a bloody good tearjerker. But to arrive at that, you viewers (and me too lah) should learn this thing called suspension of belief (SOB). In short, SOB is like you watch Jackie Chan doing all the hoo haak jumping falling stuff; you know its entertaining but there's only a 0.01% that its gonna happen in the real world. You know there's some things that doesn't make sense, like some 700dpi color posters here and there, rain that looks like the end of the world, a street devoid of vehicles, fat and skinny guys that you'd probably seen before, boobs, unnatural lights, familiar decorations, more boobs, a toilet bowl (?), and more boobs, and things of such. Well, I think we are all too immersed into the wrong direction and missed the point of a drama: character drama.
Character drama is what it is: the story of and between the characters. That's how a drama is intended to be. Now I'm not gonna talk about directors and their wacky vision yet. That's the topic for a future post. But what I suggest everyone to do is to apply some SOB in the spirit of Jacky Chan. You went in the cinema to watch an amazingly un-historic 10'000 BC and you'd thought its interesting and a lesson in human history, then why not do the same with AOG? After all, its just drama; they just did it in a different way. There's a perfect blend of characters in AOG, be it one dimensionals or two. I doubt the actors are not fit for the job. Forget the language. Even you and I can't claim total proficiency in one language. This is the problem being Malaysian and Singaporean: we are trying to be what we ain't. We are not Chinese nor Taiwanese, we are Malaysian (and Singaporean). Its time we admit our own unique culture: we are rojak, and rojak tastes damn good!
I think Age of Glory has its ups and downs, just like the decade its trying to portray. There are things we kids would never exactly know about the 60s. Heck, even the grownups don't always agree with each other. So at best, we try to come out with the most ideal vision. TV is a make belief media. It shapes reality so people like me and Jacky Chan can make money. So be a SOB sometimes, and enjoy the show.
no-fark!
