Another look at wearing the ‘Green Hat’

I received a comment from a reader named Stephen regarding the Chinese film “Green Hat,” which played Sunday night as part of the 2005 Spokane International Film Festival . It involves a spoiler, so if you don’t want to know how the film ends then STOP READING NOW!

Stephen says this: “I loved this film, but I was left confused on one point … I was wondering what you thought happened at the end of the film. What did the gunshot signify? Did he shoot his own hand (or his wife or his kid or himself or …)?”

Good question. “Green Hat” isn’t an easy film to break down . It’s more about mood and emotion and the crazy things that we do in the name of “love.” Director Liu Fendou lets us know what we’re in for from the first frames, when a character lectures us on the nature of cinema. Liu is, I think, less interested in plot than he is in character, less interested in giving answers than in posing difficult questions. It’s important, don’t you think? that the bank robber has a better sense of what love is than the cop does. His is a twisted sense of romance, for sure, one that causes him to do the same kind of action that Shakespeare mythologized in “Romeo and Juliet.”

But at least he is willing to sacrifice everything for what he believes. Remember the expression on the cop’s face when he struggles to do what the robber demands of him, which is to define love ? Not only is he unable to come up with an answer, he’s perplexed by the very question. He later demonstrates how clueless he is by making love to his wife in about as unromantic and embarrassing a manner as is possible.

(In fact, except for Friday’s 5:30 p.m. Japanese feature “Vibrator,” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that portrays sex more straightforwardly as a scream for, what, comfort, release, escape, freedom? In this sense, too, “Green Hat” does what American films seldom do, which is to portray sex in neither a romantic nor fantisized manner but simply as mere coupling.)

As for who shoots whom, the movie doesn’t give enough information to say conclusively one way or the other. The moment in which the cop asks his son – the only truly innocent person in the whole film – to close his eyes and count to three is tense to the point of terror. Especially when you hear him either cocking his automatic (or chambering a round , I couldn’t tell which). The question at that point is, what will he do: Shoot himself? Shoot the boy? Shoot the cheating wife and her lover? Shoot everyone and then commit suicide?

Well, clearly he doesn’t shoot anyone else because he is still at large at the film’s end. And I don’t think anyone else shot him. My guess is that he shoots himself because – and put yourself into his position – the pain he’s feeling at that point must be unbearable. He has to do something, so he shoots his own hand – just as he threatened to shoot the hand that the lover used to touch his wife. In that sense, it’s symbolic of the break he will then make with his family (how can the marriage continue after this?).

By the way, the film’s final scene reminds me of Mike Nichols’ 1971 film “Carnal Knowledge,” which ends up similarly, with – ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT! – our tortured protagonist working out his sexual frustration with a prostitute. And, of course, this is what happens when you are unable to love but are eaten alive by the urge to connect sexually with someone else.

In its own way, “Green Hat” is a brilliant achievement . It’s tough, emotionally wrenching, uncomfortable to watch and yet impossible to ignore. It’s been two full days and yet images from various scenes still haunt me. Of what I’ve seen so far, only “Nobody Knows” (see below) has affected me as much – which is saying something considering the quality of the films that SpIFF 2005 has screened so far.