Film Review: Ten Years

By Vanessa Chan (10560694/ 21620282)

(Source: https://m21.hk/filmblog/2016/01/review-ten-years/ )

The controversial independent film “Ten Years” has won the Best Film award this year. “Ten Years” is a collection of five short films, focusing on the socio-political issue in Hong Kong with a setting of 10 years later. Umbrella Movement scenarios where students are beaten up by police and teargas bombs are being released are mixed into one of film to gather collective memories.   

Directed by Jevons Au, “Dialect” portrays how Putonghua is marginalizing Cantonese. Taxi driver needs to take a Putonghua examination to reach a fluent Mandarin level, or else they can only drive in a particular area. Han is a taxi driver who failed in the Putonghua proficiency test, the government set up law to forbidden non-Mandarin speaking taxi drivers to drive to restricted area. Mandarin as the only official language in Hong Kong, people will have disadvantage if they do not speak Putonghua. Education is another area which affected the most under this system. Children are expected to speak fluent Mandarin and understand Putonghua slang. Han’s wife expects him not to speak Cantonese in front of his son as learning Putonghua is more beneficial. This dialect issue projected in the film is existing right now in Hong Kong, which is a real situation in terms of education. Government is trying to push primary and secondary school to teach Chinese with Putonghua.

  

   

Source:http://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php/2016/03/leung-kin-ping-ten-years/ ; http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20160310-ASIA-300-TAKING-A-PLUNGE/Life-Arts/Hit-film-Ten-Years-strikes-a-chord-with-its-stories-of-life-in-a-mainland-dominated-Hong-Kong-a-decade-from-now?page=2

Similar with “Dialect”, “Local Egg” uses a different story to mourn the demise of Hong Kong identity. Students are brain washed at school and become “youth guards”.  Their duty is to report people who uses banned words like “local”, and to throw eggs towards shops that have violated the government’s rule. The main character casted by Liu Kai-Chi has a grocery store that sell eggs and with the sign “local egg”. Youth guards reported him on using the word local. Liu’s son is also a youth guards, however he did not throw eggs to shops that violated the law as Liu always remind him of Cultural Revolution.

Liu Kai Chi used to cast in “The Election”, a production of HKTV which is about political conspiracy theory in Hong Kong. Liu tended to involve in political related film, it applies to the Auteur theory that Liu Kai Chi seems to play a similar kind of character from one film to another (Sarris).

“Some Marxist commentators see genre as an instrument of social control which reproduces the dominant ideology” (Chandler). The local consciousness of Hong Kong people has been growing in recent years, and has triggered the younger generation to rethink the identity of Hong Kong people and the future of Hong Kong. Word such as “Hong Kong-er” is created due to the main stream ideology where young citizens think Hong Kong is separated with China and to raise their local identity. I believe this movie can inspire, or to manipulate people to think Hong Kong will be invaded by China in a decade’s time. The film reflected Hong Kong people’s concern towards the future and have aroused the fear of China will eventually taking over Hong Kong.

(Word Count: 510)

Reference:

Chandler, D. (1997). An introduction to genre theory. Media and Communication Studies: http://www. aber. ac. uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1. html.

Sarris, A. (1981). Notes On The Auteur Theory In 1962 in CAUGHIE, John.Theories of Au.