Media Review: Ten Years 十年

Ten Years (十年) is a 2015 Hong Kong film that comprises five short stories set in Hong Kong year 2025. These stories include Extras, Season of the End, Dialect, Self-immolator and Local Egg which respectively directed by Kwok Zune, Wong Fei-Pang, Jevons Au Man-kit, Chow Kwun-Wai and Ng Ka-Leung.

source: http://www.weekendhk.com/

At the head, Extras takes place in an International Labour Day celebration. Several politicians and the police concoct a assassination to attempt to arouse fear, so they can get public support to legislate the National Security Law. Two gangsters accept this mission because of the high paid. However, they killed by the police and identified as terrorists, and the Law has successfully passed finally. The director Kwok states that the triad-like officials are alluding to the pro-establishment groups. “Those groups receive political orders from above. An intimating presence due to their sheer numbers, they browbeat and beat up protestors from rival groups. That’s not much different from triads.” (Ten Years, 2015) He says. On the other hand, the two gangsters are the metaphors of Hong Kong people who are powerless and can only succumb to the government and CCP. One of the gangsters, Hairy, says he just want to have a stable job but he never thought that he would come to a bad end. He is same with some of the Hong Kong people who sell Hong Kong long-term security because of immediate small gain.

source: http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/

Another story Dialect is talk about government set Mandarin (a.k.a. Putonghua) as the only one official language and Cantonese become a dialect in the future. Han, the main character, fails to pass the national Mandarin proficiency test and be classified as non-Mandarin-speaking taxi drivers (非普司機), who are not allowed to enter restricted area and it is adversely affect his business. In addition, people who do not speak Putonghua would be discriminated or be fired. This story may be the most realistic one. Today, the government efforts to implement using Putonghua to teach Chinese (普教中). A lot of parents believe that speaking Putonghua is the key to succeed. Han’s wife, for instance, she warns her husband that does not speak to their son in Cantonese anymore. It is no doubt that we learn another languages is beneficial to communicate with the world and other cultures. However, it does not mean fully abandon our mother language. Language is one of the ways to establish our identities. If we only speak in another language, we will gradually become unable to communicate with the people who originally have the same culture identities with us, our shared culture and identities will also be forgotten. Just like Han feels strange when his son calls him father in Putonghua “baba” instead of Cantonese. 

Under the frameworks of today Hong Kong and the failure of “One country, two systems”, the five directors have different but similar individual memories. They use five different stories to reflect their concerns of Hong Kong future, like police-triad collusion, political intervention from CCP, local consciousness be suppressed, failure of cultural preservation, the youth being brainwash, the powerlessness of Hong Kong people and so on. The stories are the representations of the directors’ different memories of Hong Kong. What is more, Ten Years got good box office result and won “Best Film” at 2016 Hong Kong Film Awards. It illustrated that this film arouse the resonance among the audience, the Hong Kong people who live in the same place and have the same feelings. Although these stories are imaginary, it is realistic as like the collective memories of the five directors and Hong Kong people. Chow says, “I hope our film can lead to an awakening among the masses and inspire them to think about issues and care more about Hong Kong” (Ten Years, 2015). As the ending of the film, "Already too late" replaced by "Not too late", Hong Kong people are not too late to make Hong Kong not become like the one which in the film.

Chan Ho Yan 

10449094/21625506

Reference:

Halbwachs, M & Coser, L.A (Ed. & Trans.) 1992, On Collective Memory, Chapter 1-4, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

“Ten Years: Hong Kong film that beat Star Wars at the box office, and the directors behind it” 2015, South China Morning Post, 30 December, viewed 8 Aril <http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/film-tv/article/1895992/ten-years-hong-kong-film-beat-star-wars-box-office-and-directors>