OFFICE. (2015) AS SEEN AT THE GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL. BASED ON SYLVIA CHANG'S 2008 PLAY 'DESIGN FOR LIVING.' PRODUCED BY JOHNNIE TO AND SYLVIA CHANG. SCREENPLAY BY SYLVIA CHANG. DIRECTED BY JOHNNIE TO. STARRING SYLVIA CHANG, CHOW YUN-FAT, EASON CHAN, TANG WEI, LANG YUETING, WANG ZIYI AND TIEN HSIN. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This film is a wild ride from start to finish. I was dubious about it at first. That is to say, when I pressed 'play' and realised that it was a musical, possibly my least favourite genre of film. A musical, by the way, in Mandarin Chinese. About Chinese big business and financial shady dealings. In short, a musical in Mandarin Chinese about Chinese big business and financial shady dealings. I naturally assumed I'd hate it, but guess what? I didn't. It was brilliant...!
The film feels like a cross between WALL STREET and Fritz Lang's magnificent METROPOLIS. Remember the miserable drones/workers in METROPOLIS, trudging wearily to and from their horrible, all-consuming work, day-in-day-out without cease? That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the staff of billion-dollar luxury goods company JONES & SUNN clocking on at the start of the film.
Instead of wearing rags, however, they're dressed as well as they can afford to impress their bosses and they're glued night and day to their up-to-the-minute phones. They spend their days in front of their computers or in meetings, constantly coming up with bigger and better ideas to wow the higher-ups. The pace is exhausting. The pressure to succeed is intense. To fail is unthinkable. If you don't pass your three-month probation, you might as well just chuck yourself off the nearest cliff.
Lee Xiang (Lee for Ang Lee and Xiang for dream) and Kat are the two 'new hires' whose job it is, among other things, to make coffee for their superiors and try to look as if they know what they're doing. Lee is an ambitious young fella who's always dreamed of making it big in business. The beautiful Kat has something of an ulterior motive for working as Jones & Sunn's newest young probationer. Pretty soon, they get to know who's doing what to whom and for how long...!
I personally loved the human stories behind all the singing and the office politics. Mr. Ho, the company chairman whose wife is in a coma, is having an affair with the super-groomed, super-tough Ms. Winnie Cheung, who lives for her work and her rich powerful lover. Sophie's boyfriend is fed-up with her because she won't commit to putting marriage and kids ahead of her work. David Wong, Ms. Cheung's immediate underling, will do absolutely anything to get ahead, including asking the vulnerable Sophie to help him to defraud the company.
They all may look as if they have it all, these wanna-be Gordon 'Greed Is Good' Gekkos, but in reality the whole damned lot of 'em are corporate slaves. They live for work and they live their lives in time to the beating of the giant mechanical METROPOLIS-like clock in the building's foyer. The enormous cogwheels never stop turning, turning, turning...
They clock in and, hours and hours later, they clock out, but only long enough to prepare both mentally and physically for the next shift. The merry-go-round goes round and round and never stops until success has been attained and, then, you work even harder to keep what you made. It doesn't sound like a life I'd personally be able for. I'm more the creative type...!
Though the film is billed as a musical-comedy-drama, I found that there wasn't much that was comical in the way that most of the characters have lost sight both of their morality and their sense of self in their misguided attempts to chase the almighty dollar. Is it worth it? You'll have to watch the film, my movie-loving friends, to see if any of them come out at the other end smelling of roses.
The songs, which are mostly about climbing the corporate ladder, are extremely witty. David and Sophie's song, in which they pine for their hometowns where they 'read the origins of the universe,' is more sad than funny, however. They sometimes long to go back to the places where 'time is slow and flowing.' Instead, they're stuck in the land of the corporate slave where time is, and always will be, money. David even has a recurring dream in which an elevator is crashing down on his unprotected head. If that's not an anxiety dream, I don't know what is...!
The sets, which are asymmetrical and composed of parallel lines, stripes, bars and boxes, are
interesting in that they resemble something a schoolchild or mechanical drawing student might assemble themselves in class. You know, where you're slotting one end of a coloured plastic bendy pole into another coloured plastic bendy pole and you keep doing it until you've built some kind of coloured plastic bendy structure? That kind of thing. Most of the action takes place in and around these innovative and even futuristic-looking boxy sets. Kudos to the set design team. Kudos indeed...! They've certainly come up with something very original.
Favourite character? Ms. Cheung, the best-dressed but saddest character of all, who has it all and yet really has nothing that matters. Character I most loved to hate? Chairman Ho, that cold-as-ice cheating lowlife, who lives it up while his wife's in a coma. That dastardly devil...!
Now, take a memo, if you please, and no, you can't have tomorrow off. I don't care if you and your great-aunt were close, tomorrow is our busiest day of the week. Now, the memo. OFFICE is due for home entertainment release any time now and, if you're looking for something completely different, you should buy it. Make sure that gets circulated to everyone in the office and, by the way, where the hell is that kid with the Smithson file and my goddamn latté...?
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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