NO ONE HERE GETS OUT ALIVE: JOHNNIE TO, DANCING WHILE THE BUILDING BURNS

Johnnie To (1955–) began his career in Hong Kong TV as a 17-year-old, starting out as a messenger while studying acting in the evenings (“I didn’t want to be an actor. My training… was just a stepping stone to directing.”) Over a decade of experience working his way up through various production roles provided him with an unusually grounded sense for how scenes work in practice, using casts and crews with little patience for mystique. A tentative 1979 debut was followed by a permanent shift into filmmaking in the mid-1980s, though his early features remained stifled by the studio system – co-directing assignments and jobs for hire for powerful, interventionist producers such as Tsui Hark and Stephen Chow. In 1995, To formed his own production company – Milkyway Image – in collaboration with writer-producer Wai Ka-Fai, asserting that “it was time to be a director, not an engineer”. This new-found autonomy, the post-1997 handover financial crisis, and the departure of senior figures like Tsui, John Woo and Ringo Lam for Hollywood allowed To the space to develop what has since become his authorial signature: genre films focusing on characters and shot through with operatic flourishes that belie their surprisingly low budgets; a use of close-to-hand locations (often in and around his own office and studio); and extremely economical shooting schedules. An astonishing 33 completed features between 1995 and 2009 testify to the discipline and leanness of To’s directorial approach. Balancing competing cinematic influences – the emotional expressiveness of Martin Scorsese (“my favourite director”), Akira Kurosawa (“a god”) and Jacques Demy with the spare, minimalist interiority of Kieślowski, Kobayashi and, especially, Melville – what emerges is a romanticised fatalism, where codes of honour and loyalty drenched in potent cinematic mythologies are tempered by a sober reckoning with the more realistic and banal elements of criminal life. His action scenes, built from behaviour and character – who yields, who hesitates, who acts decisively – are as elegantly choreographed as his occasional forays into musicals, and contain emotional resonances which linger in our bodies long after the dust has settled on their protagonists.

Wednesday 27 May

7:00pm ELECTION

Johnnie To (2005) 101 mins – MA 15+

Featuring a large ensemble cast led by Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Simon Yam as two opposing gang leaders engaged in a vicious struggle for power, To’s defining film brought a fresh perspective to the Hong Kong crime genre with its sobering, unromanticised view of the criminal underworld and the corruption within it. Often cited as To’s magnum opus, the film premiered in competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and went on to become a success in Hong Kong and around the world. Winner of Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay at the Hong Kong Film Awards.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

9:00pm EXILED

Johnnie To (2006) 110 mins – M

A quartet of hitmen in pre-handover Macau find the bonds of friendship tested when they fall on opposite sides in their latest assignment. An elegiac mix of ritual, camaraderie and impending doom – staged with To’s typical feel for pauses, hesitations and sudden eruptions – the film showcases his regular ensemble playing in brilliant harmony, with Anthony Wong most fully embodying the film’s bruised humour and weary grace. The widescreen frame turns every room into a pressure chamber, a space for a melancholic dance between loyalty and inevitability that plays closer to Peckinpah or Leone than to a contemporary gun opera. With Simon Yam.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Exiled/Fongchuk
by David Sanjek

Wednesday 3 June

7:00pm RUNNING ON KARMA

Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai (2003) 93 mins – MA 15+

Andy Lau, donning an impressive muscle suit, won Best Actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards for his turn as a monk-turned-bodybuilder who teams up with Cecilia Cheung’s cop. A supernatural buddy movie that defies genre categorisation, To’s tenth collaboration with co-director Wai indulges in a kinetic visual palette and stylised action choreography to create a highly entertaining confection. While it may be “one of the looniest high concepts to date” (Variety’s Derek Elley), its enriching spirituality and Buddhist themes grant it a truly rewarding depth.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

8:45pm LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE

Johnnie To (2011) 107 mins – M

A financial thriller built from intersecting strands – a small-time gangster scrambling for relevance, a loan officer nudged into predatory sales, and an overextended cop circling the fallout. Part of the post-GFC trickle of “we should’ve seen this coming” cinema, To’s mix of low-key absurdity and criminal opportunism is as much ironic farce as cautionary tale. Ordinary people collapse under forces they barely grasp, and capitalism reveals itself as just another of To’s rigged games, exposing the moral fault lines of everyone from swaggering crooks to bewildered pensioners.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

Wednesday 10 June

7:00pm THROW DOWN

Johnnie To (2004) 96 mins – M

Released during To’s most deliriously prolific period of filmmaking between 2001 and 2005, this convention-breaking martial-arts comic drama is set amidst the hidden bars and neon-lit nightclubs of Hong Kong’s underworld. Claimed by To as his tribute to Akira Kurosawa’s first film, Sanshiro Sugata, it has an unsurprisingly high number of beautifully choreographed and impactful fight scenes. Louis Koo plays an alcoholic bar owner and former judo champion who is challenged by a young rival (Aaron Kwok). This odd couple meet up with Mona (Cherrie Ying), a wannabe pop star.

35mm print courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia.

8:50pm RUNNING OUT OF TIME

Johnnie To (1999) 93 mins – M

A dying master criminal (Andy Lau) seeking revenge on the crime syndicates ingeniously enlists a police inspector (Lau Ching-Wan) as his unwitting accomplice. To’s ultra cool and hyper-stylised contemporary thriller pays distinct homage to the cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville while also leading the way towards key later works of Hong Kong crime cinema like the Election and Infernal Affairs series. Completed in fits and starts over a period of two years, this emotionally engaging and highly inventive take on the heist subgenre illustrates why David Bordwell called To “the most versatile talent” in Hong Kong cinema, with the best “track record since John Woo and Tsui Hark”.

35mm print.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
Running out of Time
by David Sanjek