An Inaccurate Memoir

The international title An Inaccurate Memoir is perhaps the work of some additional providence. Though we don’t get the expected self-reflection in the narrative, the title rather accurately describes the impression one has after watching the film. And although the film operates with the character of the narrator, he is never doubted and merely serves as a slapdash, simplified narrative element whose purpose is to piece together into a vague whole the completely incoherent passages and the truly inaccurate and inconsistent motivations of the characters and the causal connection of their actions. The filmmakers evidently wanted to create another contribution to the category of Chinese pseudo-westerns, or rather western-inspired movies, which includes a diverse array of films such as the brilliant Swordsman In Double Flag Town, the comic-book action flick Wind Blast and the nihilistic morality tale No Man’s Land. A key aspect of all of the above-mentioned films, however, is that they deal with the legacy of the western both stylistically and creatively. Conversely, An Inaccurate Memoir adopts only a visual aesthetic that revels in gratuitously spectacular shots. However, nothing of the western or anti-western ethos appears in the film. If we really wanted to, we could say that what we have here is a kind of dubious antithesis of Wu xia that conforms to contemporary ideology. Wu xia features the valiant warriors of centuries long past whose ethics stand against the villainy of the ruling classes. In An Inaccurate Memoir, we follow a group of ruffians who, during the Japanese occupation in the first half of the twentieth century, are made national heroes through the purposeful manipulation of one conscientious resistance fighter. It’s a shame that in this case the heroes are subordinated not to ethics but to their own personal benefit and the status of heroism itself, which is not presented as a subversion of the rules of the genre, but simply as an inclination toward the right path. But the truth remains that, like the English title, such considerations only try to retrospectively find some meaning in a misguided jumble of spectacularly filmed passages that don’t have any meaning. (10/09/2014)