Project Gutenberg, Facing Life’s Uncertainty

Project Gutenberg, Facing Life’s Uncertainty

Starring two major icons, Chow Yun-fat and Aaron Kwok, Project Gutenberg is a rare gem among Hong Kong films in recent years. Some viewers even called it a symbol of the revival of Hong Kong cinema after watching it. Yet it is hard for Project Gutenberg alone to bear the weight of the word “revival.” The gradual fading and decline of Hong Kong cinema in recent years may contain an element of chance, but more of it feels like the natural rise and fall of things, an unavoidable withering. Even if fine works still appear from time to time, and even if Chow Yun-fat’s gun-blazing elegance strongly recalls the dashing Mark Gor of old, glory has nonetheless become yesterday’s flower. The overall decline of Hong Kong film—and even of Hong Kong’s once-central place in Chinese-language entertainment and popular culture—still seems impossible to avoid.

Still, in today’s increasingly diminished Hong Kong film scene, amid the flood of nauseating trash—including many former great directors repeatedly churning out bad films for money, irresponsibly squandering their reputations—there are occasionally one or two exceptional works that call to mind the golden age of Hong Kong cinema. Project Gutenberg is exactly that kind of refreshing surprise. If not for the trailer, where Chow Yun-fat still carried his old charisma, I might have ignored this film altogether. Thankfully, Chow Yun-fat was in it.

The narrative style of Project Gutenberg is not new, but it is extremely risky: one careless move, and the whole thing could collapse. With Kevin Spacey’s The Usual Suspects setting the standard, this film clearly draws great confidence and inspiration from it (and perhaps invites serious accusations of imitation). Films like Fight Club also contain many similar narrative devices and plot reversals. Even so, within Chinese-language cinema, this style remains rare and bold. To a considerable extent, more than the plot itself, this film relies on Chow Yun-fat’s successful performance. His acting smooths over many of the script’s otherwise stiff and awkward flaws, allowing the audience to immerse themselves more in the pleasure of watching the film—and in nostalgia for old Hong Kong cinema—rather than spending too much energy picking apart the script’s weaknesses and inconsistencies.

A narrative like this is bound to have shortcomings. A few years ago, I imagine I might have seriously watched the film a second or third time just to point out all the plot holes and logical ambiguities one by one. But after many years, and after experiencing life’s many bewildering uncertainties, the simple pleasure of watching now means far more to me than debugging a film. On a deeper level, I have begun to feel that if drama is like life, and life itself is already a journey full of imperfections, then why should we demand absolute perfection from a screenplay? Perhaps stiffness and abruptness are themselves part of life’s incomprehensibility.

Our carefully laid plans may collapse entirely because of one person’s despair. The relationships we believe to be under control may in fact already be full of hidden danger. Breakdown and rupture always happen in an instant, yet that instant is often the result of our lack of insight into life’s uncertainty. Where there is light, there is shadow. Everyone carries a part of themselves they do not fully know. Haruki Murakami wrote in Kafka on the Shore that people are often drawn into greater tragedy not because of their flaws, but because of their strengths. The story of Project Gutenberg offers further proof of this.

Beyond Chow Yun-fat’s charisma and the familiar supporting faces so characteristic of Hong Kong films, another similarity this movie shares with the golden age of Hong Kong cinema is its habit of casually dropping lines of striking wisdom—something largely absent from most of today’s cash-grab productions. For example, Chow Yun-fat’s character says to Aaron Kwok’s: “Out of millions of people, only one is the protagonist. Those who become protagonists are people who push themselves to the limit. And to succeed, the stage matters a lot...” When it comes to life, striving to reach one’s utmost and finding the right stage are indeed profound truths, capable of provoking thought and offering inspiration. For a commercial film to achieve that much is no easy thing.