Cities

Watched 伤城 with Miao the other day, but I keep pushing back the time to blog it because it makes me quite depressed.
I am a movie lover, in fact its one of my greatest passion, but I seldom go watch movies cos i know i get affected by them too much.
Much more than u guys will understand.
And Confessions of Pain is one of those movies that will haunt me for quite a long time.
The last movie which made me totally obssessed was Matrix, cos its so though provoking I went on to study Animatirx, Enter the Matirx, Matrix revisited, and of course the two sequels.

伤城 reminds me of a short story from the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman.
This regular Joe who lives in a regular city lives a monotonous life, but he is very interested in simple things like how the shadow of a building is especially nice today, how this flower bloom over the months etc, those things we take for granted in a city.
Then one particular day, this guy, while admiring a ray of sunlight shining on a certain part of a street, entered a realm which looks so familiar yet feels very different.
Its like he's still in the original city, but there's very little people, and the so called "people" are shadow-like, disappearing into street corners.
Everything looks very vague and dream-like, but that guy is sure he's not dreaming. He began exploring the city and is surprised to find that the little miracles he dscovers everyday are all around the city, some beautiful sunrays, a well-structured building etc, but he gets tired and kinda lost soon after. He met some people along the way, and they looked confused too.
He finally met an old man, who says he stuck there for a long time already, somehow that regular Joe manages to get out, after hearing from the old man that he was not dreaming, but he was inside the dream of the City that he lives in.
You see, because Sandman is about Dream, throughout the series you realise everything actually dreams.
So this guy, after escaping from the City's dream, moved into the countryside.
When asked it is because he's afraid to enter the dream of the city again,
he said," no, I am afraid that someday the City will wake from its dream."

What if someday, Singapore decides to wake up from its dream and realise what we've done to it? So surreal was the city's dream, it wont be able to take it when it realise we've changed everything. That scares me sometimes when I have weird nightmares.
This is unrelated to 伤城 but somehow, to me, the idea about a city which is beautiful on the outside and wounded badly on the inside makes my heart hurt just that little bit.

伤城's storyline starts in 2003, which is the year of SARS, and the death of two celebrated stars, Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung, for Hongkong, it sure leaves a deep wound.
So in the midst of Christmas and New Year celebration, the police is out there to nab a serial rapist and killer.
With carols in the background and killings taking place, I can almost feel the City bleeding.
Just like how I took Tony Leung's character, Hei's side almost immediately after the movie tells his story.
When you've lost everything, then you've nothing to lose.
What can stop you from going all out to take revenge?
The wound that those bastards left on him is what made the calm, handsome, perfect guy kill his enemies ruthlessly, cold-bloodedly.
But somehow, i think Susan knows that Hei really did love her, if not she wouldnt be so sad.
The love is precisely what that hurt her the most.
It hurts extra bad when the person whom u love and loves you does such terrible things to you.
Cos you know deep inside, that person is bleeding more than you are.
She couldnt take the pain, so she died, perhaps it was suicide, perhaps her mind and body is too weak to take the pain.
He couldn't take the pain too, and so he died along with her.

Takeshi's Bong managed to recover from his love wounds, but Hei couldnt, and by commiting suicide, he in turn left another emotional wound in Bong.
A city is always filled with stories, and its those that hurts most that gets left behind.