Demons Directed by Daniel Hui
Demons
Directed by Daniel Hui
Starring: Vicki Yang, Glen Goei, Daniel Hui
Country: Singapore
Year: 2018
Author review: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
"I will be like a father to you."
Konstantin S. Stanislavskij introduced clear scientific criteria in the study of acting and the about the relationship between actor and director.
"We directors know better than anyone how much this attitude costs and how it blocks the common work. So, we need to create a correct ethic and artistic discipline, to force this group of actors to prepare at home before each rehearsal." (1)
It is not just ethics and discipline affairs. It is mainly a creative process, in which acting comes from strong study.
To achieve this, directors have to work hard, head, stimulate, encourage: “Many actors and actresses without creative initiative, come to rehearsals and wait for someone to drag them on the path of creativity and sometimes the director, after many efforts, these passive actors take energy, spirit. ... Only we directors know how much effort, patience, nerves and time are needed to move these actors out of their laziness and standstill. Women with coquetry always repeat: "What can I do! I cannot act until I feel the role. When I feel it, everything will come out on its own." (2)
The director must use "effort, patience, nerves and time" but undoubtedly, Stanislavskij never said that the director should also use cannibalism.
Cannibal is the theatre director Daniel, the protagonist with the actress Vicki, of the film Demons by Daniel Hui.
The author: "Actually both characters from Vicki and Daniel, and of course also the character I play in the film, are all versions of me. I would say that these are different sides to me and my fears. For this reason, the film is very personal for me, as well as what Vicki does." (3)
The director's job is intricate and terrifying. Everything must be perfect. If there were no division of responsibility between director and actors, everything would be lost. So, the director must use all his power. He has too much power. A hegemony that, perhaps involuntarily, could produce damage and victims. Maybe in free time director could also be friendly and nice but in the set must be a anthropophagus, must eat the soul of the actors. Daniel Hui finds justification for so much wickedness and says it resolutely: "You know, one of my biggest fears that I will become that person. Especially me as a man and as a film director. I could easily inflict on others, even unknowingly. My point of view is that of people who perpetrate the acts of violence, of the times is not that they are intentionally cruel people. It is just that they don't care or they don't know, because they are in a position of power that they don't have to consider how the other person feels." (4)
Extreme close-up, a girl and a director "Why I should choose you as my actress?" It is the first interview between Daniel and Vicki. The woman immediately shows her personality. She talks shyly, stammers and; camera opens: "Why hasn't she undressed yet?"
These are the two characters.
Daniel is superb, certain of his superiority, haughty, cynical, greedy for success, proud. In his close-up the man is disagreeable, unpleasant, smoking a cigar full of stand-offishness.
Vicki is the opposite. She has no lust, no carnality, no appeal. She is insignificant, suffering from melancholy and inertia, and so much weakness. The director exhibits her or while crying for delusions or fragility, for her phobias, or on knees while vomiting.
There is an almost religious tension between them. For the realization of the work, Daniel must suck her soul. The narration abandon any forms of realism and fills the story of surreal, imaginative, strange, horror, metaphysical, dreamlike, irrational scenes.
Daniel and Vichi are in the car, they split, and they unite. The camera is behind, and often filmed them in profile. It is a night trip. They are hidden, the feeble light becomes fog. There is something spiritual. An invisible force upsets the woman's vulnerability, and she runs away in the foggy darkness. The director follows her, stops her.
To calm her down, to give her confidence, he has sex with her. She does not resist; she accepts as if it were a duty. Nevertheless, Daniel is not like Harvey Weinstein. In fact, he is gay. He lives with his boyfriend (played by the same Daniel Hui) so fucking with Vicki is not a pleasure but a job, because as Stanislavsky said, the actor must work on the part even at home.
It is a succession of illusory, absurd, illogical sequences, but the most nonsensical is the fish one. Vicki lives with her brother and they invite the director to dinner. He does not bring a courtesy bouquet for her, he deliveries nice package, complete with a bow. Inside there is a fish, a kind of brill. What Vichi has to do with it: "Try it on. You should wear it."The woman puts the fish on her head. The sibling tells her to thank with: "Come on, moo" and she mooed: "Just like a cow". The camera frames the director and the brother alternately. They rudely laugh and make fun of poor Vicki. A disturbing scene, Daniel Hui describes it this way: “A lot of scenes are quite disturbing and scary. For example, the one with the fish, because for Vicky the situation is painfully embarrassing and uncomfortable, but the two characters at the table are just laughing.
Daniel: That is the scene which made me most uncomfortable when I was editing. It is strange because we were shooting it we were laughing so much, because we just found it so funny. We were all laughing, because we were all laughing. But then when I edited it, I suddenly realized I felt extremely uncomfortable with the scene. It is strange, like I said, sometimes we do not realize what we are doing until it is too late." (5)
These types of episodes continue until the theatrical play. It is a success. Daniel and Vicki are filmed from behind while receiving applause from the public. However, Vicki turns back, towards the camera, she has an alarming face. After the triumph, Vicki disappears.
The second part changes the tone.
The police physically accuse the director about crime against Vichi.
Unconsciously, he has already punished himself by frightening visions and seize by a mysterious cult.
The first atonement is in a Kafkaesque scene, incomprehensible and also highly disturbing. Daniel Hui: “Especially in the scene where Glen has a meeting with funds committee, everyone understands each other, and they are laughing but he doesn't understand so he kicked out of that unit. The same when you are in the foreign country and you don't speak the language, you are outside." (6)
The scene: two women announce to Daniel that their association refuses to funding his theatrical activities. Two women explain the reasons: "We are asked to load the malware with electronic devices to control the hypnotic level. Yes, and this review shows evidence of incorporated rhizomes. They could stop the continental self-inspection parameter. As long as you hide the cost and the rotoscope you can still benefit from many myopic nodules. We do not say that you will not be able to regenerate your dual character but the competition requires that frequency and feedback be decompressed so as to be able to reinforce this unstable sector."
Pure madness. Senseless phrases. In the first part of movie, the insanity was exhibited through words, gestures and movements, always characterized by a strong moderation.
Now, the stylistic and visual rebellion of Daniel Hui, burst.
The accusation is terrible: cannibalism. Figurative or material? "The truth is that you are a cannibal."
The director is on trial. The judges are odd characters, they wear the hoods like Ku Klux Klan. Red dominates, the director's face is soaked in blood. The defence has only one direction:
"Without me where would you be now?",
"You are always destined to play the same role."
However, the truth "is as I had no more power". The director has lost supremacy; now he is defeated, depressed, destroyed. The beheading is necessary.
In the film, the camera moves slowly, the zooms finish to close-up. Madness and dissociation have priority for Daniel Hui, who uses electronic scenes, editing with so much blood. The modern computerized element is compared to the atavistic aspect like ghosts.
The relationship between actors and director is magical; it is intensity and conflict affair. Aware of these contrasts, Daniel Hui has a smart idea. He chooses an equal performer for playing the Daniel character. He entrusts the role to a real theatre director Glen Goei, so he avoided cannibalism and beheading.
Konstantin S. Stanislavskij, Il lavoro dell’attore su se stesso, Laterza, Diciassettesima edizione 2005, Pag. 500 (translatedby author)
Konstantin S. Stanislavskij, Il lavoro dell’attore su se stesso, Laterza, Diciassettesima edizione 2005, Pag. 501 (translatedby author)