March 08, 2004
"Some anarchists imbued with the festive spirit of May '68 acquired the rights to a Taiwanese film, adapted the soundtrack and managed to infiltrate the local cinemas mainly visited by immigrant workers. Its title, The Dialectic Can Break Stones , was, it seems, an imitation of one of Mao's famous dictums. The pirated plot went something like this: out-and-out war pits two gangs of youths against each other, the bureaucrats against the libertarians. The leader of the latter - we'll call him Ling Pi - goes out alone to fight off 20 of the enemy. His little sister Miu wants to fight alongside him, but our hero puts a stop to that: "Your mistaken political line won't let you come with me. Stop reading the mind-numbing pair Marx and Lenin and get into the complete works of Sade!" Another sequence shows Ling Pi, in full possession of his martial arts, as his forearm chops its way through the ranks of bureaucrats: "You idiots, stop parroting Marchais's editorials from L'Humanité !" The leader of the enemy: "Revisionist, traitor!" Ling Pi: "Now you'll find out about the muscle-power of a pupil of Nietzsche and Lou Andrea Salomé!' Needless to say, I was delighted by the film. But it also delighted the rest of the spectators who, absorbed in the wondrous action, didn't pay much attention to the sparkling wit of the dialogue."
Posted by William Blaze at March 8, 2004 09:01 PM