6 - Underneath the Shock Waves: The (Un)told Stories of Herman Yau

Summary

‘Refusing to give up is what success is all about.’

— Stephen Chow and Herman Yau, New King of Comedy

Introduction

To shed further light on the development of the Hong Kong model (of filmmaking), it is necessary to have a flexible consideration of the idea of ‘main melody’ itself. Notwith standing its diversification, the genre of main melody films must promote national rejuvenation and enhance the images of the nation, the Party and the Army. From a volleyball team to a pilot, the main melody has been played to win glory for the country. Owing to the continued commercialisation of Chinese cinema, however, some mainstream films with less overt political messages have also been produced to sing ‘quasi-main melodies’. Anti-crime topics, in general, are central in Chinese cinema; good and evil is a clear-cut dichotomy, and justice must be done in the mainland market. More specifically, anti-terrorist, anti-drug and anti-corruption have become key themes echoing the national rejuvenation project. It will be argued in this chapter that, besides propaganda works that paid tribute to the nation, the Party and the Army, those loosely defined ‘quasi-main melody’ films were also very important.

The flow of this chapter is a bit diff erent from that of the previous five. In the previous chapters, I first sketched the trajectories of the directors’ film careers in Hong Kong, based on which their main(land) melody projects were further discussed. In this chapter, I will begin with a main(land) melody film directed by Herman Yau in 2011, and then move on to his earlier projects before going back to his ‘quasi-main melody’ blockbusters towards the end of the 2010s. As mentioned in the Introduction, the main melody films that paid tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution in 2011 kick-started a new decade of main melody blockbusters. Besides Teddy Chan's Bodyguards and Assassins (2009) and Jackie Chan's 1911 (2011), Herman Yau's The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake (2011) was also an example of early pioneering main melody projects helmed by a Hong Kong director.