The film is more a self-actualization of Director Jiang himself on his aspirations and far-sightedness than a readily decipherable reading for the audience. Alongside the 4 episodes respectively under the narrative motifs of insanity, love, gunman and dream, the quadruple-segmented parody in a non-chronological structure embeds in its inner core, quite implicitly, a philosophy of karma, cycling, reborn, rejuvenation and blessings. Structurally, events in the last episode (dream) precede those in the first episode (insanity) in temporal dimension but is narrated in a flashback. The interrelatedness between the first episode (insanity)and the third (gunman) as well as the sequential arrangement of the second episode (love) and the third (gunman) provides a bridge that completes the causality in both temporal and spatial dimensions of the story. The last episode (dream), a flashback, closes most gaps, bestowing on the audience a residual brain working activity on leaving the cinema.
The wide spectrum of the director's meditation of the story does not call for a preferred reading on the part of the audience. Instead, it leaves ample rooms for decoding and boundless interpretation. Insanity rides through the entire story in various degrees and in variant forms: insanity reigns in the insanity episode; it then tunes down itself as an over-reaction in the love episode; it transforms itself into an extreme sentiment and lust in the gunman episode; it becomes a possible nirvana (expressed in an aberrant gesture of the character), under a rising sun, on the next generation in the dream episode.
Jiang establishes love as another common narrative theme and the act of running as visual motif in the four episodes. Love sways between parental care and lovers' romance in the sequences. The wide geographical coverage in the story and the western-styled gunman perhaps are projections of the grandiose and ostensible aspirations of the director.
Under fast pacing, fast cutting, elliptical narrative, a deluge of film language and cinematographic techniques, fluidity in temporal and spatial orientations and with abrupt slapsticks in loud volume (ambient sounds), the film presents with comic effects and titillating musical acoustics a contrivance from an essentially intrinsic perspective that swings between perceptibility and imperceptibility to practical decoders.
The wide spectrum of the director's meditation of the story does not call for a preferred reading on the part of the audience. Instead, it leaves ample rooms for decoding and boundless interpretation. Insanity rides through the entire story in various degrees and in variant forms: insanity reigns in the insanity episode; it then tunes down itself as an over-reaction in the love episode; it transforms itself into an extreme sentiment and lust in the gunman episode; it becomes a possible nirvana (expressed in an aberrant gesture of the character), under a rising sun, on the next generation in the dream episode.
Jiang establishes love as another common narrative theme and the act of running as visual motif in the four episodes. Love sways between parental care and lovers' romance in the sequences. The wide geographical coverage in the story and the western-styled gunman perhaps are projections of the grandiose and ostensible aspirations of the director.
Under fast pacing, fast cutting, elliptical narrative, a deluge of film language and cinematographic techniques, fluidity in temporal and spatial orientations and with abrupt slapsticks in loud volume (ambient sounds), the film presents with comic effects and titillating musical acoustics a contrivance from an essentially intrinsic perspective that swings between perceptibility and imperceptibility to practical decoders.