GUISI (SILK)
Taiwan, 2006, 116 minutes, Colour.
Chen Chang, Yosuke Eguchi, Barbie Hsu, Berlin Chen, Karen Lam.
Directed by Chao- Pin Su.
East Asian cinema has been preoccupied with ghost stories for more than a decade. How much of it is part of the culture of the region, how much religious belief or how much of it is a successful trend that has been imitated by Hollywood?
Silk is one of the better examples – though just as far-fetched as any. It tries to give the impression that it is dealing with the phenomenon in a scientific way, the invention of an energy sponge that can trap energy even from another world. When the ghost of a young boy appears, investigation goes into full swing. The results are eerie – and destructive of the team.
Along the way reflections are offered on the meaning of life and death. The silk of the title is a mysterious thread that appears as the ghosts go to their murderous work and link their energy with their victims.
1. Asian interest in the supernatural in its films of the 1990s and the following years? The Asian traditions about ghosts and ghost stories?
2. This film and its intention to give a rational approach to ghosts? The invention of the sponge? To capture energy? From beyond life and in the next world? The scientific approach, the
police investigation approach? Yet the mysterious and the mystery of life after death?
3. The Taipei settings? The house with the siege? The abandoned house? The rooms with the ghost? The streets, the contemporary Taipei settings, the underground? The musical score and its eerie atmosphere?
4. The title, the silk thread, linking the energy of the ghosts to people in this world?
5. The prologue, the Canadian, his setting up the photos, his being commissioned to photograph the ghost? His failing - then his looking at the photos, the appearance of the boy, the terror of his death? The picture of him lying dead - and the autopsy and Tung actually opening him up, taking out his heart and seeing the imprints of the hand and fingers?
6. The siege of the house, the little boy and his getting the numbers from his scientist father? The hostage attack to the bomb? The squad coming in and defusing the bomb? Tung and his ability to lip-read and getting the code? The boy found in the cupboard? The boy as the ghost? The sniper shooting his father dead, saving the hostage?
7. The team and their invention of the Menger Sponge? Hashimoto and his polio, his artificial limb? His genius? The invention? His accountability to the chiefs? His asking for more time to find the ghosts? His decision to hire Tung, his ability to lip-read? A good investigator? His assistant? The young couple and their work, their scepticism?
8. The appearance of the ghost, the boy? The woman and her trying to use her own methods, being trapped behind the glass? Looking at the boy, her being killed by him - and the two forms of the woman, the theory about energy, the second image disintegrating?
9. Tung, his background, his relationship with his mother, her wanting to die, her boiling the egg and putting her hand in the water? Her going to the hospital? The tension of the relationship
between the two? His coming to assist Hashimoto? His commission? His examining the body of the Canadian? His following the boy - going around the city, getting on the bus and off the bus? Going to the school - interviewing the teacher, finding out that the boy had killed himself? His following the boy, the threat to the man in the street, his pulling the gun, his own wounds? His further pursuit, the car chase, the crashing of the car and his getting out? His encounter the other ghosts? In the train? Going to the hospital for his mother? The ghosts finally destroying him - but his being resuscitated, his heart being revived?
10. Hashimoto, crippled, fall and his injuries? His relationship with the women? His orders to the young couple? His pessimism - his philosophy about life and death? His ultimately cutting his own throat?
11. The women, the investigations? The young assistants?
12. The ghosts, the boy, the mother? Their appearances, their moving in and out of people? Their destructiveness?
13. The significance of the silk thread? The link between this world and the next?
14. The rational approach to investigating ghosts - how realistic, surrealistic, transcendent?
