A CHINESE ODYSSEY: PANDORA'S BOX (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

I'll dispose first of a bit of business about the subtitle: this film has nothing at all to do with the Pandora's Box of Greek mythology, even in a metaphorical sense. In this first part of a two-part project, the box doesn't even appear until the last hour of the movie, as a magical time-travel device, and doesn't have a big impact on the narrative. The sort of instantaneous temporal jaunting it provides contrasts strongly with the only kinds of time-travel seen in pre-technological stories: the "Rip Van Winkle method" and the "reincarnation method," both of which appear in the source material being adapted here.

I have never read any translated version of the 16th-century Chinese fantasy-novel JOURNEY TO THE WEST, but I've read assorted summaries and seen a fair number of secondary adaptations. Thus, even before re-watching ODYSSEY's second part, I think it's a given that writer-director Jeffrey Lau was only using the general plot and characters of JOURNEY as a springboard for his own story. In fact, given that the main narrative focuses upon two demon-women and the mortal men who get involved with them-- which doesn't seem a major trope in JOURNEY-- ODYSSEY seems a little closer in structure to the many cinematic versions of another Chinese classic, "Legend of the White Snake." It may not be coincidence that the 1990s premiere hot-shot Hong Kong producer Tsui Hark had previously done one such serpentine adaptation a year or two before ODYSSEY.

There's a short set-up in some vague archaic period in China's history, focusing on Monkey King (Stephen Chow) being sentenced to a punishment by the goddess Kuanyin: to be reincarnated as a mortal until he learns the importance of the Buddhist truths, as represented by his erstwhile master Longevity Monk (Kar-Ling Yaw). Some generations later, Monkey King is reborn as a common mortal bandit, Joker (also Chow). 

Joker and his fellow bandits hang out in some small rural village until a beautiful woman, Jing Jing (Karen Mok) makes the scene. All the men try to peep on her at her toilette, but out of nowhere a giant spider appears and many gross hijinks result. The spider turns into another beautiful female, Spider Woman (Kit Ying Lam), and Joker finds out to his regret that both females are sister-demons. They've come to the village on some vague notion of looking for the reincarnation of Monkey King, on the theory that he can lead them to the reincarnation of Longevity Monk. If the sisters can find the Monk, they can devour his flesh and so gain immortality. Joker not only doesn't know that he was once the fractious hero Monkey King, he also doesn't suspect that his Number Two bandit-buddy, billed as "Assistant Master," was once "Pigsy," another humanized animal who ended up serving under the original Longevity Monk. I'll just call the bandit Pigsy for sake of potential clarity.

The sisters don't seem to have any means of figuring out where their intended victim is, but their quest is rendered somewhat moot by the arrival of an even more powerful demon, the minotaur-like creature Bull King (Shuming Lu). The demon-sisters take Joker and Pigsy to a secluded cave, which becomes the main set for the rest of the film's action. While in the company of Jing Jing, she and Joker fall in love. Spider Woman doesn't feel quite so intensely toward Pigsy, but thanks to one of those unplanned metaphysical interactions that just kind of happens, Pigsy impregnates Spider Woman (not, to be sure, the old-fashioned way). Spider Woman is so mortified at getting knocked up by a common mortal that she forbids him to tell anyone that he is the father of their child (which gets birthed super-quickly in a big comical scene). Later Spider Woman tells her sister that Joker fathered the child, which breaks Jing Jing's heart. She commits suicide, after which Joker seeks to use Pandora's Box to go back in time and prevent Jing Jing's death-- a plotline that will then bleed into the second part of the story.

Though I haven't liked a lot of Chinese comedies, most of the zany stunts and grossout jokes here work pretty well, and even though the sets aren't as opulent as the best Tsui Hark fantasies, the fight-scenes are more than adequate, particularly a magical battle between Jing Jing and Bull King. In a scene destined for Hong Kong immortality, Jing Jing shrinks herself to insect-size, zooms down into the bull-man's stomach and starts slicing up organs, leading to the memorable line from Bull King: "Bitch, don't step on my intestines."

But I wouldn't give ODYSSEY PART 1 a strong mythicity if I didn't think it succeeded in drawing some intriguing opposition between the world of Buddhist self-renunciation and the cosmos of sublime romance-- again, possibly more like the "White Snake" fable than like the 16th-century novel. Though the Buddhist precepts are "true," the romantic entanglements have their own, arguably lesser truths, and the first part of the story essentially leaves them at odds with one another, just as they are in human culture and consciousness.