Hong Kong 1941 (12) |Home Ents Review

This intimate epic showcases the nuances Hong Kong film was capable of in its heyday: it is a powerful tale of family tensions, a love triangle, loyalty among friends and a brutal occupation. 

Ha (Yip) is the daughter of a successful merchant. She’s in love with Wong (Man), a petty criminal working around the docks. After Wong meets Yip (Chow) at a riot caused by Ha’s father’s stockpiling of rice, the three people soon become inseparable friends. 

As the British authorities come to realise how exposed they are to Japanese invasion, law and order breaks down. When the invasion threat becomes real, lines are quickly drawn and sides taken. Man continues with his black market activities and Yip starts to play a double role, working for both the Japanese authorities and the mainland Chinese communists. Ha looks on aghast as her father sides with the Japanese to further his business interests. 

All three of them want to escape Hong Kong as soon as possible, together. But the window for escape is closing and the cost growing. 

Northampton-born director Po-Chih Leong takes a no-frills approach to the action and the quieter dramatic moments. This approach works well with the script, which tends to develop the plot through personal encounters between the characters rather than through any epic vision. There is also some impressive cinematography by Brian Lai. 

Cecilia Yip narrates but Chow Yun-Fat is the standout actor here – the man does glow!

As is often the case with HK films, what struck me was the different approach taken here, compared to an historical drama made in Europe or the US. The film creates an overwhelming situational ‘war is chaos’ note that threatens to render everything else irrelevant: there is no sense of ‘grand passion’ here or even of heroic choices and deeds. 

Encounters in the streets or in domestic interiors alert the viewer to the possible choices for the characters: collaborator, Communist resisters, the cynically self-interested. Then, we don’t see anyone making a choice, we see them already in the milieu of their choice. This downplaying of the drama of choice feels refreshing and unusual here.

This is a largely unsentimental film about loyalty between friends, in the midst of violent historical upheaval. If you don’t like it, you can blame Margaret Thatcher. As Tony Rayns mentions in one of the extras, it was Thatcher’s 1984 agreement to hand Hong Kong to the Chinese (in 1997) that set HK films makers to remembering the historical precedent to British surrender of the colony.