TRAN ANH HUNG

I blogged about this on my dayre before but I thought that I would properly construct a post about it.
I want to talk about one of my fav directors - Tran Anh Hung

He isn't as famous as let's say:
- Michael Bay (guy obsessed with explosions, basically the director of Transformers)
- Wes Anderson (another of my fav directors who is actually quite famous lol – The Grand Budapest Hotel, Rushmore CLASSIC)
- Luc Besson (guy who directed MANY of movies I adore to death – Taken, The Fifth Element and the most recently LUCY)

Tran doesn't have many films under his belt, so far - he has only directed 5 theatre films and 2 short films. His works include the award winning “The Scent of Green Papaya” and “Cyclo” which are also not very well known unless you’re really really into movies. Tran is a Vietnamese-born French film director whose works are heavily influenced by French cinema and also from some European and Japanese filmmakers.

Why I like Tran's Directing
If you watched the trailers of the earlier movies he shot, it is seemingly abstract and contains no verbal actions. Kind of like the upcoming Adam Sandler (last chance at redeeming urself bro), Jennifer Garner and Ansel Elgort film “Men, Women & Children” – also a movie I highly anticipate, you guys should go check out the trailer, it’s a work of art. Directed by Jason Reitman who also directed Juno and Up in the Air - perfect man.

Tran likes to direct movies based on feeling and emotions. Words – not so much. As much as I’m a lover of words, I really like his style of directing. It took me awhile to get used to but once you understand where Tran is coming from when directing these films, you feel the raw emotion he is trying to make the viewer understand.

Trần's style of filmmaking is expressed through the claim: "Art is the truth wearing mask". He denies the conventional story-telling style and pursues making films with a new language: "to challenges the audience's feeling, making them enjoy the films not with the critical reasoning but the body language".

I basically grabbed it off wiki but this explains it perfectly. His movies don’t really have a conventional flow. He has choppy consistencies and quick unexplained transitions. Some people really don’t like this (as I read from forums and discussion boards) but for me, I feel like this style of film-making forces one to think. 

Also, the screenplays he usually chooses to adapt into film are very different. He is a definite risk taker. He was one of the brave individuals who decided to adapt Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood into film – which is very, very challenging. 

Murakami’s books are generally written in first person point of view, which is harder to be transitioned into film as you can’t really show thoughts apart from saying it out loud. I wouldn’t say he did an excellent job on the adaptation, but I really enjoyed the silent scenes and just the whole thought process of Watanabe/Midori/Naoko. 

Midori and Watanabe

The closest other director I can think of who is similar to Tran is Daihachi Yoshida, who is a Japanese director who only shot 5/6 films, but very well directed films. After I typed so much, I just wanna say that these are all just my personal analysis and thoughts so it has no basis lol but if you have time and would like to venture into independent films, start with Tran.

PSA: Appreciate directors because without them, there would be no films *ba dum tss*

Many 21st century directors are now slanting away from the norms and it's such a breath of fresh air.