YESASIA: Customer Reviews - Re-Cycle (Blu-ray) (US Version) -

numinair
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April 18, 2008

This customer review refers to Re-Cycle (DTS Special Edition) (Hong Kong Version)

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rE-cYclE Customer Review Rated Bad 8 - 8 out of 10

For the Pang Bros, "Re-cycle" must be (so far) the most lavish production they have made yet, aside to the final scenes of "The Eye", and certainly a film with creditable aspects. "Re-cycle" is another trek into the brother's dark worlds (they seem to excel when together, don't they), and although this film is derivative, its certainly interesting if only for the twisted fantasia journey you'll get from it. "Re-cycle", though, isn't exactly a scary title in itself reflecting, the horror of the tale, but more a warning to the grimness of the film's premise. The 'horror' in all of this regards human waste, cast offs or neglect of various kinds - the wider social sense of modern living, pollution and consumable excess. But mainly the personally discarded; memories, experiences, love, God, regrets - that can all be cast out as needless aspects of the soul, and all in the blink of...cough..an eye. So the decayed city, city of books, lost babies in "Re-cycle" are abstract manifestations (as symbols) that have been thrust into a anachronistic dumping ground hell of Ting Yin's making (but she's forgotten all about it). But the title "Re-cycle", ironically, becomes the way out of it all, as Ting Yin experiences and faces the dross of her forgotten past, that she discarded behind a dark veil beyond superficial life - and re-news herself through this 'dark reflective world' she treks through. A re-birth of sorts. In tandem to that, too, certainly the Pang Bothers had been playing the ultra disturbing video game "Silent Hill 4 : The Room", concerning aspects of this film. "Re-cycle" plays out like a video game, and the "Silent Hill" and American McGee's "Alice" video games, relate to "Re-cycle's" dark looking glass and decayed grim parallel worlds, that Ting Yin finds herself in. Some of the deleted scenes also reflect the Silent Hill 4 influence by one piece of music used and the "Chasing in the City" scene. But with one great influence onto another, this can only be a good thing!

"Re-cycle" certainly has impressive visual effects (great CGI). The haunting beginnings with Chu Xun typing out her novel in that errie ghostly green raise the atmos to start things off, with the addition of a long haired ghost in wisps of her blurred presence. But its the 're-cycle worlds' where the effects really kick in. Like the mass of falling bodies from a dark grey sky (the fall?) to the ground, to suddenly and simultaneously rise up again - is effectively surreal. An overhead swinging fun fair wheel moves silently and sweepingly over a wide perspective over Ting Yin's head, and the floating ghosts that chase her through the dread city. The Dawn of the Dead type motifs, though, by the lost souls in Ting Yin's forgotten playground, are a bit too cliche, - and if these zombie aspects had been reflected more imaginatively to the disturbingly dread surroundings, would have heightened the film's appeal. These 'dead' are a bit to repetitive and pedantic in becomingly reflectively satirical, to what should have been more genuinely effective and scary. (But I think the Pang Brothers are a bit tongue in cheek anyway, though).

Although that relates to Sinje Lee's main protagonist Ting Yin, her real self is Chu Xun - an authoress who writes popular novels. Chu Xun, who by writing her new supernatural novel called "Re-cycle" alone in her apartment, creates a Doppelganger character named Ting Yin, who becomes the lost soul within this pseudo reflected and surreal hell of her Re-cycle novel. Chu Xun needing for creative inspiration to complete her book for a deadline publishing date (as she discards much of her writing), soon gets unusual experiences. Her character Ting Yin as long hair, and is supposed to be a part of herself, which Chu Xun explains at a book presentation press conference. And has she begins to type out her novel in her apartment in isolation, apparitions of Ting Yin's character seem to appear in Chu Xun's room. Chu Xun gets ever more spooked by the unreal, as she finds long black hair strands around her room, and a blurred ghost which becomes the odd inspiration for her novel. These manifestations trigger Chu Xun's 'other world' to gradually manifest around her. Soon she goes out of her apartment and is sucked into a parallel and grotesque dead world of her own forgotten memories - a repository of cast off things and people.

Chu Xun then (or Ting Yin), similar to Dante's Hell Inferno, traverses a dark poisoned world of numerous hell zones or levels (similar to computer game worlds) and moving from one to the next , as she tries to find her way back to the 'real' world of her apartment. She meets an old man, who seems to be her grandfather, who tells her that she has become trapped inside her own thrown away memories, and that her "Re-cycle" novel she is writing, as provoked the doorway into this realm. Everything Chu Xun has ever thrown away in her life (even books and pages of her novels) resides here in the worst ever re-cycle bin. Chu Xun also meets a little girl who assists her though the many 'worlds' : the Playground of the Damned, Forest of Hang, Ghosts Bridge, Embryo Tunnel etc., all like levels of a video game, so that she can get through them and find her way back, like Alice in the looking glass, back to her room.

Mainly, "Re-cycle" is played out like a dark set of dream sequences, with Chu Xun/Ting Yin traveling from one crazy world to another, locating 'gates' to move on the the next zone/level - entering firstly a decayed and desolate city that is butted together like chaotic twisted metal and onwards through shadowy and haunting worlds of people and things dropped from Chu Xun's life, producing souls devoid of 'life' and 'substance' and inanimate things. Like the Embryo Tunnel of aborted babies and the City of Books, where a mass of piled high books represent high consumption or neglect into material waste, if unread. These cast out things, though, relate more to Chu Xun's soul and emotion, than mere forgotten things. Its through Ting Yin's 'ghost emotion' of seeing the things in life she had thrown away, that starts to re-new her soul and realization of what was more important to her. Sinje Lee mentions herself in an interview on the bonus disk, how easy it can be in modern life to cast things aside - certainly clothes and consumables, but also friends and fellow people in the need to re-new things on a daily basis. Re-cycled food. Re-cycled clothes. Re-cycled friends. All eventually isolating the person into the room that Chu Xun finds herself writing her novel in - having discarded cherishing parts of her life into the abyss of the "Re-cycle" world.

This film's themes certainly could have elaborated on what is being said in all of this. "Re-cycle" is far more a visual feast and a roller coaster ride in a nightmare world of computer graphics, than musings about pollution, climate change and fast food relationships. It hints at the substance, though, but you have to think about it all on top of the film's premise, after watching. Like all movies, there is something relevant to glean from it. Even rubbish itself speaks volumes (the pearl in the oyster) and "Re-cycle", (no, its not rubbish) altough less of an intellectual exercise, can provoke other works and cinema with its themes and ideas.

Sinje Lee is wonderful in this second ghostly role for her again with Danny and Oxide, and I hope maybe she does a third one sometime. "The Third Eye of the Re-cycle Mirrors", maybe...yes, I'll shut up!

Apparently "Re-cycle" is to be given a Hollywood version in the near future, although I hope that the original (like many other Asia movies) isn't superimposed upon and 'forgotten' by this remake. Although by "Re-cycle" getting the re-cycle treatment with a new version is a way to showing that nothing is ever really forgotten. Like matter transforming into another form of energy, it continues onwards.

This 2 x DVD set is great! The disks are R3, but loaded full of Chinese / English subtitles to everything on these two DVDs, even the commentaries. So you can get a good 100% from this one. Also, there are two art booklets showing the various zones from the film. Recommended for its visual splendor no doubt, but also for some of its reflections and ideas, and for those who have enjoyed the Silent Hill series, this could be an interesting addition.