Buddha Mountain is a movie directed and scripted by LI Yu. The plot can be summarized: Three hazy youngers rent rooms from a retired opera singer, Chang Yueqin, in Beijing. After a series of conflicts and quarrels, the generations learn from each other and a familial bond is formed between them. In the end, the retired opera singer committed suicide in a trip visiting a temple in Buddha Mountain to relinquish her misery of losing son and husband.
The plot summarization could be jumpy in my words. But this is exactly what I am trying to address in this comment. Mood atmosphere of trance is sent to the audience in a more sensible way than its subtle theme of life, death, distress and self-reconciliation of Buddhist disposition. Instead of a clarified logic between scene transition and character motives, Buddha Mountain abandons the acuteness of narratives and focus carrying out a heavy profound message in the disguise of the mix of stereotypical teen movie elements. Such attempt is surprising but frail as you can spot in the end of the movie where the suicide of Chang Yueqin is so abrupt that it has to be explained via the clouded monologue from Bingbing Fan’s crispy and cold female voice, who played the protagonist Nan Fen of the movie.
Movie starts with Nan Fen’s accidentally hitting the testicles of a customer to activate the call for money to compensate. With the main task set, one of the youngers was robbed by gangsters and kissed by a female member of the gangsters to show her tease. To revenge, Nan Fen confronted the villains by hitting her self with a glass bear bottle in the head. Then she kissed the frightened female gangster selflessly while blood shedding on her face. All above are more than enough elements to assembly an amusingly-melancholy teen story only if it’s a teen movie. Unfortunately, it is not. Yet Li Yu uses these to present the being of uncertainty via the device of people in the movie rather than a faithful characterization. That partly explains the inconsistency and perplexment most audience may find during their watching. Some omission on the narrative clarity seems advanced and showy while some are not, which actually damages the comprehension of the audience.
The excessive cumulation of teen movie elements nearly squeezes out the room for the theme to voice. It is understandable considering the unideal market response of melodrama in China. However, it is still unignorable that the materials LI Yu chose to display and construct with on the screen outweigh the core of the movie itself. The signified surpasses the signifier therefore a vague but attractive temperance of Buddha Mountain is created.
