"Lust, Caution" portrays pro-Japanese collaboration during War of Resistance
Se jie (Lust, Caution)
Directed by Ang Lee
Story by Eileen Chang; screenplay by James Schamus and Wang Hui-ling
Focus Features
157 minutes
Rated NC-17
2007
Reviewed 2007 October
"Se jie" ("Lust, Caution"), a fictional movie directed by Ang Lee ("Brokeback Mountain," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Sense and Sensibility"), follows snippets of the adult life of Wong Chia-chi, an urban womyn university student who joins a Chinese patriotic theater troupe in Hong Kong during the War of Resistance against Japan. The theater troupe has success with a receptive audience in Hong Kong, before it was occupied by Japan. An old friend of the troupe's founder is an assistant to a rising Chinese pro-Japanese collaborator who becomes a top official in the real-life puppet collaborationist Wang Ching-wei government that controlled Nanjing, Shanghai, and other areas. Seeing an opportunity to carry out an attack on behalf of his nation, the energetic theater troupe founder, Kuang Yu-min, recruits Wong and others for a plot to kill the official. Wong ends up playing the role of getting close to the government official, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), who is in charge of overseeing repression, and luring him into a trap. The conspirators pursue the collaborator from Hong Kong to Shanghai, with an intervening break, by which time Shanghai had been completely occupied by Japan. "Lust, Caution" portrays the Wang Ching-wei regime as hunting down and torturing anti-Japanese rebels and abusing other Chinese people. At one point, it is suggested that the united $tates is supplying the anti-Japanese resistance forces with arms. In one scene, a Western film suggestive of Hollywood playing in a theater is interrupted with pro-Japanese propaganda (apparently spliced into the reel) encouraging Sino-Japanese unity against the West. There is a statement to the effect of "keep Asia in the hands of Asians."
Though most of the movie's dialogue is in Mandarin or Cantonese, "Lust, Caution" is showing in some mainstream and indy-, art-house type theaters in amerika with subtitles. When amerikans encounter stories about resistance to occupations and colonialism, the attitude is that resistance to non-u.$. countries is OK and is for Britain, Germany, and France, but not for the united $tates. Amerikans have been exposed to stories about Chinese resistance to Japan to a lesser extent, for historical and political reasons. Since the specifically communist side of things and resistance to u.$. imperialism and lackeys aren't depicted in "Lust, Caution," the movie presents a problem. Amerikan viewers may walk away from this movie with their prejudices in favor of the united $tates intact, as historically accurate the movie is. It is not possible to review this movie as if only Chinese people or people knowledgeable about the relevant history watched it. (Likewise, even if "Lust, Caution" were good for amerikans to watch, the same would not necessarily be true of people in China. This review doesn't deal with the Chinese reception. China has other films about the War of Resistance; so, "Lust, Caution" would need to be compared with those.) This would be this reviewer's main objection to distributing this movie in the former Allied Western countries, particularly the united $tates. The pro-u.$. World War II mythology, which ignores the Chinese and Soviet roles in defeating German and Japanese imperialism, is still going on strong six decades later. "Fist of Fury" (1972), starring Bruce Lee, might be relatively more offensive to some amerikans since it deals with the international settlement in imperialist-occupied Shanghai in 1908, though "Fist of Fury" portrays Japanese oppression, not amerikan. People are talking about the graphic sex in "Lust, Caution," as if it were the main or only thing, but this reviewer wouldn't detract from "Lust, Caution" just to give a boost to James Bond movies and u.$. spy agency recruiting movies with sex. There is something to be said about First Worlders' tolerance for sex scenes in movies in general, but the key thing about the scenes in "Lust, Caution," at this time in the First World movie culture, is the surrounding context. Although, Third World nations in which the movie might be censored because of the sex scenes may already be set against u.$. imperialism or may otherwise not need "Lust, Caution."
If the NC-17 rating, and the sexual and "tiresome" etc. artistic aspects of this movie that may disagree with amerikans' publicly expressed tastes and taste for high-energy action movies, push amerikans away from "Lust, Caution," it might be just as well, even though "Lust, Caution" is somewhat more intellectual than other movies playing in amerika. Despite parallels with the Iraq war, on people's minds, it is unlikely more amerikans will support national liberation movements, even on a Liberal basis, after seeing "Lust, Caution," and the effect may even be more u.$. chauvinism because of the movie's focus on the inter-imperialist contradiction between Japan and the united $tates. (There doesn't seem to be anything Taiwan lackeys of u.$. imperialism would necessarily object to either.) As a broad recruiting tool, "Lust, Caution" would be completely misplaced. There is no revolutionary class in the Euro-Amerikan nation anyway, no class to stir up revolutionary feelings in with a movie.
As a means of conveying historical information to people who are already on a scientific revolutionary track, "Lust, Caution" is better in that way and a more materialist portrayal of reality than most Amerikan movies with historical and political themes, though it might be recommendable to just read a book instead. For many amerikans, "Lust, Caution" will just be another World War II-era movie, just set in China, but "Lust, Caution" relative to other movies adds to what people need to know about history to have a fuller understanding of the contradictions that led to the theory of the united front's and the theory of the principal contradiction's becoming part of Marxism. In general, people need to have some concrete understanding of history, because it is possible to claim to be a fan of Mao or even agree with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism superficially but not really understand why the theory of the principal contradiction became a universal part of Marxism.
Specifically, "Lust, Caution" has to be given credit for its stark portrayal of collaboration during the War of the Resistance, because the fact is some recent First World bourgeois and lackey research on the topic has muddled the question, for example, by focusing on the intentions of individual actors and treating them as if they were independent of classes and the principal contradiction. So, it becomes possible to say that principled anti-communist officials who failed to unite with the Chinese communists, who were the greatest supporters of the united front against Japan, and the proletariat and ended up collaborating with Japan weren't really collaborating. They were just "accommodating" or trying to "survive." "Lust, Caution" counters that view by portraying collaborators as rounding up and murdering anti-Japanese resisters indiscriminately. The non-resistance of so-called bystanders can ultimately be represented in the state, the state power of collaborators acting in the name of peace. One line of thinking holds that collaborators were trying to survive as individuals, implying that resisters weren't also engaged in a life-or-death struggle, against imperialism. In an individualist way, "Lust, Caution" opposes that train of thought, which has more to do with reversing the "demonization" of collaborators than exploring problems in establishing and maintaining a united front; Yee is a ruthless, willing collaborator. Yee is unlike the apologetic collaborator inspector character in "Fist of Fury" (another movie about Japanese occupation of China amerikan viewers will probably most remember, in addition to "The Last Emperor" and Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun"). Also, Yee is rich. If Yee is trying to survive by collaborating, he is surviving as a bourgeois. If he wasn't always bourgeois, he had to be bribed, which suggests that mere survival isn't at work. Bribery and the nature of the bourgeoisie as an exploiting class are major causes of collaboration with imperialism in reality and foundations for the formation of a comprador class.
Much of the research sympathetic to collaborators' situations is concerned with a variety of phenomena in-between conscious collaboration and resistance and even draws distinctions within conscious collaboration, saying that some of those who rationalized collaboration thought they were acting in the interests of the Chinese nation. There may be an important question of the margin at the front lines, where the enemy may have an advantage and the united front is susceptible to deterioration, but that does not mean one can do without the concept of the united front, and the united front against Japan proved to be effective despite divisions. (There was also a united front behind enemy lines. How people resisted Japan while living with occupation is interesting.) How failing to enter into a united front can turn into collaboration with the national enemy is beyond some people who are looking at the history of collaboration during the War of Resistance against Japan but overly concerned with what some individual officials were thinking. In the name of opposing the Manichean moral demonization of collaborators -- an attitude allegedly responsible for a paucity of attentive research on the collaboration history -- they focus on, what else, the subjective intentions and thoughts of the collaborators, rather than their actions and how they fit into a big picture. Whether collaborators thought they were acting out of necessity or not, collaboration has structural causes that can be struggled against. Exculpating or condemning individuals is unimportant to Marxist science; although, bourgeois collaboration research has little to say about why the denunciation of individual collaborators was socially necessary in China. It is given that there is going to be capitulation, even inside a communist party, as the struggle becomes more intense; the important question is how to prevent and combat capitulation.
The individualist approach to the collaboration history, with petty-bourgeois pacifist undertones, in some cases leads to the notion that the Chinese communists and even the bourgeois nationalists resisting Japan violently were a bunch of crazed militarists who were endangering China's future -- which happens to closey coincide with the views of the collaborators. Postmodernists adhering to this view of collaboration have taken the collaborators' subjective thoughts and basically treated them as authentic reflections of reality. In paying attention to allegedly neglected Nationalist history, some of them analyze collaboration as if the communists either weren't a factor in the struggle, in which case collaborators could be excused for not uniting with them against Japan, or, being communist, aren't a factor in evaluating the correctness of the collaborators. Under the pretext of overcoming Western anti-Japanese bias, others openly rehabilitate Wang Ching-wei by arguing that he just supported a strategic retreat or accommodation, and was a better nationalist than not only the communists and u.$. lackey Chiang Kai-shek, but also the militant anti-Japanese in the Guomindang in general, who supposedly handed China over to the communists. Japan was turning out to be good economically for Chinese in occupied China, it is even said. Imperialist bribery and its role in collaboration suggests themselves both in the collaboration history and revisionist research itself, on that history, in the 21st century. Where imperialism brings higher living standards, it gains supporters -- bribery or co-optation. By habit, bourgeois researchers mirror this process in the excuses they suggest for collaboration. Even "Marxists" who don't oppose the "theory of the productive forces," or view imperialism as a force for economic development, are prone to allying with imperialism or justifying collaboration.
Against those contemplating things from the viewpoint of the collaborators, "Lust, Caution" tells the resisters' side of the story, and one fictitious collaborator's story, Mr. Yee's. By largely omitting the communists from the picture, or not distinguishing them within the larger anti-Japanese resistance, "Lust, Caution" could give the impression that the war was only between different bourgeois forces. In that fantasy situation, without the opportunity to unite with the communists and the forces they led, the national bourgeoisie would have had more limited options and would have been more prone to vacillation and collaboration. Similarly, today, wrong ideas about the class structure in the united $tates and a Euro-Amerikan proletariat about to overthrow u.$. imperialism may lead to accommodation to imperialism in some circumstances, under the assumption that help is coming from the Euro-Amerikan workers. Wrong views about class forces in the oppressed nations and inside the imperialist nations can influence conclusions about the contradictions that exist in and between nations. The particular narrow perspective through which events are seen in "Lust, Caution," where communists are absent from the scene, does not represent the kind of perspective that supports correct practical and theoretical conclusions. Nonetheless, "Lust, Caution" is unequivocal that there were substantial collaborationist activities that posed a danger to the resistance.
Wong Chia-chi's story
In "Lust, Caution" there is a panoramic flashback that reveals that Wong Chia-chi had first-hand experience of the impact of the Japanese invasion and observed Nationalist troops on the move -- kinds of experiences that led many people to resist Japan. One gets a sense of large social forces, involving a tremendous number of people, at work. But the real meat of the individualist story in "Lust, Caution" for most viewers revolves around Wong as an individual. Wong's father fled to England and abandoned her. Her mother is gone, and Wong gets involved with the Hong Kong theater group and the assassination plot seemingly out of romantic feeling for Kuang, or at least that is how Westerners will interpret it. Without giving the ending away, suffice it to say that the story begins and ends with romance, and it cuts both ways; the enemy is able to take advantage of romance, too.
Wong's reasoning process leading up to her joining the theater troupe and then the assassination plot isn't entirely clarified in the movie. One can imagine effete and pretentious First World petty-bourgeois types of people thinking that Wong Chia-chi is some naive, foolish student who doesn't know what she is doing, just enamoured with Kuang, even though Wong is educated, or that she has no political reasons. Petty-bourgeois pseudo-feminists of the sort to criticize all nationalism would object to how Wong is used as a womyn to get to Yee through his pants. The disproportionate burden seems to be on Wong, as the rest of the resistance cell, mostly males, appear to hang around at home waiting for the bait, Wong, to bring back the prey, Yee, for them to kill. The burden on Wong and the unexpected responsibilities she finds herself with become a theme in the movie. (One thing this reviewer would question is whether the drama group could have stuck with making advances in the cultural struggle and left the armed struggle up to the organized resistance, in which case the plot and Wang's role in it were unnecessary. Kuang is portrayed as trigger-happy.)
As the movie makes crystal-clear, Wong gives up the chance to have a stable romantic relationship with Kuang. And this is after she first joins the nationalist theater group and develops politically in that context. Wong risks her life by pretending to be the wife of a businessman, infiltrating Yee's household, and having an affair with Mr. Yee at the same time as she plays mahjong with his wife and circle of her friends, gambling and losing. Risking her life in a real revolutionary situation, Wong does more to resist imperialism than people with lofty pacifist, social-democratic or vegetarianist principles in the First World stuck in a morass of parasitism. Wong could have opted for a relatively comfortable, if uncertain, bourgeois life, but instead she joins the resistance and doesn't spend time thinking about how she could make a love life a part of her revolutionary practice. Romantic feelings for Kuang linger in the background, but Wong leaves romance behind and the sex with Yee starts out as being just a part of her role in the assassination plot.
Wong's relationship with Lee is shockingly sadistic and then stereotypically sadomasochistic -- pointing to a process by which Wong is dominated even as she plots against Lee. In a sense, Wong could represent the conflicted persyn who is on his or her way to becoming a collaborator. Throughout the movie, one feels that all the sex is a metaphor for something else, maybe colonization, the nature of romance, or attraction to power. The movie actually goes out of its way to point this out about itself, in case the viewer doesn't get it, but Westerners are likely to come away from "Lust, Caution" thinking that Wong is a heroic or complicated petty-bourgeois-type character caught in the middle of an impersonal war and striving to regain a sense of agency, by enjoying a relationship with the persyn she is supposed to be trying to kill. Pseudo-feminists might say Wong is caught in the middle of another men's war, equating China with imperialist countries. If all nations are thought of as being the same or there are no classes, the petty-bourgeois outlook lends itself to collaboration more than others.
As it turns out, sadomasochism ends up being bad for Chinese womyn. Thank you, Ang Lee, for pointing out what people working to end oppression should already know. There is a contrast between Wong's suppressed feelings for Kuang, and Wong's miserable relationship with Yee. Wong could be happy with Kuang if she had the opportunity to do so. So, "Lust, Caution" may still reinforce ideas about romance that belong to bourgeois society. "Lust, Caution" could have easily ended with Wong running off with Kuang to somewhere to have a relationship instead of resisting Japan, but overall "Lust, Caution" borders on being forward-looking in terms of gender-related ideas. People in the middle of a class war can't always live happily ever after romantically. In places where romantic beliefs prevail, there is an abundance of wealth and leisure time, at the expense of oppressed people. There is no significant revolutionary struggle internal to the First World imperialist nations.
There are many, sometimes conflicting ideas Western people have about oppressed nation people in terms of sexuality and gender, and there are particular ideas about Asian wimmin, and men, too. "Lust, Caution," can't help but undermine some of these, because of its depiction of adultery and raw sadomasochism. "Lust, Caution" may contribute to chauvinist ideas about Asian men as being latently aggressive, Asian wimmin as being latently hyper-sexual, but after watching "Lust, Caution," it will be difficult to maintain that Asian wimmin or men are always reserved. In reality, dominator behavior is concentrated the First World, with even First World adult females' being and becoming men-like. Third World people in general look like the oppressed gender in comparison, and they are. "Lust, Caution" gestures toward a similarity between Western and Chinese wimmin where there really is a difference. However, this reviewer appreciates the comparison "Lust, Caution" raises between Chinese wimmin and Western women. Ultimately, the characters in "Lust, Caution" have to reject sadomasochism, but Western women as a prop of the patriarchy accept sadomasochism by embracing relationships with power differences. Watching "Lust, Caution," one gets a sense of transformation taking place in gender relations in the midst of tremendous social upheaval. In the First World, there is just decadence and some demographic transition, not any force that will end relationships of oppression in the world.
Thus, Wong's character serves as a window into larger social processes. This reviewer doesn't mind pointing this out about an otherwise individualist movie, because, though "Lust, Caution" focuses on the experiences of one individual, "Lust, Caution" is not so idealist as to suggest Wong plays a pivotal role in history. One scene, while depicting hidden intrigue typical in spy movies, also reminds the viewer that societal forces underlie the events Wong experiences and takes part in, whether Wong is aware of them or not.
Nor is Wong a bystander or just a victim. Another movie about the War of Resistance could have shown someone just suffering from the war, but Wong undertakes to resist Japan politically. "Lust, Caution" is even better because the viewer knows the outcome of the war. As an individual, Wong's power is limited, but she is on the right side of the principal contradiction and part of a larger force. Wong Chia-chi's individual success or lack thereof becomes irrelevant.
Again, this reviewer can imagine pseudo-feminists, detracting from Wong Chia-chi's prestige, making a thing out of the sexual role Wong Chia-chi is expected to play because she is a womyn. It probably wouldn't occur to these pseudo-feminists that if Yee were a (heterosexual) womyn, or a gay man (like the gay British agent character in "The Good Shepherd"), it would be a man sleeping with her or him. Wong's suffering in the relationship is painful, but that she has that role is mostly for historical reasons.
Wong finds herself in a more arduous, testing struggle because of her anatomy, and various individual reasons are suggested for why Wong engages in patriotic activity. In general, people get into politics for all kinds of reasons, especially in the First World where there is little social basis for revolution within the First World class structure. In real revolutionary situations, oppressed people may get pressurized into a revolutionary struggle before attaining scientific understanding, because of the unevenness that is inevitable in the distribution of scientific knowledge and thinking initially. In the First World without a revolutionary struggle going on, there is no meaningful sense in which it can be said that there are communists who are pre-scientific followers. The socialist stage of revolution hasn't been reached in the First World; so, only scientific leaders are able to be communists in practice there. There is no such thing as a sustainable First World nation communist organization, without the risk of enormous vacillation, made up of followers, rather than leaders or leaders becoming more homogeneous in leadership ability. Wong Chia-chi in China isn't shown advancing beyond nationalism ideologically, and she may not have a scientific understanding of the struggle she is a part of (to an extent, even the national bourgeoisie, as a bourgeois class, is incapable of such an understanding), but since Wong is in China during the war portrayed, this reviewer is less concerned about possible questions regarding Wong's scientific knowledge and ability. As with people in the First World, the particular reasons why Wong as an individual gets involved in the resistance are also not important scientifically big picture-wise. Romantic motivation or feelings about her father, who fled to England, may underlie Wong's political reasons; nonetheless, it is not important, because Wong is part of a socio-historical process.
Collaboration and the principal contradiction
People with petty-bourgeois kinds of thinking watching "Lust, Caution" will reactively identify things in the movie as excuses for why Wong Chia-chi should give up, or kill Yee before the group wants to attempt the kill. Wong suffers. Wong didn't entirely know what she was getting into. Or maybe the resistance and the collaborationists are all wrong because they are both violent, from the pacifist petty-bourgeois perspective. Actually, "Lust, Caution" has an answer to this, indirectly. Wang Ching-wei is infamous in China for his "peace" program, and the Sino-Japanese unity propaganda shown in the movie theater in the one scene in "Lust, Caution" is instructive. There are all kinds of ideas people draw from to justify collaboration. Wong's world as an individual could be seen as a metaphorical microcosm of the material and ideological forces that resulted in collaboration.
Various supporting ideas went with Wang Ching-wei's "peace" program: pan-Asianism, anti-communism, "prosperity," anti-Westernism, and so-called nationalism. The latter two were combined with support for the Japanese occupation. Recent research has made much of Wang Ching-wei's intentions and the extent to which he was consciously either pro-Japanese imperialism or nationalist. It is important in this context to remember that various reactionaries, including u.$. imperialists, claim to support the national interests or masses of oppressed nations. For that matter, everyone from imperialist country police departments to the u.$. federal government claims to "serve the people." To those, one has to add fakes falsely calling themselves "Maoist" today who actively backed the u.$. invasion of a Third World nation in the Middle East in line with u.$. government preparations for invasion. So, it isn't always possible to proceed from intentions to arrive at the truth.
The anti-Japanese resistance took money and even armed help from the u.$., but then there was enormous inter-imperialist contradiction, and Japan at the time was the primary obstacle in the Chinese proletariat's contribution to the struggle for world communism. What the principal contradiction is, is determined by contradictions that actually exist and the class forces involved in them, not geopolitical strategic calculations that ignore the masses. If it isn't possible to unite the masses for goal, such as peace with Japan historically or uniting with u.$. imperialism against Iran today, that is a good indication that geopolitics has been put before a correct resolution of the principal contradiction.
With various people, including chauvinists and lackeys, claiming to support the oppressed while putting forth sharply conflicting goals, there needs to be a way of distinguishing between them in order that advances may be made and enemy influence isolated. With enough petty-bourgeois or government money and support, anyone can mouth righteous-sounding rhetoric and be heard. The first line of demarcation is to consider how worthy a long-range goal is. Anyone can claim to want to end all oppression, but do they have an accurate idea of oppression as it actually exists, or are they only opposed to a minority of exploitation and oppression or even just opposed to something wrongly labeled "oppression," is the question. In fact, many of those in the First World claiming to fight oppression are just working to redistribute the spoils of oppression and even propping up oppression.
An additional line of demarcation deals with the way in which someone works toward long-range goals. So, on a more basic level, Marxism rules out subjectivism, individualism, and liberalism, for example. What those things look like as a policy outside an organization, such as a foreign policy, may be unclear, and there is going to be individualism and liberalism in society when it is going through a capitalist stage, but those things should not exist inside a proletarian party in the first place. In no circumstance could subjectivism etc. in a communist party be justified as strategic accommodation (except perhaps as something forced by a Cultural Revolution-type situation). Marxism also rules out racialism, and rules out regionalism and continentalism that include imperialist nations except as a temporary alliance, when the principal contradiction is between imperialism and the oppressed nations -- by contrast, Wang Ching-wei called for an enduring spiritual unity between China and Japan (though his goals weren't the same as the proletariat's and the anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie's anyway). Also ruled out are policies based on imperialist theories of development. The "theory of the productive forces" is not Marxist, and even outside Marxism, the national bourgeoisie can have some sense of why some economic ideas currently favoring imperialism are wrong, in terms they understand.
The point is that there are limits to what can fall under the rubric of strategic differences. If phony communists back neo-colonial development ideology and then support an accommodation to imperialism, it can no longer be assumed that they are on the right side of the contradiction between imperialism and the oppressed nations just because they are in an oppressed nation and claiming to be patriotic or oppose oppression. Some of the things mentioned within the previous paragraph are still within the realm of ideas; so, it is necessary to look at actions and what they achieve, and compare them. The comparison has to be appropriate, not a comparison between moderate collaborations, who thought they were nationalists and anti-foreign, during the War of Resistance and today's Chinese social-fascists, or something similar. Failure to make correct comparisons and make distinctions between different proposed "strategies" leads to endless accommodation and even collaboration in the name of strategic maneuvering, and eventually collaborationist regimes like Wang Ching-wei's that take on a life of their own. Trends appearing internationally that support accommodation or are disruptive to the united front against imperialism must be opposed.
In the current struggle against imperialism, oppressed people globally are uniting against u.$. imperialism, often with imperfect ideologies. So, for example, religion-based versions of pan-Islamism and culturally derived ethnic pan-Arabism can each play a needed role, providing the basis for further oppressed unity, even though they reflect false consciousness of the proletariat to an extent because of the religious or cultural aspects. Religious pan-Islamism isn't on the wrong side of the principal contradiction just because it isn't scientific. On the contrary, it is chauvinists and lackeys falsely claiming to be scientific revolutionary communists who are on the wrong side of the principal contradiction and involved in dividing the oppressed along various lines.
"Lust, Caution" portrays one example of the Sino-Japanese unity propaganda used to divide the Chinese people. This movie would have been better had it dealt specifically with efforts to divide the Chinese people with anti-communism. For an individualist spy movie, "Lust, Caution" is high in materialist content, but it is unlikely to make a positive impact on amerikans' thinking even within petty-bourgeois limitations, and will offend few amerikans. The movie's best role may be as a counterbalance to pro-Wang Ching-wei or anti-united front research and sentiments; although, neo-colonial compradors wearing the mantle of Chiang Kai-shek's anti-communism or Sun Yat-sen's nationalism may find nothing to disagree with in "Lust, Caution." "Lust, Caution" is illustrative, but politically, it has a dull edge in current struggles.