The Blue Mansion is unmistakably blue. The exteriors of the said mansion are coated in blue walls and inside, the environment and the people inhabiting within are lit with lights coloured in a blue hue. And deep inside the people who live with and associate with the mansion owners have a tint of blue within their hearts.
Glen Goei’s second feature since Forever Fever, his musical comedy hit,
is The Blue Mansion, a satirical drama-comedy disguised as a mystery
story within the vein Robert Altman’s Gosford
Park. The film stars Patrick Teoh as
Wee Bak Chuan, a wealthy Asian tycoon who has made his fortune selling
pineapple tarts, finds himself in a coffin dead and ignored by his family and helpers
after waking up one morning. A walking spirit, Wee Bak Chuan wanders his home,
observing his dysfunctional family as they reunite to hold a funeral for him.
During which, family conflicts will thrive and family secrets will be brought
to light.
The story progresses and unfolds with a good
pace. While the sudden shift of tone and genre near the end of the film may be
a little too jarring for some, the film’s narrative does a good job to set-up and forebode the hidden
darkness in the earlier parts of the story as it naturally juggles between
comedic and dramatic aspects quite nicely, with darkly humorous moments within
the film being able to be twisted into something more dramatically dark later
in the film. The humour also serves as a good juxtaposition to further
highlight the eventual conflict of the film.
The Blue Mansion does not aspire for realism;
instead it has a more surreal touch. Other than the film’s fantastical plot of a dead man roaming
around as a spirit watching his family, the film places emphasis on the
unreality and fantastic supernatural element through its use of saturated
colours in the set-design and lighting and the exaggerated theatrical
performance of the actors - the way the core characters speak in their perfect
sounding English and their carefully engineered dialogue that reveal both
character and exposition in a naturalistic manner are clear inspirations from
theatre.
The film’s influences from theatre while they definitely enhance the
fantastic and unreal elements of the narrative, they can be seen as a negative
trait. There are moments where the characters are allowed to speak a little too
much to deliver exposition about the situation and their personalities, while
the written dialogue is still written in a manner that can be delivered
naturally and the actor’s
performances are certainly strong, the over-reliance in dialogue and the spoken
word within certain scenes can detract from the overall experience and remind
the viewer that they are watching a film.
But even so, Glen Goei is aware that this is
cinema and not the stage, through the lens of director of photography Larry
Smith, a cinematographer notable for shooting Stanley Kubrick’s last work Eyes Wide Shut, through
the use of the occasional symmetry, a complementarily opposing colour scheme of
cold and warm and the use of shadows that wraps around the characters and
shifts like what can only be described as shadows of tentacles against the
environment and the character’s
faces. The film takes on a foreboding tone of the unnatural and surreal.
When I described the plot of the story two
paragraphs above, the film would seem rather plot driven, however The Blue
Mansion’s core plot relies on
its characters, their motivations and secrets making the characters the engaging
aspect of the film, the emotional core. All of these characters have their own
motivations, ambitions, flaws and weaknesses. Despite the theatrical dialogue,
delivery and performances on the screen, which may detract from the immersive
quality that cinema often provides. The three-dimensional and humanly qualities
of these characters help us to easily sympathise and understand them.
One of the characters, Wee Teck Meng (Adrian
Pang) for instance, is the son overshadowed by his father. Volatile and hot-tempered,
he is severely dissatisfied with his life. The matters of his father’s company succession does not make matters
better, with his inexperienced older brother Wee Teck Liang (Lim Kay Siu)
instead, chosen to succeed. However, he still has a soft spot for his mother.
There is a moment in the film where he and his
sister, Wee Pei Shan (Neo Swee Lin), drive home. They remise of the past, of
the time when they were young and Teck Meng had been caught smoking by his
mother, Wee Siok Lin (Louisa Chong). It is moments like this that bring great
humanity into the characters and make them seem real.
Perhaps a reason why these characters feel so
real is because the film appears to be based on an actual powerful and wealthy
family in Singapore. It is undeniable that there is an uncanny resemblance
between the fictional and the real within The
Blue Mansion, several of the events and circumstances of the characters can
be found in the presumed history of a very famous Lee family, which if one is aware of
the tabloid news surrounding the family, these events and circumstances are not
exactly flattering. Still, Mr Goei treads carefully, never mentioning the
family’s illustrious name in
the film and highlighting that the film is a work of fiction at the opening, that
‘all characters
appearing in (the) work are fictitious.’
With all said, while The Blue Mansion is
certainly no masterpiece, it is definitely worth a watch. Although the
performances and the dialogue may be seen as too theatrical, the humanity that
can be found within the characters is what makes the viewing experience so
endearing.
Written by Timothy Ong Le Hao
And here is the most important piece of information in this whole article. Where can you get hold of the film? The Glen Goei DVD Box Set, containing The Blue Mansion and Forever Fever, his debut feature film hit, was selling at Books Kinokuniya since 2011. Not sure if it is still available there. But we found out Books Actually is selling them online. You can order the box set here.