Thursday, May 06, 2004
detained under her majesty's pleasure...
its been quite a lot of months and i've still into this issue ever since i watch 'from the queen to the chief executive'. its pretty controversial and it mainly talks about the underdogs of hongkong society... an irony to the cosmopolitan city...
its about juvenile delinquents that commits serious crimes such as murder... they can be very young... so, the idea of them being detained under her majesty's pleasure are suppose to be not that serious as such of the adult's murder verdict... yet, in sheh pik prison, lantau island in hong kong... there are still 17 others who are still detained under her majesty's pleasure... before the handover... after the handover, their life is most uncertain... these people wait and wait and wait for a verdict upon them... yet, the chief executive refuses to give them a proper verdict... they are suppose to serve their sentence lower than the usual adults tariff, but now, they are undergoing a life with no hope since young... and after the handover, their sentence was lengthen again... even longer than those of a adult... and they were locked before 18... some even younger.... most of them are already in the late 20s and early 30s... and they still have to be locked till they reach 50s... and this have already violated their human rights!!!
earlier on, i was arguing with shaun about this... his immediate response? they should be locked for life!! they should have been dead...
i was dumbfounded for a moment...
these people have already serve their sentence... and they are expected more? even the parents of the murdered child has already forgiven them on account of their young age and innocence... yet, they still deserve more?
from director herman yau, his experience throughout the visit to the prison was a long and tedious journey... below is an interview with herman yau...
from the queen to the chief executive
For a number of years I have been trying to make a film which would both allow me to express myself and entertain an audience. Looking back at my work, I don’t think I’ve ever succeeded. The Untold Story [Yau’s 1993 take on the real-life ’pork bun’ killer] was criticised as ”reckless speculation”, regrettably by a film critic whose opinions I highly respect. Ebola Syndrome (1996) had a similar fate. The Apple Daily newspaper gave it one point out of a possible thirty-three. Despite of all these negative comments, at least I am glad to say that I have managed to please myself.
Aside from movie-making, I’m also interested in the publishing industry. In the past, I have participated in magazine publishing. But for various reasons, including a lack of adequate finance, the ventures were aborted. Still, I have never given up. Shortly before the handover of Hong Kong to China, some friends and I started the Step Forward Multimedia Co Ltd. I felt from the start it would be impossible to make much money, but that didn’t put me off. In fact, one of the objectives of Step Forward is to make the impossible become possible. The idea behind it was to give good publications which, for whatever reasons, may have not been able to get a publisher, the chance to find an audience.
During the first winter after the handover, my work at Step Forward led me to read the draft of Elsa Chan’s book From The Queen To The Chief Executive. This is based on true story about prisoners held in captivity under the ruling known as Detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. We always claim that we are civilised human beings living in a society under the rule of law. But we still see prisoners being locked-up endlessly because the authorities refuse to give them a definite sentence. The incidents seemed to be very familiar, and I remembered seeing them on the news. The story made me angry, and awakened my sense of justice. I thought it would make a good movie.
The sentence Detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure was supposed to be a lenient punishment. The idea was to show a little mercy to juvenile criminals. Because of their immaturity, the court does not treat juvenile criminals the same way as adult ones. The judge will give them a lenient punishment, and will normally leave the details of the sentence to a non-judiciary individual or institute. The idea is that, during their detainment, they will have the chance to make up for what they have done. The term of their detainment is not fixed.
The absurd thing is that that the sentence given for Detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure turned out to be an endless imprisonment. It is a much more severe punishment than that imposed on adult criminals. It becomes a lifetime of torture for the prisoners. When the British left Hong Kong, they left behind 17 prisoners who had been Detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure during colonial rule. After the handover, our conservative Chief Executive [Tung Chee-hwa] can’t be bothered to clean-up the mess left behind by the British.
I always like to make films about society’s underdogs. These people are often neglected, intentionally or otherwise. But in the name of humanity, basic human rights, or simply because we have enough guts to face the problem, we should acknowledge their presence. Local film-makers rarely touch on the topic of human rights sincerely, not to say the rights of criminals. Although Hong Kong has returned Chinese rule, I don’t think I can say that that we have lost our right to do this. We still enjoy freedom of speech under rule of law.
Right from the start, I felt that the movie would have to be easy to understand to interest the general public. So I decided to use a straightforward narrative approach. The original story comes in bits and pieces: Elsa Chan, the author of the book on which the film is based, arranged the stories of various juvenile criminals in different chapters. To link them up, she uses a group of people who has been trying to obtain a definite sentence for the 17 prisoners who have been Detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
The story took place shortly before the handover. For the film, we spent a long time creating a chronological order to these incidents to make up a complete story. We wanted to make it easy to understand. We did adapt some incidents and characters. But we tried to respect the original as much as possible, and took care to ensure that Elsa’s message still prevailed. We did once consider adding a melodramatic incident, but we decided not to. What’s more, the story touched on substantial legal issue and questions. This made the scriptwriting very difficult.
To get a better understanding of the various characters, I met with some of the 17 left behind at Shek Pik Prison, which is on Lantau Island. The journey to Shek Pik is no easy ride. Private vehicles without a permit are not allowed direct access, so public transport remains the only alternative. A 30-minute visit takes hours of travelling time, and you are only allowed to see one prisoner during each visit. After clearing all the registration and inspection procedures, I was escorted to a quarantined interview room and asked to wait. I was not alone in the interview room. An old lady with the handset in her hand, speechless, kept on gazing at a young man on the other side of the window. They both had tears in their eyes. The old lady had probably taken the same long ride as me to get there for this precious moment. I felt so sorry for her. I began to realise that the whole family had to pay for the price for an offence committed by a single member.
The prisoner I was waiting for arrived on the other side of the glass, and I began talking to him on the handset. I could hardly hear him because of an echo. I had to cover up one of my ears to hear him at all. He was aware that I was planning a movie, though I admitted that I still could not secure a financier. I also told him I didn’t know if the movie would help the prisoners’ cause. He did not seem to be too keen on the idea of a movie. Maybe he just had low expectations of an unexpected visitor. Throughout the half an hour visit, I felt that he had a good knowledge of the legal issues. By the time we said goodbye to each other, I noticed tears in his eyes. No matter what happened next, he was grateful to me for having taken all the trouble to visit. Subsequently, he wrote to me.
All the prisoners I met had a decent bearing and manner. If you judge by appearances, I have to say that I look more like a villain than any one of them. It is hard to imagine that they have committed serious enough offences to deserve the punishment they are enduring.
We often take melodramatic movies at face value, and consider the plots to be over-dramatic. But as a matter of fact, they reflect the realities that we each face everyday. For instance, those prisoners all had unpleasant childhoods. One of them was abandoned by his family after he was locked-up. His childhood was a total disaster. His family abandoned him, so he was brought up in an orphanage. Even when he was so sick that he needed to be sent for surgery, he was accompanied by one of the orphanage staff, not one of his family. At the age of nine, his family decided to make him stay with them solely for the purpose of acquiring a bigger housing unit from the government. Then he was ordered to leave his ”home” again. Subsequently, he committed a crime - and had to pay for it with the rest of his life. He was scared to death and wrote to his family for comfort. Sadly, the letter was surrendered by his stepmother to the police and subsequently presented to court as evidence against him.
It is fair enough to pay for what you have done. But the punishment should not be an indefinite one. The Court of International Human Rights has pronounced that detaining a prisoner without giving a definite sentence violates his human rights. This group of once-juvenile criminals who were given the ”blessing” of being Detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure simply want a definite detention period so that they can plan ahead for the future. They still hope to have a future. Even though they are not sure when they will be able to leave prison, they have been studying very hard. Some of them have achieved good academic results.
Casting is often a critical commercial decision, and incurs a certain level of risk. I have a tendency to cast unfamiliar faces to make the movie more realistic. Stephen Tang, an acquaintance of mine for more than ten years, was chosen to play the character of Leung Chung-kan. Stephen has many years experience on stage. He is a sad-faced actor, and that’s why I felt he was the right person to play Leung Chung-kan. Leung has spent most of his life caring for the underdogs of society and fighting for others. Terrible things come up everyday and make people like Leung sorrowful. The character of Yue Ling was played by Ai-jing, a singer from Shenyang, Mainland China who is another good friend of mine. She personally shares the same character as Yue Ling, who has both a strong sense of righteousness and a negative feeling towards Hong Kong. I met the real character of Cheung Yau-ming in Shek Pik. He looks smart but rather timid and sad. He is very quiet and hardworking. David Lee shares all these attributes.
I never intended to make the movie polemical or political. I wanted to address the issue of a minority group which has been abandoned. I also wanted to show those who are willing to sacrifice their private time to help this minority group.
During the course of pre-production, I tried to identify the appropriate angle from which to narrate the story. In view of the success of The Untold Story, some people suggested that I use the same format. They said I should focus on just one of the incidents, and make it with an eye to good box-office. I was saddened by this view. People tend to think that movies on politics or other serious topics will drive audiences away. Political films are not really my thing, but I don’t think it’s good that Hong Kong film-makers avoid politics. We all have out political opinions, and we can all voice them. Why can’t we use movies as witnesses to history? I have to say that those who claim they have no interests in politics are often the ones who get the most out of the political situation as it stands.
A film about a serious topic does not necessarily have to be a commercial disaster. Local filmmakers are too conservative and tend to make decisions for the audience without actually finding out what the audiences are looking for. I respect the fact that everyone has freedom of speech. But I sincerely hope that the conservatives in the industry will not obstruct alternative movies, so that the local film industry can accommodate more variety. This will allow it to prosper and bloom.
Many people feel that From The Queen To The Chief Executive is very different from my previous productions. These are considered commercial. However, I do not agree with this. The film shares much common ground with my earlier work, and I do not distinguish From The Queen To The Chief Executive from my previous productions. As a movie director, it’s always my dream to make movies on different topics that will please both myself and the audience. Deep down in my heart, I have to confess that I don’t really care what others think of my movies. But I do think that a movie should not be made as a private indulgence - it must be able to be shared with others. The most important thing, for me, is to be true to my beliefs, and provide an accurate portrayal of the time.
We have spent 3 million Hong Kong dollars [approximately US$385,000] on From The Queen To The Chief Executive and I spent almost two years securing an investor. The process was a cycle of ups and downs. Conservative opinion tells that the potential risk of making a movie on such a topic is extremely high. It could never be a profitable venture, as anything touching upon politics would be detrimental at the box office. On the verge of giving up, Mr Charles Heung [the powerful owner of production companies China Star and One Hundred Years of Film] gave me the green light, in spite of all the negative noise. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Mr Heung, who made From The Queen To The Chief Executive a reality.
As I write, the year 2000AD has just passed. I have recently made the movie Master Q 2001, and hopefully it will be my darling daughter’s favourite. It is the first Chinese movie to incorporate both 3D computer-animation and live-action characters. It involves the highest amount of special effects ever used in Chinese cinema. I am also involved in another masterpiece from Tsui Hark, Zu - Warriors from the Magic Mountain II [aka The Legend Of Zu]. Last but not least, there is From the Queen to the Chief Executive. No one knows how these movies will fare when they are released. But anyhow, the year 2000 was a good one for me.
liten shan@
6:30 PM
