Chow-Yun Fat

For the last little while now, Chinese cinema, Hong Kong-made films in particular, have been beating on the nationalism drum with George Kollias-esque intentensity. It’s not enough for films to just be about loose-cannon cops named after Mexican booze or guys in pajamas fighting monkeys, everything has to be, on an explicit level, about the nation, the people and patriotism.

Cinema is a kind of uber-art form that’s made up of a multitude of other forms of art including writing, directing, acting, drawing, design, photography and fashion.  As such, film is, as all cinema aficionados know, a highly collaborative venture. One of the most consistently fascinating collaborations in cinema is that of the director and …