Cape No.7

The Cape No.7 Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BR-mKrkYNs&feature=related

<1945> From Cape No.7:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P4ABEMaDwM

Everytime when I heard the word "Romantic", i always have a piece of music played by piano flowing arround my ear, the music is called "1945" and it is from a Taiwanese movie Cape No. 7, a movie about the true love, which is indirect but powerful.

The movie is about a story happened in the 1940s near the end of the Japanese era of Taiwan, an unnamed teacher (Kousuke Atari) dispatched to the southernmost town of Hengchun falls in love with a local girl with the Japanese name Kojima Tomoko (Rachel Liang). After the Surrender of Japan, the teacher is forced to return home as Taiwan was placed under the administrative control of the Republic of China. On his trip home, he pens seven love letters to express his regret for leaving Kojima Tomoko, who originally planned to elope with him to Japan.

More than 60 years after the teacher left Kojima Tomoko, Aga (Van Fan) is introduced as a struggling young Hengchun-native rock band singer who could not find success in Taipei. After returning to his hometown, Aga's step father (Ju-Lung Ma), the Town Council Representative, arranged a position for him as a postman, replacing the aging Old Mao (Johnny C.J. Lin), on leave after a motorcycle accident broke his leg. One day, Aga comes across an undeliverable piece of mail that was supposed to be returned to the sender; the daughter of the now deceased Japanese teacher has decided to mail the unsent love letters to Taiwan after discovering them. Aga unlawfully keeps and opens the package to discover its contents, but the old Japanese-style address Cape No. 7, Kōshun District, Takao Prefecture can no longer be found.

Meantime a local resort hotel inside nearby Kenting National Park is organizing a beach concert featuring Japanese pop singer Kousuke Atari, but Aga's step father makes use of his official position to insist that the opening band be composed of locals. Tomoko (Chie Tanaka), an over-the-hill Mandarin-speaking Japanese fashion model dispatched to Hengchun, is assigned the difficult task of managing this hastily assembled band, led by Aga along with six other locals of rather particular backgrounds. After a frustrating trial period, Aga and Tomoko unexpectedly begin a relationship. With some assistance from hotel maid Mingchu (Shino Lin), who is revealed to be Kojima Tomoko's granddaughter, Tomoko helps Aga find the rightful recipient of the seven love letters. Tomoko then tells Aga that she plans on returning to Japan after the concert because of a job offer. After returning the seven love letters, a heartbroken but determined Aga returns to the beach resort and performs a highly successful concert with his local band alongside Kousuke Atari while Kojima Tomoko reads the letters.

The Plot of the movie in fact did not give me too much sense of "Romance"until the music kicks in, then everything in the movie became so romantic. And everytime when I hearded or thinked about the 1945, i got moved, and not only because it reminds me about the plot from the movie, but it also gets me sink into my memories. The plot of the movie, especially the 7 love letters did awake my romantic feelings, and I believe both RHETORIC and POLITICS play really important role of it.
As of Rhetoric, the movie used words instead of scenes to express the Romantic love from the Japanese teacher, it displayed little scenes about how the Japanese teacher and
Kojima Tomoko stay together and love each other, but everything was written on the letter. When expressing the romance in the movie, pictures, actions or talks are very direct and powerful, however, they also put too many limitations for our imagination. Literature does not gave us a powerful or direct feeling of love but put lots of space for imagination, everytime when we read the literature, our brain will simultaneously produce many love scenes to fill up our imagination, and that is when literature becomes most powerful.
Politics also helped me to generate the romatic feelings. In most of Asian countries, people likes to express their love using implicitical way, like sending love letters or singing love songs to each other. In addition, everything can be converted into a romantic objects, for example, the moon represents the deliverer of love. As a Chinese, my feeling of love gets awaked by the love letters, it is because those letters gave me more connection with Chinese culture and so that The construction became so powerful to me.