Everyone needs to break out of jail

Not long ago, Hong Kong’s renowned director Johnnie To’s interview with the foreign media about the death of Hong Kong cinema due to the restriction of creative freedom under China’s political tightening has aroused a great deal of concern and rebuttal from pro-government people. However, two weeks ago, the Hong Kong movie “Breaking Hell”, starring Wong Tze Wah and Hui Koon-man, was released in Hong Kong. Inferno, which broke the box office on its first day of release with 1,000 screenings and grossed over HK$60 million in 11 days, has been the talk of the town every day, and has been used by the official Chinese media as a reason for questioning director Johnnie To’s claims.

However, anyone who knows how to think can tell that the popularity of a movie is not directly related to the freedom of movie making. However, Breaking Hell has indeed become a phenomenon worth discussing in Hong Kong.

The film is the first of its kind in Hong Kong to focus entirely on the funeral industry. The story is set in Hong Kong in the midst of the new Crown Pneumonia epidemic, and tells the story of “Wei Dao Sheng” (Wong Tze Wah), a former wedding planner who has no choice but to join the booming funeral industry in the midst of the recession and become a funeral broker. “As he tries to apply his business acumen to his work, he clashes with his mentor, Man (Hui Koon Man), over the contradiction between tradition and innovation. In the course of their relationship and cooperation, the two explore the complex meaning of life and death together. As of Tuesday, the box office has already exceeded $60 million, and on the 16th of last week, the box office reached $9.05 million, with more than 120,000 people attending the movie, making it the highest one-day box office record for a Hong Kong movie.

A Different Story
The movie “Hell” is set in Hong Kong’s funeral industry. To put it bluntly, it takes an outsider’s point of view to lead the audience into the mysterious and traditional field, reflecting the changes in Hong Kong’s society in the aftermath of the epidemic. Originally a middle-class wedding planner, Mr. Wei Dao Sheng lost his job during the epidemic and became heavily indebted. In order to make a living, he changed his profession to become a funeral service salesman, commonly known as a “funeral parlor”. Being an “outsider”, Dawson did not understand the traditions of the local funeral industry, let alone the mentality of the customers, i.e. the bereaved families. At the beginning of his career, Daw Sang encountered many obstacles, until he befriended Man, a former master of the funeral trade, who taught him how to “put the living first”.

The movie is also a clichéd story of family reconciliation. The traditional hell-breaking ceremony is passed on to men but not to women, thus creating a rift between Man and his son, Chi-Bin, and daughter, Wen Yueh. In the end, a death ritual is performed to reconcile the deceased with the living, and the audience is able to feel relieved. The script of Breaking Hell is simple and delicate, with individual vignettes explaining how Dawson learns how to care for the living from the cases of different victims, so that the audience can understand the meaning of living together. The movie is originally of a heavy and depressing style, but the roles of Wong Tze Wah and Hui Koon-man, two actors who are generally regarded as comedians by the audience in the past, make the movie a wonderful chemical effect.

The English title of the movie is also very special – “The Last Dance”, which symbolizes the last dance for the deceased, and also provides an opportunity for the living to say goodbye officially. In the film, a freshman humanist in the funeral industry recognizes that the ceremony is sometimes for the living. At a funeral, the living are given the opportunity to say a formal goodbye. Whether it is a chance to cry or to organize and express their thoughts, emotions are taken care of, and this is an important process to help the living gradually face death and accept their loss. No matter how many grudges we had with the deceased, everything should be put aside the moment the body turns into white smoke. In the face of death, everyone can feel the pain of the heart, and it is because of this that it is especially important to say goodbye to the other person seriously.

Beyond Rituals: Breaking through the Dilemma
As an ancient civilization with a long history, China’s funeral rituals are not the same in each different historical period, after thousands of years of long sedimentation and development, formed a set of complex funeral rituals, the content of which is mainly manifested in the form of funeral and burial, such as wearing mourning, streamers to attract souls, reciting the scriptures and other forms of rituals with a strong color of feudal superstition. In the disposal of the body, the main coffin burial, earth burial is the main form of funeral in old China. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, funeral reforms were initiated, and in February 1985, the Chinese government issued the Provisional Provisions on Funeral Management, which determined that cremation should be actively and step-by-step implemented, while traditional forms of cremation, earth burial, sky burial, and water burial have been preserved in ethnic minority areas. The “breaking of hell” in the movie is an important funeral ritual in the Taoist faith, aiming to perform the “breaking of hell” for the deceased, so that they can be released from hell and rest in peace.

The Taoist community has different views on who should perform the “Hell Breaking” ritual. Generally speaking, only those who died at a young age, died in an accident or committed suicide need to perform the “hell-breaking” rituals, but some say that people always make mistakes in their lives, so everyone needs to perform the hell-breaking rituals after their deaths in order to be freed from hell. After the director, Mr. Chan Mau-yin, had the initial concept of the script, he contacted a funeral consultant and, with the consent of the family members of the deceased, he observed the process from the mortuary to the funeral parlour and the whole ceremony for many times, which allowed him to observe various kinds of deceased in good or bad health conditions, and to understand this unfamiliar industry from the mouths of the real practitioners, which allowed him to restore the most complete scene of the funeral service in front of the audience.

The “hell-breaking” shown in the movie goes far beyond the ceremony itself, it is not a quick fix, but a continuous process. It requires courage to face the past, to talk to oneself honestly, and to look at all experiences through the lens of love. The movie shows viewers the multiple facets of life – birth and death, love and separation, pain and redemption. Behind every hell lies a path to light. As long as people are willing to face these hells, the ultimate exit will be inner peace and fulfillment. The true meaning of “Breaking Hell” is to awaken people from the predicament of life, to learn to embrace the coexistence of shadow and light, and to meet the challenges of each day with a calmer mind. When people break the hell in their hearts, spiritual redemption will follow, and life will truly be transformed.

The Renaissance of Hong Kong Cinema
The success of Breaking Hell has also injected a shot in the arm for Hong Kong’s movie industry, which has been under much skepticism in recent years. Since the 1980s, with the change of time and the influence of the external environment, Hong Kong movies, which used to be known as the “Hollywood of the Orient”, seem to have gradually lost their former glory. However, Breaking Hell proves that as long as we maintain our creative edge, write good stories, and rely on excellent local talents, Hong Kong movies can still be vibrant in the new era. The movie has not only become the opening champion of Hong Kong movies in 2024 at the box office, but more importantly, it has injected new vitality into the revival of Hong Kong movies. The reason for the movie’s success lies not only in its strong cast, but also in its profound cultural connotation and social significance.

The most profound part of the movie is that it points out that the rituals not only overcame the dead, but also overcame the living. The living are in a lot of trouble, so it is necessary to perform the rituals. This sense of ritual in traditional culture is not only a visual impact on the big screen, but also a deep reflection on the beauty of culture and the meaning of life. Through the delicate expression of these traditional rituals, the film explores the dialectical relationship between death and life, and triggers the audience to rethink their own time and culture. Director Chan Mau-yin skillfully utilizes “hell-breaking”, an intangible cultural heritage of Hong Kong, as an entry point, which not only allows the audience to feel the emotional value behind the traditional customs, but also arouses people’s concern and thinking about the funeral industry and its related culture.

“Breaking the Hell” is not only a funeral ritual in Taoism, but also an important part of the emotional bond between the living and the dead. By watching this movie, people may have a deeper understanding of life, learn to cherish the present moment and be grateful for what they have. Professor Murray, the protagonist of the popular Western novel The Last Fourteen Lessons of Tuesday, says, “Everyone knows they’re going to die, but no one wants to talk about it. The fear of death seems to be a human condition. Perhaps it is only when we let go of our obsession with life and death, our grudges against others, and our harshness towards ourselves that we truly begin the first step towards hell-breaking.

The movie is not only a spectacular cast, but also brings unprecedented visual and spiritual impact to the audience through the combination of real-life scenes and traditional culture. The brilliant performances of Wong Tze Wah and Hui Koon-man bring the movie to an emotional and philosophical level. Their different attitudes and understanding of death in the movie give the movie a strong depth of thought, making the audience think about their own attitudes towards life while enjoying the movie. Although the movie focuses on the funeral industry in Hong Kong – a work with strong regional cultural characteristics – it puts the eternal theme of life and death in the spotlight, which is common to all human beings and thus has a strong international resonance. This movie is much more than a shock to the senses, it is more of a baptism of the heart and mind.

Movies have influenced the world
Since the invention of the movie, the world’s largest film industry has been in Hollywood, followed by India with its large population. Movies were first made in Bombay, India, 130 years ago, and in China, which has a similarly large population, movies began to be made in Shanghai in 1905, with only a few Cantonese movies being made in Hong Kong at the time. However, due to China’s long history of civil wars and wars against Japan, many films were shot in Hong Kong in the 1930s, when the Shaw Brothers founded Shaw Brothers, which was the world’s largest film studio, and films were distributed to the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. With the founding of Communist China, a large number of Chinese filmmakers came to Hong Kong, making Hong Kong the third largest film production center in the world. It is only since 30 years ago that the huge Chinese market has dominated the production of Chinese-language movies. Because of this, Cantonese movies, such as Kung Fu, Triad and Funny movies, have been influencing the development of world cinema for a long time in such a small population as Hong Kong.

However, China’s movie production has been subjected to various governmental regulations, and its themes and contents are limited, so it does not have a great influence on the world’s movie industry. As Hong Kong film productions have to develop the Chinese market, the number of films targeting the local community has decreased significantly. However, with the drastic changes in Hong Kong society in 2019, more and more local filmmakers are choosing to make films on Hong Kong society, and many of them have gained international recognition.

It remains to be seen how Hong Kong cinema will continue to develop, whether it will have the possibility of redevelopment, or whether it will gradually become a part of Chinese cinema. However, films like “Breaking Hell”, which can resonate with the majority of people in their daily lives, will probably stimulate the creation of Hong Kong films and open up new horizons, which is something that is yet to be seen.