Comments on: Forget It Jake, It’s Chinatown

By: tromag

tromag — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:10:44 +0000

An additional interpretation hit me when I was reading a review of “Curse of the Golden Flower”. The reviewer pointed out that the ultimate moral of that film is “In China, you don’t mess with The Man”.

Traditional China represents a leader with ultimate authority, incredibly powerful and accountable to no one. Possibly Chinatown in the movie represents the symbolism of the rich and powerful being the new Emperors. The corruption of society has created a class of men who are above the law, if you go against them, you’re doomed to failure.

By: DoorFrame

DoorFrame — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 04:33:30 +0000

It’s basically a prequel, yeah.

By: nach

nach — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:03:26 +0000

is this anything like big trouble in little china?

By: jbg.

jbg. — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:40:10 +0000

funny. i don’t remember having a conversation about it. i’ve seen it once; i like it. but have never seen it again.

By: DoorFrame

DoorFrame — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:00:37 +0000

I think jbg had mentioned this to me a long time ago, but it was interesting how the whole movie seemed to be based in Chinatown (the title, references to Chinatown, the frequent Chinese employees and jokes about the Chinese) while, until the end of the movie, nothing actually took place there.

Chinatown was their dangerous inner city, the place were the truly awful happened. When you’re out in the greater city as a whole, we can expect, one would hope, a higher level of public decorum. And all the talk of Chinatown was just reminding us that, in fact, we’ve never left. Chinatown may have its problems out in the open, but the greater city has bigger problems and they’re harder to deal with because they’re harder to see… but we haven’t left them behind. For the people in the movie, they can’t be left behind. You’re forever stuck in Chinatown.

I just thought that aspect was neat.

By: crazymonk

crazymonk — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 05:58:58 +0000

It’s a great movie, and it gets better with each viewing.

By: Troeltsch

Troeltsch — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:28:00 +0000

by “nobody can try”, i mean “nobody should try”

By: Troeltsch

Troeltsch — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:27:27 +0000

Chinatown is a metaphor for the dirty seemy underbelly of life that nobody can fix and nobody can try. Working the Chinatown beat as a cop disillusioned Jake and made him turn PI. Similarly, Jake’s noble attempts to save the girl and stop the corrupt system were totally futile. Chinatown (the movie) is a noir homage, of course, and like most noir the main character isn’t really happy at the end, but there’s another step here, where while he solves all the cases that need solving by the end, nobody gets their just deserts (I guess the man gets shot, but he doesn’t die, righ?), expanding the disillusionment of the lead gumshoe so that pretty much everyone is disillusioned.