Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Sàidékè balái), or: The unconventional use of action sequences

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Sàidékè balái) (2011)

Directed by Te-Sheng Wei

***SPOILERS***

Film Crit Hulk wrote a great piece on how to write action sequences. He boasts filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and Tom Townend (cinematographer for Attack the Block) as masters of the genre, and mostly because they understand that great action sequences are made up of four main ingredients: anticipating the action, understanding the action, feeling the action, and reacting to the action—and all of which is nowhere to be found in many films, including Michael Bay’s entire filmography, probably. Film Crit Hulk even dissects a rather clear-cut scene from Captain America, in which he alternately explains the action occurring between Cap and Bucky, transitioning between each of their locations and how well the movie lays out their situations:

“THEY INTRODUCE A SITUATION WHERE CAP AND BUCKY (HIS FELLOW SOLDIER) ARE SEPARATED BETWEEN TWO TRAIN CARS. CAP IS IN THE FRONT CAR FIGHTING ONE BIG BAD HYDRA GUY AND BUCKY IS IN THE HIND-CAR SHOOTING THE OTHER BAD GUYS. THEN BUCKY RUNS OUT OF BULLETS AND THERE’S STILL ONE LAST HYDRA BAD GUY STALKING HIM FROM BEHIND A SHELF. CAP TAKES CARE OF HIS BIG GUY IN THE FRONT CAR AND COMES BACK TO BUCKY’S CAR AND SEES THE SITUATION AT HAND. CAP THEN LOOKS UP AND SEES A SHELF IN BETWEEN HIM AND HYDRA BAD GUY. THEN, IN A SERIES OF QUICK BUT DELIBERATE MOVEMENTS: CAP OPEN THE DOOR, THROWS BUCKY HIS GUN, THEN RUNS FORWARD AND PUSHES A BEAM ON THE SHELF FORWARD. THE BEAM KNOCKS THE HYDRA SOLDIER BACKWARD, RIGHT INTO VIEW OF BUCKY, WHO IMMEDIATELY SHOOTS HIM. BING. BANG. BOOM. BAD GUY TAKEN CARE OF AND IT TOTALLY THE BEST ACTION “BEAT” IN THE MOVIE.”

The entire article goes on in this manner, dissecting films that perform action sequences correctly and those that don't, and for the most part it’s an educational piece that is inarguably correct. The only danger in this piece of work is its lack of versatility. Despite its incredible length, I would argue the piece does very little to establish the meaning behind the presence of action, and instead simply relates what makes an action sequence work. Perhaps this is what Film Crit Hulk was going for. But sometimes the presence of action in a film owns a meaning so unique and integral to the narrative that it really defies all convention and writes its own rules.

In Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale, the film begins by breaking every one of Film Crit Hulk’s guidelines. Part of what makes the Captain America scene work is the established relationship between Cap and Bucky and the brevity of the situation at hand, all of which lends weight to the exquisitely timed action sequence. Warriors of the Rainbow launches into its story without a moment’s notice, tossing various warriors at the viewer as they run through the jungle and chase a pig, and then are subsequently ambushed by another tribe. Mona (Da-Ching) jumps into the water after the pig, and the opposing tribe continues to shoot arrows at him through the water. He eventually swims to the other side and pops out, running through the jungle, continually avoiding arrow after arrow. Once he reaches the other side, the tribe screams his name in vain, and he returns home with his own tribe, ready to be declared a man and receive his tribal tattoo.

On the technical front, this particular scene follows Film Crit Hulk’s rules. Every bit of action is cleanly established and foretold, keeping the audience up to speed on where Mona is going and how the sequence is functioning. But being the first scene of the film, there’s no context for such a bombastic and abrupt scene. At no point in the exchange of arrows and tribal trash talk is the relationship between these two groups established, nor is their reasoning for wishing to kill one another. I think the best way to explain this is comparing Warriors of the Rainbow’s first action sequence with Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance’s. Inept in every possibly way throughout its entire course, Ghost Rider’s opening scene is, of course, poorly executed, mainly because it’s closer to Michael Bay than Steven Spielberg, whipping the camera back and forth between parties and never establishing a clear-cut sequence of events—or, as Film Crit Hulk writes it, creating an understanding. What Warriors of the Rainbow accomplishes that Ghost Rider cannot is making the audience feel the action at hand. Essentially the same on paper, each of these sequences doesn’t  establish a relationship between the parties. Unfortunately for Ghost Rider, this opening sequence is integral to its own contrived and laughably shallow plotline. Moreau races into a temple to protect a boy, whom the bad guys are after, and at no point do we know A) why they’re after this boy, or B) why Moreau must protect him. With nothing to understand or feel, I’m at a complete loss in how to emotionally invest myself in a scene.

But for Warriors of the Rainbow, such an ambiguous picture is different. Mona returns home to a celebratory tribe shooting their guns into the air, relishing in the fact that he survived and will now become a “man”. Such a ritual involved stamping a tattoo below his bottom lip soul-patch-style, followed by a tribal celebration full of dancing. And, during these sequences, one thing is cleanly being established: violence carried a different weight entirely for the Seediq tribe. As Mona moves forward as a man, we witness him becoming more brutal and lethal, and concurrently more feared by other tribes and more respected in his own. Various ambushes and random acts of violence continue to ensue, never establishing who these other tribes are, why they wish to kill each other, or, really, where the hell all this is taking place. The film actually depicts the Wushe Incident—an event American history books may not have covered, but one that is universally understood in Taiwan. And with knowledge of the event, most Taiwanese audiences may be up to speed with the violent nature of the film. The Seediq tribe members gained recognized power in their tribes by how many heads they collected, essentially giving every decapitation context and emotional weight—for these men, killing wasn’t just self-defense, but a way of life.

Because of this, Western audiences will undoubtedly question whether or not violence it is responsible to glorify violence in film. It’s like discussing whether or not 50/50 exposes cancer for laughs—surely it does (to an extent), but there’s a level of responsibility involved in the matter. Deeply entrenched in the day-to-day proceedings of chemotherapy, humor derives from cancer, but doesn’t depend on it. We aren’t laughing at people as they lie sick in their deathbeds—we are understanding how humor is found in such proceedings. Likewise, violence may be glorified in Warriors of the Rainbow, but only because violence is glorified among the Seediq tribe.

There’s a scene involving Mona and a younger tribesman. The younger man attempts to shoot his arrow at a sitting deer. Following the animal himself, Mona approaches it from a distance and shoots it with his gun, sending the bullet just over the man’s shoulder. Mona says nothing, passing the boy and approaching the deer. He cuts into it, scoops a handful of blood and drinks it, covering his face. He takes a bite from the deer’s internal organs, and then invites his friend over to join him. Gruesome and intimate at the same time, this moment establishes a working and identifiable relationship between the two, all the while carrying the violent nature of the tribe’s proceedings. A similar moment occurs when Mona attempts to shoot Temu (Umin Boya) and one of his own jumps in the way. After shooting his comrade, Mona approaches him not with pity or regret, but a hardened matter-of-fact sense of understanding. He helps the boy up, but not before establishing that nobody disrupts Mona during a headhunt. This speaks volumes of the abruptly inserted ambushes that occur regularly in the film’s first third, which are presented to move Mona up the ranks and establish the shared hate between the tribes. Never about personality or petty grievances, all animosity derives from Mona’s earned power through headhunting, thus lending the action a presence that’s finely established through the aforementioned events. Continuously relationships and power statuses are established through action and violence, giving each subsequent action sequence emotional investment and relevance (and understanding), all leading up to the battle between the Seediq tribes and the Japanese army.

In these sequences violence carries a different weight entirely. Long erased are the days of tribal headhunting, now replaced by a sense of order on Japan’s part, separating the tribes and destroying their hunting land. These moments between the opening battles and the final battle establish the disconnect between new Seediq tribe members and their ancestors. Once a way of life, headhunting is now viewed in an almost immature and brute manner, which is subsequently beat away by an aged Mona (Lin-Ching Tai), who understands the touchiness of their given situation and the planning and swiftness killing entails—neither of which his blood-thirsty sons have the proper sense to own. The gap between these boys and Mona finds a meeting point, during which the young men remind Mona that defending one’s homeland is their ticket into the afterlife, while Mona employs his hardened (and well established) warrior mindset to map a plan, unify the tribes, and remind his men what glory lies inside the beautiful art of killing.

What makes such an endearing embrace of violence work is the acceptance of responsibility on director and writer Te-Sheng Wei’s part, who matches the glory of headhunting with the consequence of war, focusing on core relationships and individual stories to relate how crippling the Seediq way of life could be. Unable to feed themselves, all the Seediq women hang themselves and their children, all in the name of allowing men to fight a battle. Jiro (Soda Voyu) establishes the internal struggle of remaining loyal to one’s tribe, as he kills his own wife and child, just before killing himself. It carries a different weight from the women who hung themselves, as they performed such a horrific act as part of their debt to the gods, because Jiro wasn’t deeply ingrained with the Seediq way of life. Deriving from a Seediq ancestory but groomed by the Japanese government, Jiro recognizes the importance of ritualization, but such recognition is outweighed by the terror at hand. Compared alongside Pawan’s story, we alternately experience the boy raised by the Seediq tribe, but not yet hardened by the horrors of life. The consequence involved in this case derives from the aforementioned disconnect, which allows Pawan to understand killing was once a way of life, but never understand why it was a way of life. So as he and his young comrades rush a room full of women and children to cut their heads off, we find their ritual tattooing to carry a different weight than Mona’s. Mona, who killed to establish his own status as a man, did so for the glory. But these children did so simply because of wartime, and obtaining a tattoo would rise them to Mona’s and their older siblings’ status.

The violence in Warriors of the Rainbow is never bittersweet, which would imply a sense of sweetness combined with the constant taste of bitterness throughout the film. For glorifying war—as uncomfortable as it may make Western audiences—can be an irresponsible act, but can also work in the correct context. And such a context allows Wei to break the conventional rules of action sequences and present violence through a beautiful landscape painted in blood. There is a moment in which a Japanese soldier stares into the trees, admiring the cherry blossoms in full bloom. “So red. Red as blood,” he says, just before being ambushed by a Seediq tribe. A later scene features a dying Seediq tribesman as embers from leaves fall upon his face, presented with the same angle as the Japanese soldier’s scene. In this moment, we see the aftermath of war and the beauty of cherry blossoms coming together, giving a disturbing aura to the presence of red—spoken of romantically, violence coincides with such an image of beauty. And it’s what makes Warriors of the Rainbow’s action sequences so gruesome, unconventional, and poetic all at once.