Monday, December 10, 2018

Film review: Yellow is forbidden

Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 135 plus films later, here is the review for December 2018.

Yellow is forbidden
A film review by Rev Dr Steve Taylor

Documentary is a unique genre. There is no script writer, paid actors or shooting of multiple scenes. Instead there is the promise of true to life insights. But exclusivity comes with a price. The veil onto an authentic self is being lifted, but the gaze of camera and interviewer should be adoring. An overly prying eye or a critical interview could well result in the end of access, a film canned rather than in the can.

“Yellow is forbidden” is documentary. Kiwi director Pietra Brett-kelly follows Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei off the catwalk and into the dressing rooms and digital design studios of the global fashion industry. Several stories are cleverly embroidered together. First the career of China’s most famous designer, including a closeup of the “Magnificent Gold” dress, stunningly worn by Rihanna on the Met Gala red carpet. Made from gold, taking two years to make and weighing 25 kilograms with a five metre hand embroidered train, it placed Guo Pei on the global fashion map. Second, the complexity of a Chinese designer organising a fashion show in Paris, an outsider crossing boundaries of culture and taste. Finally, Guo Pei’s personal life including the backstitched story of her childhood, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, in which golds are the colour of the court and Guo Pei is forbidden to dress in yellow.

Yellow as colour is thus a central metaphor. The movie begins in darkness. A voice calls for a iphone to be turned on and the materials of a dress absorb the stark glare of spotlight. With the iphone then turned off the dress then shimmers with a ghostly radiance. It is a stunning visual reminder of the beauty of fashion and the way technology can be twinned with imagination. As a beginning, it has echoes of John 1. A light shines in the darkness, in order that all of humanity might absorb, then in shimmer in response to Divine Light in Christ.

Historically, religion has lived in an uneasy relationship with fashion. Pietism celebrates the unadorned and naturally human. Yet a rich set of images emerge if humans can shimmer with beauty in response to technology and imagination.

In Christian Scripture, God is a fashion designer. In Job 10:11-2, God is a dressmaker. In Ezekiel 16:9-1, God is a maker of designer clothes, a crafter of perfumes and accessories to adorn the nation of Israel. In Psalm 12:6, God is a jeweler crafting silver. One way to watch “Yellow is forbidden” is thus as an extended meditation on God the maker. The cinematic depictions of fabric being dyed, sequins being painstakingly sown and patterns woven in golden thread, are a window into the way God intends humans to participate in the creative fashioning of life together.

Drawing on the image of God the maker, theologian Paul Fiddes argues that being made in Gods’ image means humans are made to craft in delight, be open mouthed in wonder and practice perseverance. Such are the possibilities suggested by a theological conversation with the fashion in “Yellow is forbidden.”

Posted by steve at 08:49 PM

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