Analyze+THIS!+ShaoLin+Soccer


 * Analyze THIS: Shaolin Soccer Analysis **

The movie "Shaolin Soccer" is a 2001 comedic Cantonese movie directed by and starring Stephen Chow. Sing, a master of the art of Shaolin kung fu, tries to promote the art of Shaolin kung fu to the public, trying to show people how it would be very beneficial to them. However, his methods fail miserably, but soon meets Fung, an ex soccer star, who thought of promoting the art through soccer. Sing liked this idea and decided to call up his old Shaolin team to form a team and the team slowly moves up the ranks and become the world champions. Ultimately, the plan of promoting the art of Shaolin through soccer worked, and Sing got what he wanted, with the public all using Shaolin techniques in their daily lives.

There are multiple themes in Shaolin Soccer, but one of the stronger themes (in my personal opinion) is the reoccurring theme of love. Although he didn't necessarily realize it, Sing had one of those love at first sight moments with Mui, the baker girl who was making "man tou"'s on the street using martial arts. As the movie progresses, Sing and Mui's relationship progresses, and it becomes apparent that Mui has feelings for Sing. However, when she confesses her feelings to Sing, Sing told her that he just wanted them to be friends (Mui got friend-zoned). At this point, Sing still has yet to realize that what he NEEDS is to realize that he loves Mui.


 * Lighting: ** The lighting in ShaoLin Soccer varies quite a lot, but I’ve noticed that in the scenes where Sing is with Mui, from the time he first met her to the end of the movie, the lighting changes from being rather bright, to a little less bright, to dark, and then back to bright as Sing discovers his feelings for her. Stephen Chow uses the lighting in these scenes to show the progress of Sing and Mui’s relationship, with bright lighting creating a rather warm and happy tone, showing that something good is about to happen that strengthens the relationship between them is very strong, while darker lighting creates a slightly colder and sad tone, showing that something bad is about to happen that affects the relationship of Sing and Mui.


 * Sound: ** The sounds in the scenes where Sing and Mui are together works well with the lighting to create warm, happy tones and also cold, sad tones depending on the situation. For example, when Sing first meets Mui, there is a soft and slow music playing in the background while she is making the “man tous”, and it gets faster and faster as Sing continues to watch her, until the point where he starts singing and telling her how he admires her work through song. That creates a rather happy and warm tone and represents how love is growing between Sing and Mui. As the movie progresses, the sounds changes to become slower and slower, until the point that Sing friend-zones Mui, where the background music is a slow, almost inaudible piano music, which creates a colder and less happy tone, representing how something has happened that affected Sing and Mui’s love in a negative way. The sounds near the end with the epic music and all while the last game of soccer is being played also created an epicly happy tone and showed how Sing and Mui’s love strengthened and Sing finally realizing that he loved Mui.


 * Mise en Scene: ** Everything about the mise en scene works really well to show the love that blossoms between Sing and Mui. One primary example of that is the ever-changing appearance of Mui. Stephen Chow decided to first show Mui as a shy girl who lived in poverty through using makeup to make it look like Mui’s face was completely destroyed by acne, put her in shabby clothing, place her in a ghetto neighborhood, having her head always down, and have hair covering her face. As the movie progresses and Mui begins to fall in love with Sing, her appearance starts to change for the better in order to make sure that Sing falls in love with her; her face becomes less covered in acne, she goes to a make-up parlor to make herself more beautiful, got new and more “seductive” clothing. Ultimately, she completely changed her appearance by shaving her hair off and dressing up as a ShaoLin monk to help Sing and his soccer team.


 * Editing: ** I’ve noticed that in terms of editing, the editor didn’t cut back and forth from Sing and Mui’s a lot while they first met, and set a rather slow pace to the movie (and their relationship), but as the movie (and their relationship) advances, the editor starts to cut back and forth between them more rapidly, fastening the pace and showing that their love is strengthening, that Sing is finally finding true love. Also, the editor made Mui fade in and fade out at her working spot at the bakery place as Sing looked over imaging that she was still there, when in reality she was not. That sets a kind of sad tone to the movie because it depicts how Sing realized that he had lost who he had loved.


 * Cinematography: ** The cinematography works well in portraying the theme of love in ShaoLin Soccer. The cinematographer used quite a bit of over the shoulder shots when Sing and Mui were talking together, as well as medium shots to show that they are together, and have some sort of connection to each other. He likes to try to use shots that have Sing and Mui together in a shot se that he could have them looking at each other and so that we as the audience could see the interactions between them and set up a nice atmosphere and tone to the scenes, and also show the progress of their love for each other.

The theme of love in ShaoLin Soccer fits Stephen Chow's body of work quite well, as the basic templates for most of his films is: "A slightly dimwitted, but talented man gets thrown into strange circumstances, where he ultimately finds redemption and resolution through love". He uses the theme of love in a lot of his films, and ShaoLin Soccer is just another one of those films.