MARCH OF HAPPINESS

Taiwan’s official entry this year for an Oscar, MARCH OF HAPPINESS, begins auspiciously enough in a Taiwanese theater. An ensemble of actors are practicing lines and dialogue in a musical play. The pivotal scene occurs as one thespian spirits off his paramour to the universal disdain of other costumed characters, who accuse her of adultery and him of wife stealing. In a subsequent performance before a live audience, the actors begin their scene, when a Japanese officer struts onstage, commands the patrons to leave and shuts down the performance. Subtitles explain the complicated political situation, as Japan is losing the war in 1945, but tightens its political grip on its island colony, Taiwan.

Cut to the romantic story. A-Yu (Hsaio Shushen), a teenage girl, sits disconsolately in a restaurant next to her imperious fish-ball merchant father (Chen Kun-chang), who demands that she submit to his matchmaking with a doctor’s son. A-Yu rebelliously wears theater makeup and tries to repel the doctor’s son. A-Yu is in love with another actor, A-Jin, who studied composing in Japan. Will A-Yu prevail in her love for A-Jin in the face of her father’s demands that she marry the doctor’s son on a hurried-up wedding date? The film answers that question in a quirky, classical and ultimately satisfying way.

An ensemble piece, MARCH OF HAPPINESS cleverly leaps from A-Yu’s and A-Yin’s romantic dilemmas, to the stories of other members of the theater troupe, all of whom are watched closely by the various governments, which invariably shut down their performances before any one is consummated. One of the more interesting characters, a woman street vendor who sells illegal American cigarettes, precipitates one of the dramatic climaxes of the film when she is knocked down by a Nationalist Chinese police officer, who confiscates her contraband. Although it is not directly connected to the story, this incident actually happened in Taiwan.

Much of the action of MARCH OF HAPPINESS occurs inside Zhan Tian-Ma’s (Leon Dai’s) café in Taipei. The café resembles a Taiwanese version of Rick’s café in CASABLANCA, where the intrigue never ends. First, Zhan Tian-Ma ingratiates himself to the Japanese overlords by painting American and British flags on the cement pavement outside his restaurant to humiliate the Japanese’s enemy, then has to erase the paintings when the Nationalists take over Taiwan. Similarly, the theater troupe starts out being menaced by Japanese soldiers, then is ordered to incorporate “western” themes when the Nationalist government takes power and orders martial law.

In one of only two instances of gun violence in the movie, a Nationalist officer threatens a Japanese customer who talks loudly to himself in Zhan’s café, then murders him as he walks down an alley in Taiwan. The other killing happens when soldiers shoot protesting civilians who rally after the policeman arrests the cigarette lady.

It is rare that US audiences get to experience the consternation and outrage of foreign theater troupes and audiences whose artistic freedoms are brutally suppressed by autocratic governments, who send soldiers into theaters to arbitrarily shut down performances. In this sense, MARCH OF HAPPINESS is a plea for artistic freedom in the face of constant political interference by first Japanese, then Communist Chinese, then Nationalist Chinese censors. Its mildly humanist worldview includes a scene of a couple lying in bed, adult themes and mild violence, including soldiers shooting protestors during a rally.