Green Snake and the search for belong­ing in a hos­tile world

A young Bud­dhist monk and a wiz­ened old man are soar­ing through the for­est, run­ning on air as if weight­less. The old man’s white hair and robes stream behind him as he ami­ably tells the young monk he’s been train­ing for over 200 years. The monk, named Fat-hoi, feigns ami­a­bil­i­ty for a moment longer. ​“What a shame. I’ve only been train­ing for 20 years,” he says, before a switch flips. ​“I can tell you’re not human at first sight. Show your true form!”

Forcibly reveal­ing the old man to be a spi­der demon, Fat-hoi sucks him into a bowl-like prison in the palm of his hand. The demon begs for mer­cy, appeal­ing to the monk’s ​“kind heart”. He’s been train­ing to reach enlight­en­ment for hun­dreds of years; he’s almost human now, but if the monk ban­ish­es him, he’ll nev­er be able to rein­car­nate and will be forced to return to evil. ​“Shut up,” Fat-hoi says, star­ing down at the spi­der demon, whose shrunk­en body is dou­bled over tor­tur­ous­ly in his cage. ​“Evil will always be evil.”

Thir­ty years ago, Tsui Hark’s Green Snake intro­duced itself to the world with this always-pre­scient moral pro­logue. Lay­ing bare the philoso­phies of its uni­verse with a few swift nar­ra­tive strokes, the film tells us that while some beings desire trans­for­ma­tion, oth­ers have the pow­er to pun­ish and deny it. In Green Snake – and every­where else, it seems – pow­er is the author­i­ty to con­struct the truth and enforce it on oth­ers, with the might of hege­mo­ny behind you. Redemp­tion and trans­for­ma­tion are impos­si­ble for demons, accord­ing to the monk: all beings are either born human, or evil. This can­not change. Dream­ing of becom­ing some­thing else can be dead­ly in a world like this. Many do, regardless.

Based on Lil­lian Lee’s nov­el of the same name – itself a retelling of the Chi­nese folk­tale ​‘Leg­end of the White Snake’ – Green Snake tells the sto­ry of two snake demons who have trained for cen­turies to take the form of human women. Myths have always been fer­tile ground for mutu­al­ly enrich­ing inter­pre­ta­tions, yet one par­tic­u­lar­ly irre­sistible way this sto­ry may be read is as a work of trans world cre­ation: one about exist­ing in oppo­si­tion to fascism’s attempts to con­trol and define the body, expos­ing the arti­fice of things deemed divine­ly ordained, and remould­ing the world to affirm life, rather than deny it.

The orig­i­nal Leg­end of the White Snake cen­tres on the old­er and more expe­ri­enced snake sis­ter and her love affair with human schol­ar Hsui-xian; though intend­ed to be a hor­ror sto­ry, cen­turies of sto­ry­telling have bur­nished their attrac­tion with the lus­tre of a for­bid­den romance, not in spite of, but because of, its trans­gres­sions against the laws of nature.

Lee’s nov­el and Hark’s film, how­ev­er, flip the per­spec­tive of the myth to fore­ground the younger and more insur­rec­tion­al sis­ter, Green Snake. Though she usu­al­ly plays a sup­port­ing role in the back­drop of White Snake and Hsui-xian’s sto­ry, in Green Snake, it is through the tit­u­lar sister’s eyes that we dis­cov­er the plea­sures, dan­gers, and ongo­ing rebel­lion of bridg­ing the worlds of demons and humans. Played by a lithe and sen­su­al Mag­gie Che­ung – sen­su­al in its basest and most ani­mal­is­tic form, mean­ing ​‘of the sens­es’ – the chameleon­ic icon of Hong Kong cin­e­ma enthrals with her uncan­ny, delib­er­ate­ly the­atri­cal per­for­mance, one befit­ting a pow­er­ful, cen­turies-old super­nat­ur­al being con­front­ed with the task of mak­ing her­self small enough for the human world.

It is a rather momen­tous shift to observe this strange world through her eyes. As an out­sider, not teth­ered to a human lover like her sis­ter (Joey Wong is an equal­ly delight­ful, albeit less impul­sive snake demon), her only desire is to under­stand her place with­in this real­i­ty. The two sis­ters use their mag­i­cal pow­ers to sum­mon a house into being, and Hark’s film is won­der­ful­ly unfussy about the way this is com­mu­ni­cat­ed: a swathe of colour wipes lat­er­al­ly across the screen, paint­ing over a des­o­late plot of land with beau­ty. Lotus flow­ers sud­den­ly bloom, pink and plump, over the glit­ter­ing waters of an illu­so­ry pond. Real­i­ty is mere sur­face, remade with ease. Why must Green Snake lim­it herself?

Intrigued by the human world’s for­eign­ness yet unim­pressed by its rules, Green Snake is eager to seek out what her sis­ter implores her to avoid. Refus­ing to fall in line, she desta­bilis­es the frag­ile bound­aries between human and demon, truth and deceit, good and evil. Want­i­ng to expe­ri­ence love or desire for her­self – or per­haps dis­cov­er the dif­fer­ence between them – she drapes her­self around Hsui Xian (Wu Hsing-Kuo) only for her sis­ter to tell her to find anoth­er man to quench her amorous curiosi­ties, so long as it’s not the dan­ger­ous Fat-hoi. Yet the monk has been har­bour­ing spir­i­tu­al doubts about his abil­i­ty to renounce bod­i­ly plea­sure and asks Green Snake to test his resolve. He los­es quick­ly, but while Green Snake believes she has exposed Fat-hoi’s hypocrisy, the monk dou­bles down and decides to hunt down the snake sis­ters, ensnar­ing count­less mor­tals in his wake. (ACAB means you too, trans­pho­bic monk!)

Unlike White Snake, Green Snake nev­er seems ful­ly com­mit­ted to the idea of becom­ing human; it feels as though she’s mere­ly test­ing the waters. Wit­ness­ing her sis­ter and Hsui-xian falling in love, the younger snake remains uncer­tain of what that means. Is love what makes her sis­ter more accom­plished at being human, and her­self less so? Is love the same as desire, or is it some­thing else? Why do some humans run away from it? And if the world-trans­form­ing bond between her and her sis­ter or her sis­ter and Hsui-xian still isn’t enough to prove their human­i­ty and capac­i­ty to love, then does Fat-hoi real­ly know any more about what it is to be human than two snake demons?

Green Snake is a wux­ia fairy­tale drenched with daz­zling colour – gauzy and sen­su­ous greens, pinks, and blues drape oper­at­i­cal­ly across the screen, roman­ti­cal­ly embell­ished with glit­ter­ing light leaks. The cam­era is a fan­tas­ti­cal crea­ture all of its own, trac­ing the bil­low­ing fab­rics of the snake sis­ters’ robes and the monk’s sur­plice as they unfurl beyond mate­r­i­al lim­i­ta­tion, a kind of dream physics som­er­sault­ing on screen, respon­sive and alive. The film’s arti­fi­cial and heady beau­ty is a con­stant estrange­ment. Even the mis­match of its curi­ous­ly out-of-sync ADR feels like yet anoth­er sto­ry­telling device beck­on­ing us to find mean­ing in the gap between real and not real.

Wit­ness­ing all of this, Green Snake her­self asks: what would it mean to exist in ambiva­lence, and not in the vio­lent impo­si­tion of incom­plete truths? ​“I come to earth but have been mis­led by the world,” Green Snake says, jad­ed and mourn­ful, as the film swells to its calami­tous and trag­ic end­ing. ​“You say there’s love in the human world, but what’s love?” She stares down at a riv­er of drowned souls, col­lat­er­al dam­age to Fat-hoi’s ide­o­log­i­cal war. ​“It’s ridicu­lous. Even the humans don’t know.”

Only one thing is for sure in the world of snake demons, carcer­al monks, and lovelorn schol­ars; in the world of film­mak­ing; and the world beyond: the sur­faces and nar­ra­tives we weave togeth­er to tell our sto­ries are mal­leable. This can imprison us if we are the monk, caught in a los­ing bat­tle to extin­guish the spir­its of those deter­mined to live the life they desire. But it can also free us if we embrace the idea that the world can always be what we make of it.

Green Snake tells us that if one day we fig­ure it out, maybe she’ll make her return. And with that, after cen­turies of learn­ing to be in this world with us, she van­ish­es into the water.