Love is subject to all sorts of temptations. The Knot film is based on Chinese romantic epic. A love story during the war…not like Indian ’1942 Love Story…’. “The Knot” remains entertaining in a big budget schlock-buster fashion, although unlikely to win any awards for depth or originality, it certainly achieves in its aim of mass appeal melodrama with its luscious production values and epic scope..
The film certainly looks gorgeous with some great sweeping camera work, and is lent a suitably epic air through its globetrotting plot. It is the first Chinese movie to fully use digital intermedia to complete its post-production, generating ideal effects for the local street conditions.
The movie was shot across China, including Tibet which the director and actors said was the hardest and most challenging part for them.
The story of a pair of lovers separated by the Taiwan Straits in the 1940s
The story begins in the present day with a young woman (played by Hong Kong starlet Isabella Leong) traveling around various Asian countries pestering her old painter aunt Wang Biyun (Ah Lei Gua, Wang Biyun - old age) in New York on the phone for details regarding her apparently mysterious uncle. This awkward prompting leads into the main story, related in flashback and beginning in Taipei in the 1940s, during the 2nd World War.
It is the story of 20 years old Qiushui Chen (Chen Kun also in “The Little Chinese Seamstress”), a young English tutor who falls in love with 18 years Wang Biyun (Vivian Hsu also Singer/actress Hsu made her music debut in 1991 at the age of 16 as a member of a female trio and released her first solo album in 1996, Her most recognizable role was in "The Accidental Spy" with Jackie Chan), the daughter of a rich dentist.
They fell in love. They were separated. Qiushui is forced to flee to the Mainland after the government starts hunting down suspected left wing activists after the 228 Massacre. Biyun gave him a gold engagement ring and they promised to meet again. Sadly, Qiushui fled Taiwan, where he becomes a military doctor. Qiushui served as an army doctor during the Korean War, where he met Wang Jindi, (Bingbing Li , also in “Wait ‘Til you’re Older”) a nurse from Shanghai who fell in love with him instantly. Qiushui went to Tibet to rescue the people there.
Years had gone by, Jindi followed Qiushui to Tibet and they were married there. But they were still concern about Biyun. And one day they were killed in an avalanche. While poor Wang Biyun remains in Taipei, caring for her lover Quishe Chen’s aging mother and remains single and lonely hoping that fate will reunite them, but….
She waits nearly sixty years for Chen’s return.
Some movie fact:
*The story is very touching, (I am not saying the director of this film Yin Li said)
In a marketing gambit, the New Film Association offered couples 10 yuan discount per ticket who hug or kiss outside any one of more than 30 times.
Chen faced a lot of difficulties trying to reenter Taiwan
*One for shooting scenes and the other for promotion work faced difficulties to enter Taiwan.
Taiwan authorities claimed that the movie had not passed the censorship because its description of the "1940’s Uprising" was not fact.*