The Great Buddha+

Taiwanese filmmaker Huang Hsin-yao’s film is an expansion of his 2014 short of the same name, which explains the plus sign cheekily added to the title. A dark comedy about class and corruption on the island, The Great Buddha+ centers on Pickle (Cres Chuang), a watchman at a factory that makes huge iron statues of Buddha, and his pal Belly Button (Bamboo Chen), a scrap collector. The two while away the nights watching TV in Pickle’s run-down office, where he opens and closes the gate to let vehicles in and out. When Pickle’s set breaks down, they decide to check out the dash-cam footage from his boss Kevin’s Mercedes. Most of what they see—which is shot in bright colors, in stark contrast to the gritty black-and-white of the rest of the film—consists of tedious conversations between the womanizing Kevin and his many dates, but eventually they come upon a horrifying scene in which the boss kills a woman who threatened to reveal his shady connivance with government officials and religious leaders. The pair dither over what to do—at one point even trying to consult an oracle at a makeshift shrine dedicated to General Chiang Kai-shek—until a tragedy proves that, in the end, power is all that matters. The Great Buddha+ is a slow and meandering film that requires a viewer’s patience but also ultimately rewards it. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)