# The Puppetmaster (戏梦人生)
**The Puppetmaster** (戲夢人生; Hsimeng Rensheng, literally "Drama, Dream, Life") is a 1993 Taiwanese biographical film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien about the early life of the master glove-puppetry (budaixi) performer Li Tien-lu (李天祿), covering the years from Li's birth in 1909 to the end of Japan's fifty-year colonial rule over Taiwan in 1945.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) It is chronologically the first part of Hou's trilogy on Taiwan's modern history, followed by *A City of Sadness* (1989) and *Good Men, Good Women* (1995), and it won the Jury Prize at the 46th Cannes Film Festival.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) • [2](https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202406285005.aspx)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director, year, country | Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1993, Taiwan[3](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/le-maitre-de-marionnettes/) |
| Subject | Li Tien-lu (1909–), master of budaixi glove puppetry, regarded as a "national treasure" and called by Hou "a living encyclopaedia of Chinese tradition"[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) |
| Period covered | Li's life from birth in 1909 to 1945, spanning the Japanese colonial era from the 1895 cession of Taiwan to Japan's defeat in World War II[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) |
| Form | Li narrates and appears as himself on screen, interwoven with dramatic reenactments performed by actors[4](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-puppetmaster/) |
| Runtime and key credits | 142 minutes; screenplay Wu Nien-jen and Chu Tien-wen; cinematography Lee Pin-bing; music Chen Ming-chang; production Era International[3](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/le-maitre-de-marionnettes/) |
| Awards | Jury Prize, 46th Cannes Film Festival (1993); technical awards at the 30th Golden Horse Awards including Best Cinematography, Best Styling Design, and Best Sound[2](https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202406285005.aspx) |
| Trilogy position | Chronologically first of Hou's three films on modern Taiwanese history, before *A City of Sadness* (1989) and *Good Men, Good Women* (1995)[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) |
## Spoilers
### Subject and structure
The film's subject, Li Tien-lu, was already familiar to Hou's audiences: he had acted in several of the director's films beginning with *Dust in the Wind* (1986), including *Daughter of the Nile* and *A City of Sadness*.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) • [4](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-puppetmaster/) Hou met him in 1986 while casting the grandfather role in *Dust in the Wind*, saw his budaixi performance, and invited him to act; the two went on to collaborate on two further films before *The Puppetmaster*.[2](https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202406285005.aspx)
**A hybrid form.** The film combines documentary and fiction. The elderly Li appears on screen and narrates his own story in voice-over, in the manner of a traditional Chinese storyteller, while actors (Lim Giong as the young adult Li, Lin Chung as the adolescent) perform dramatized scenes of his early life.[4](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-puppetmaster/) • [5](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/puppetmaster/) The film scholar Lin Wen-chi observed that Li's on-screen testimony anchors the dramatized sections, so that the reenactments function as performances subordinate to a firsthand account.[6](https://funscreen.tfai.org.tw/node/2570) The narrative is organized in three main segments: Li's childhood and family relationships, his relationship with a prostitute named Leitzu, and his service as chief puppeteer in a Japanese propaganda unit along with his family's wartime evacuation.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1)
The film opens with traditional Chinese music over the credits, intertitles recounting the cession of Taiwan to Japan after the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, and a fixed shot of roughly 110 seconds showing a complete budaixi "banxian" (ritual blessing puppet performance for family celebrations) blessing performance at a family banquet for Li's first birthday.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) • [6](https://funscreen.tfai.org.tw/node/2570)
## History through one life
Li's autobiography doubles as an account of [Taiwan under Japanese rule](https://www.edgepedia.org/taiwan-under-japanese-rule). The film shows the colonial order mainly through its effects on ordinary and family life: Li's rebellion against his father and stepmother, the Japanese prohibition of public puppet performances, his compulsory work for a Japanese propaganda puppet troupe under the Japanization movement, and wartime American bombing, which the film's narration describes but its images never show directly.[4](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-puppetmaster/) • [7](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/20578/the-puppetmaster) The film ends with the Kuomintang takeover of Taiwan in 1945 without showing the consequences of that transfer of power.[8](https://researchers.westernsydney.edu.au/files/94855049/uws_31339.pdf)
Puppetry carries several layers of meaning in the film. It is Li's livelihood and art, a ritual offering to the gods, a piece of folk culture shown alongside [Peking opera](https://www.edgepedia.org/peking-opera) and Taiwanese opera rather than elevated above them, and a metaphor for a life manipulated by others: Li recounts that fortune-tellers dictated at his birth that he take his mother's family name and that his father be addressed as uncle, and he later describes himself as a puppet with someone above pulling the strings.[6](https://funscreen.tfai.org.tw/node/2570) • [3](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/le-maitre-de-marionnettes/)
## Production
Hou shot the film in Taiwan and in Fujian Province in southeast China, from Fuzhou south through [Zhangzhou](https://www.edgepedia.org/zhangzhou), Quanzhou, and Nanjing, covering thirty years of history in a film of about two hours and twenty minutes.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) • [9](https://fuzhou.baogaosu.com/xinwen/%25E8%25A5%25BF%25E6%25B4%258B%25E5%2590%258D%25E5%25AF%25BC%25E4%25BE%25AF%25E5%25AD%259D%25E8%25B4%25A4%25E7%259B%2591%25E5%2588%25B6%25E4%25B8%258B%25E8%25A5%25BF%25E6%25B4%258B/25361262/) To authenticate Li's life, Hou re-staged live budaixi shows in Fujian, hoping the environment of present-day China would evoke Li's memories of colonial-era Taiwan; his assistant director Chen Huai-en countered that it was Taiwanese culture, not China's, that needed salvaging, and that the reenactments produced only a surface authenticity.[10](https://academic.oup.com/hong-kong-scholarship-online/book/40259/chapter-abstract/346233610)
**Style.** Compared with the epic scale and large cast of *A City of Sadness*, *The Puppetmaster* focuses on one man and pushes Hou's hallmark reticence further: the camera almost never moves, takes are exceedingly long, and colonial hardship and wartime bombing are heard in narration rather than shown.[7](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/20578/the-puppetmaster) Hou said he reduced the number of dramas and characters to focus on the essence of relationships through ellipsis, a structure he likened to traditional [Chinese opera](https://www.edgepedia.org/chinese-opera), which presents a scene without a fully spelled-out narrative.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) Editor Liao Ching-sung described the cutting approach as a "qi-yun" (breath-rhythm) editing method.[6](https://funscreen.tfai.org.tw/node/2570)
## Reception
*The Puppetmaster* was the first Taiwanese feature selected for the Cannes Film Festival's competition, where it won the Jury Prize at the 46th festival in 1993; at the 30th Golden Horse Awards it took the technical prizes for cinematography, styling design, and sound.[2](https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202406285005.aspx) The *Village Voice* critic J. Hoberman, reviewing it in 1993, called it "a rebirth of cinema itself," and the film scholar Yvonne Ng argued that its elliptical, multi-layered narrative and use of the subject's own voice-over opened new ground for the medium, while noting that the ellipses posed comprehension difficulties for some Western viewers.[1](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1) • [11](https://mubi.com/en/films/the-puppetmaster/critics-reviews) The film scholar James Udden has argued that, though it received relatively little attention next to *A City of Sadness*, it may surpass that film in both aesthetics and historical sense.[12](https://hkupress.hku.hk/image/catalog/pdf-preview/9789888139224.pdf)
Hou himself framed the film as an act of cultural preservation. He said Taiwan had absorbed Japanese and then American influences, and that his generation had a responsibility to conserve the beauty of its own traditions and pass them on using the tools of the age.[5](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/puppetmaster/) In a later interview with the screenwriter [Chu Tien-wen](https://www.edgepedia.org/chu-tien-wen), who worked on the film, Hou said the trilogy idea came after the success of *A City of Sadness*, and that Chu regarded Li Tianlu as the reason *The Puppetmaster* was made at all.[13](https://notesonfilm1.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/houHsiao-hsin_zhuTianwen_interview.pdf)
## References
1. [Yvonne Ng, "Essence and Ellipsis in Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Puppetmaster," KINEMA, Spring 1999](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/896/882?inline=1)
2. [中央社, "開箱老照片》「戲夢人生」開鏡" (2024)](https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202406285005.aspx)
3. [Festival des 3 Continents, "The Puppetmaster" film page](https://www.3continents.com/en/film/le-maitre-de-marionnettes/)
4. [Nick Schager, "Review: The Puppetmaster," Slant Magazine (2005)](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-puppetmaster/)
5. [Howard Schumann, "The Puppetmaster," Senses of Cinema (2003)](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/puppetmaster/)
6. [林文淇, "《戲夢人生》," 放映週報 no. 26 (2006)](https://funscreen.tfai.org.tw/node/2570)
7. [Melbourne International Film Festival archive, "The Puppetmaster" (MIFF 1994)](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/20578/the-puppetmaster)
8. [Yu-Ting Hung, "Are Hou Hsiao-hsien's films political?" Western Sydney University thesis](https://researchers.westernsydney.edu.au/files/94855049/uws_31339.pdf)
9. [福州新聞網, "名導侯孝賢監制《下西洋》 1991年曾在閩拍《戲夢人生》"](https://fuzhou.baogaosu.com/xinwen/%25E8%25A5%25BF%25E6%25B4%258B%25E5%2590%258D%25E5%25AF%25BC%25E4%25BE%25AF%25E5%25AD%259D%25E8%25B4%25A4%25E7%259B%2591%25E5%2588%25B6%25E4%25B8%258B%25E8%25A5%25BF%25E6%25B4%258B/25361262/)
10. ["Hou Xiaoxian as Ambassador: Performing Cross-Strait Histories in the 'Taiwan Trilogy'," Hong Kong Scholarship Online](https://academic.oup.com/hong-kong-scholarship-online/book/40259/chapter-abstract/346233610)
11. [MUBI, "The Puppetmaster (1993) critic reviews"](https://mubi.com/en/films/the-puppetmaster/critics-reviews)
12. [James Udden, *No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien*, Hong Kong University Press](https://hkupress.hku.hk/image/catalog/pdf-preview/9789888139224.pdf)
13. ["Words and Images: A Conversation with Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chu T'ien-wen," positions 11:3 (2003)](https://notesonfilm1.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/houHsiao-hsin_zhuTianwen_interview.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Biographical films of musicians, artists, and writers › Biographical films about visual and performing artists*
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