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Taiwan · 2017
1h 42m
Director Huang Hsin-yao
Starring Cres Chuang, Bamboo Chen, Leon Dai, Lin Na-Dou
Genre Comedy, Drama
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Pickle is a night security guard at a bronze statue factory. His colleague, Belly Bottom, works as a recycling collector during the day, and Pickle's biggest pleasure in life is flicking through the porn magazines Belly Bottom collects in the small hours in the security room. One day when the television is broken, their lives are changed forever.
Film Journal International by David Noh
Compositionally often quite gorgeous and filmed largely in luminous, at times otherwordly black-and-white, The Great Buddha is compelling due to its mordant wit, authentically observed performances and distinctive cynical/lyrical outlook.
Though the satire Huang employs here is charming, it conflicts sharply with the atmosphere of hopeless melancholy. In juggling the two, Huang never quite manages to do justice to either tone. As a result, the film can feel a bit messy and occasionally frustrating.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
Most importantly, the pic gets laughs out of the class system without being glib about its cruelties. The gulf between rich and poor clearly matters to Huang, who poignantly shows how poverty robs even the dead of dignity.
This ballad of sad losers mixed with satire on parochial politics is convulsively funny yet uncompromisingly bleak, bridging art with entertainment.
Los Angeles Times by Michael Rechtshaffen
As savagely satirical as it is gorgeously surreal, The Great Buddha+ is something else again — an outrageous, poignant punk Taiwanese black comedy marking the feature arrival of fresh filmmaking talent Huang Hsin-Yao.
RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams
The Great Buddha+ is one of those movies that's much more rewarding to think about than it is to watch.
The strength of the film comes from the symbolic devices that decorate the strikingly illustrated social ladder.
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