ELDT On Screen: What Is Fantasy?(Movie Movie: Life Is Art 2016)

To interpret the theme of fantasy in Journey to the West from different perspectives, the director divides the play into four parts, which focus respectively on the four main characters in the novel: We all love Chu Ba Jieh (hedonist), We all fear Sun Wu Kong (rebel), We all fancy/hate Tang San Tsang (idealist), We all ignore Sha Wu Jing (pragmatist). Husband and wife, teacher and students, candidates and jurors, tour guide and tourists, political parties, celebrities to commoners, all derived from the four main characters, together their stories interwoven into a picture of life's hardship. As an analogy to the pilgrimage to obtain religious texts in the original novel, the play can be viewed as a book of spiritual enlightenment for modern people.