The Great Buddha+ (2017) on Netflix
Pickle minds a Buddha statue factory through the night. His only friend, Belly Button, collects recyclables and slips into the guard room to watch the boss's dash-cam footage with him.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.6/105,560 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Kevin owns a Buddha statue factory in the Taiwanese countryside, where he is known as an artist and a philanthropist. He also bribes officials to win bids, and the factory is finishing a giant statue for an upcoming ceremony that needs only the head and body soldered. Pickle is the factory's night guard. Belly Button, who makes his living from what others throw away, is Pickle's only friend. Belly Button slips into the guard room, and the two of them watch recordings from Kevin's dash-cam, curious about how a rich man lives. What they come across is horrifying rather than erotic.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Great Buddha+ (2017)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Huang Hsin-yao got the idea of hiding a body inside the Buddha statue while filming at a real statue factory with a giant copper Buddha about 40 feet high. He thought nobody knew what was inside it.- Huang Hsin-yao shot The Great Buddha+ mostly in black and white, keeping colour only for the scenes seen through the carcorder, a choice he used to express the idea of voyeurism.
- Huang Hsin-yao said the film's carcorder came from his own experience: after a car crash he used one, and found it interesting that the camera faces outside while recording the sound inside the car.
- Lin-Shengxiang and his band finished composing and recording the whole The Great Buddha+ soundtrack in less than a month; the album won Best Original Film Score at the 2017 Golden Horse Film Festival.
SPOILER
Huang Hsin-yao ends The Great Buddha+ with a knocking sound from inside the Buddha statue that continues after the picture fades to black, so that viewers realise they are part of the story rather than spectators.- In Let's Take a Peep at the Chairman's Good Deeds, composer Lin-Shengxiang used an electric guitar to represent the active Belly Button and an electric yueqin to represent the dull, silly Pickle.
