The Great Buddha+ 大佛普拉斯 (2017): Why You Should Watch This Chinese-Language (Taiwanese/Mandarin) Film
In the landscape of 2017 Chinese-language cinema, one film made everyone sit up and take notice.
It wasn't a big-budget production. It had no star-studded cast. Almost the entire film was in black and white. Yet it swept 10 nominations at the 54th Golden Horse Awards, ultimately winning 5 awards including Best New Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. On Douban, over 300,000 users have given it a remarkable 8.7, ranking it as the second-highest rated Chinese-language film of 2018.
That film is The Great Buddha+.
The "Plus" in the title is significant — director Huang Hsin-yao had made a 22-minute short film called The Great Buddha in 2014. With the help of producer Chung Mong-hong, he expanded it into this feature-length masterpiece.
This is a film about "voyeurism." The poor peek into the lives of the rich. The audience peeks into the world on screen. But as you watch, you begin to realize — you're actually peeking into yourself.
Today, I want to talk about this film and why it deserves to be watched again and again.
Part One: The Poor Live in Black and White. The Rich Live in Color.
The story takes place at a Buddha statue factory in southern Taiwan.
Cai Pu (Chuang Yi-tseng) is the night security guard. During the day, he plays in a funeral band to support his sick elderly mother. Duo Cai (Bamboo Chen) is his friend — a scrap collector who sleeps in an abandoned phone booth on the roadside. Buddha (Zhang Shao-huai) is a wanderer whose only daily task is to "wander around."
They are the lowest of the low. Society's forgotten. No one cares about them. No one remembers them.
One day, Cai Pu's television breaks. Duo Cai suggests, "Let's watch your boss's dashcam footage — let's see how rich people live."
And so, the "peeking" begins.
The world inside the dashcam footage is in color.
Boss Huang Qiwen (Leon Dai) drives a Mercedes. He frequents high-end clubs. He toasts with politicians and businessmen. He flirts with different women. Duo Cai and Cai Pu listen to the audio, imagining the scenes in their heads, sighing with wonder:
"See? A rich person's life is indeed in color."
This is the film's most brilliant design — the poor live in black and white, the rich live in color. This visual contrast isn't just stylistic. It's the content.
Director Huang Hsin-yao presents the lives of the poor in black and white because "in a poor person's world, there is no color." It's not that they don't want color — it's that life has drained them dry. They don't even have the energy to dream.
Part Two: One Giant Buddha, One Corpse
The story takes a dark turn mid-way through the peeking.
Duo Cai and Cai Pu hear something they shouldn't have — Qiwen, arguing with his mistress Ye Fenru, accidentally kills her. To cover up the crime, he hides her body inside the giant Buddha statue being crafted at the factory.
That Buddha is destined to be sent to a national prayer ceremony, where it will be worshipped by thousands.
A Buddha containing a corpse — about to be venerated by the masses.
The premise is absurd to the extreme. Yet the director presents it with a calm, restrained hand. No melodrama. No sensationalism. Just the facts — letting you feel the spine-chilling irony for yourself.
"If Buddhas are built by rich people like this, then these Buddhas become ornaments for self-deception, cover-ups for ugliness. The world is in decline. Chaos everywhere. The human heart has no Buddha. What use is building bigger and bigger Buddhas?"
Part Three: The Dashcam — The Poor Man's Rear Window
The dashcam is the film's cleverest device.
It's meant to record road conditions — but Duo Cai and Cai Pu use it as a window into the lives of the rich. The setup is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Rear Window — a wheelchair-bound photographer spying on his neighbors through a window.
But Huang Hsin-yao's "rear window" is mobile. Modern. And far more ironic.
The dashcam records both the sounds inside the car and the environment outside — cleverly connecting public and private space. The crucial detail: it records sound, but not image. Duo Cai and Cai Pu can only hear the lives of the rich, then imagine the extravagant scenes in their heads.
This "hear but cannot see" design maximizes the tension of voyeurism.
And when Duo Cai and Cai Pu discover the truth, they don't call the police. They don't seek justice. They're just afraid — afraid of being implicated, afraid of their boss finding out they've been watching.
"Poverty prevents them from even thinking about justice. They fear the powerful. They know the courts are a place where only the rich eat well."
Part Four: The Director's Narration — Breaking the Fourth Wall
The Great Buddha+ has another unique feature — director Huang Hsin-yao provides his own voiceover.
Early in the film, he introduces himself:
"Throughout the film, I'll pop up every now and then to say a few words, promote my personal philosophy, explain the plot — please take it easy."
Breaking the fourth wall isn't rare in cinema. But Huang's narration has a distinctive local flavor. He speaks in Southern Min, dropping colloquial jokes and life philosophy. He's like a storyteller sitting beside you, watching the film together.
He explains why Duo Cai loves playing claw machines — "Because he finds it therapeutic."
After Duo Cai's death, he reflects: "In his lifetime, this 2.5-square-meter shipping container home was probably the only place where he could find a little bit of confidence."
And at the film's end, he delivers the unforgettable line:
"We now live in the space age. Humanity has long since learned to travel to the moon by spaceship. But we will never be able to explore the inner universe of another person."
This narration isn't a condescending "God's-eye view." It's a fellow traveler — someone who once struggled at the bottom himself — telling you about his friends.
Huang Hsin-yao started working right out of high school. He was a factory worker, a bubble tea shop clerk, a promotional car driver, a car salesman. He understands the lives of the poor.
His narration isn't pity. It isn't sympathy. It's understanding.
Part Five: The Death of Duo Cai — A Life Too Humble for a Funeral Portrait
The most heartbreaking part of the film is Duo Cai's death.
He's found dead in a roadside ditch. The police say it was a "drunk driving accident." But the audience knows — he was silenced for witnessing the truth.
After Duo Cai dies, Cai Pu visits his home for the first time.
It's a "shipping container" built from an abandoned phone booth and scrap wood — cramped, leaking, barely livable. But inside, Duo Cai has collected dolls and knickknacks he'd found in the trash, along with a UFO-shaped CD player.
Standing in that tiny space, Cai Pu realizes for the first time — he never truly knew his friend.
"For him, rain or shine, there were always difficulties. But he couldn't afford to think about the difficulties of life — because just getting through life was difficulty enough."
The final irony: Duo Cai's funeral portrait is a mugshot taken during a past arrest — cropped from a news screenshot — because it was "the only decent picture" anyone had of him.
A scrap collector dies. And dies he remains.
Buddha stands by the sea, watching Duo Cai's belongings burn. The narration says:
"At least he left behind a silhouette."
That line is the cruelest summary of "existence" — a man too humble for a proper funeral portrait, but at least leaving a chalk outline of his body on the ground.
Part Six: The Ending — A Sound from Inside the Buddha
The film's climax is its most stunning moment.
At the national prayer ceremony, monks lead the faithful in chanting sutras. The giant Buddha rises slowly. Suddenly — a pounding sound comes from inside the Buddha.
Is it the corpse struggling? A ghost crying out? Or just the audience's imagination?
The camera freezes. The film ends.
Huang Hsin-yao offers no answer.
The open ending throws the question back at the audience: What lies inside that Buddha?
Sin. Hypocrisy. The truth no one dares to look at.
The Buddha was meant to save all beings. But here, it becomes a vessel for filth. Religion, hijacked by capital and power, becomes "a plaything of the rich."
Huang Hsin-yao once said:
"True despair is the inability to turn things around. People at the bottom have no chance of rising. Study hard? Then what? You'll still end up counting money for someone else. Class mobility is an illusion."
That statement is the foundation of The Great Buddha+.
Part Seven: Why This Film Is Worth Watching
Because it's a mirror.
The Great Buddha+ is not a "feel-good" film. It's oppressive. Absurd. Filled with irony. But it reflects the realities we don't want to see — income inequality, class stratification, hypocritical religion, power corroded by money.
Because it gives voice to the marginalized.
In most films, poor people are either background props or "tragic symbols" to be consumed. But in The Great Buddha+, Duo Cai, Cai Pu, and Buddha are the protagonists. They have flaws. They have desires. They have humble joys — and loneliness with nowhere to go. They are people, not symbols.
Because its humor is both dark and warm.
The director's narration. The Southern Min slang. The absurd dialogues between characters — The Great Buddha+ was one of the funniest Chinese-language films of 2017. But the humor never lets you forget the weight beneath.
Because it makes you think: what is a "Buddha"?
Buddha is compassion. Goodwill. Clarity of heart. But in the film, Buddha becomes a tool for covering up sin, a front for political corruption, a "good luck charm" for the rich.
Where is the real Buddha?
Huang Hsin-yao's answer, perhaps, is — not inside the statue. In the softest part of the human heart.
Final Thoughts
The Great Buddha+ is not a perfect film. Its pacing is slow. Its story is sometimes confusing.
But its honesty. Its sharpness. Its humor. Its sadness — make it the greatest surprise in 2017 Chinese-language cinema.
In an era when everyone is looking "up," Huang Hsin-yao chooses to look "down." He turns his lens toward the forgotten — scrap collectors, watchmen, wanderers.
Then he tells us: these people are just like us.
They have dignity. Love. Fear. Secrets they can never speak. Their lives — like those "in the color world" — deserve to be remembered.
"Though it's black and white, it's more radiant than color."
Tom De · The Movie Prince 🎬
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