I went to see an interview with the British film critic Mark Cousins a couple of weeks ago, and discovered that he is a passionate fan of Chinese cinema.
My own feelings, I realised, are rather more mixed. The dominant strain in my response, I suppose, has been disappointment. Well, disappointment and boredom. The Chinese have some wonderful cinematographers, and even their most humdrum films usually look fantastic. But the conception of 'narrative' here seems to be very different from the West: there's often no pacing, and very little direction or coherence in a story. They just present a muddle of stuff that happens.... and then, it stops happening. And that's it. The Chinese missed out on the Aristotelian analysis of tragedy: the idea of following the transformation of a character, the sense of a story arc.
I always made a point of seeking out Chinese films when I was living back in the UK (the one or two a year that would get an arthouse distribution). And I've watched a lot since I've been living here. And most of them, I'm sorry to say, have sucked mightily. I find Jia Zhangke, much praised for his gritty realism, to be insufferably tedious (scenes that should take ten seconds are often spun out to minutes). I find Feng Xiaogang, much praised for his lively wit, to be erratic and undisciplined (I like the opening scene of Cellphone and a few bits and pieces in A World Without Thieves, but most of his stuff is very laboured and obvious). I find Li Shaohong, much praised for, er, being a woman, to be pretentious and incoherent (although I quite liked her early work, Bloody Morning, a re-telling of García Márquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold set in a small Chinese town; but again, that's more to do with the cinematography than the storytelling): her Baober In Love (despite the radiant presence of Zhou Xun in the title role) is just a turgid mess.
I don't even much like the stuff we're all supposed to like: Farewell, My Concubine was overlong and failed to engage me; The Blue Kite I found ploddingly over-earnest and (again!) far too long; Gu Changwei's Peacock I've heard some good things about, but anything that runs over 4 hours in its original cut suggests the lack of discipline and proportion that I decry in so much of the Chinese cinema I have suffered through. And as for Spring In A Small Town - a 1948 film that is supposedly the great classic of Chinese cinema (remade a few years ago by rehabilitated Blue Kite director, Tian Zhuanghuang) - well, I'm afraid I still haven't seen it.
Don't even get me started on Zhang Yimou. His early stuff - Ju Dou, Raise The Red Lantern (my favourite of the lot), Shanghai Triad, The Story of Qiu Ju, To Live, and The Road Home - all these are fantastic. His recent infatuation with bloated martial arts flicks is lamentable.
I love Hong Kong films: the martial arts comedies of Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow, and the slick gangster films like Election and Infernal Affairs. But if I confine myself to mainland Chinese cinema that I've seen while I've been living here..... hmmm, not such a broad selection.
Well, here goes......
My 10 Favourite (Recent) Chinese Films
1) The Missing Gun (Xun Qiang)
(Dir. Lu Chuan, 2002)
As The Weeble complains in the first comment below, Lu Chuan is known as even more of an arsehole than most people in the Chinese film industry. Furthermore, it is apparently an open secret in the industry that the author of this film was really its star, Jiang Wen, temporarily unable to get permission to work as a director from the authorities here.
Well, whoever should be getting the credit, it's a stunning piece of work, head and shoulders above anything else I've seen here; the one film that I can truly say has a coherent narrative that's accessible to a Western audience, as well as an exhilarating zest and stylishness in its execution. It's a police procedural, a comedy of small town manners, and a study of a struggling marriage, laced with moments of magic realism and parodies of other genres. Tremendous fun, but also ultimately surprisingly moving. I've already reviewed it more fully here.
2) Kekexili (released in the US as 'Mountain Patrol')
(Dir. Lu Chuan, 2004)
Well, even if Lu Chuan may not be a nice chap, and may not have been the sole or principal director of the marvellous Missing Gun, he surely was the man at the helm for this fantastic action adventure. It's a Chinese 'Western', based on a true story about a group of Tibetan vigilantes which formed in the mid-90s to try to fight the plague of poaching of the endangered Tibetan antelope. It's breathtaking to look at (shot entirely on location in the Kekexili region of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau), morally complex, and compellingly tragic.
3) Keep Cool (You Hua Hao Hao Shuo)
(Dir. Zhang Yimou, 1998)
A little-known gem from the famous director, which I only found out about through personal recommendation from a translator friend. It was apparently shot on a shoestring budget in the space of a few weeks, a fill-in between other more expansive projects. It's filmed almost entirely on location on the streets of Beijing, and with a largely non-professional cast. There's an almost Dogme-like simplicity and directness about it, much of it being shot with hand-held cameras, in a jerky, hyper-kinetic style that is unimaginably removed from the elaborate choreography of colour and movement that is the trademark of his most famous films. It starts out as a breezy, if offbeat, romantic comedy, but evolves into something much darker: the entire second half of the film focuses on the two principals sitting together in a restaurant, debating the pros and cons of violence and murder. It is, in fact, a very black comedy; but, for once, the humour translates, and even Western audiences will find it laugh-out-loud funny. And it has superb performances from the two leads, Jiang Wen and Li Baotian.
4) Blind Shaft (Mang Jing)
(Dir. Li Yang, 2003)
Li Yang began his career in documentaries, and this, his first feature, has a gritty, slice-of-life feel to it. It's an extremely dark drama about migrant workers in China's largely unregulated and appallingly dangerous coal-mining industry, and is purportedly based on a true story of two such workers who develop a method of scamming money by murdering fellow workers below ground and then faking an accident and demanding compensation - or hush money - from the anxious mine owners for the death of their 'relative'.
5) Not One Less (Yige Dou Bu Neng Shao)
(Dir. Zhang Yimou, 1999)
Another rather untypical, 'experimental' venture from Zhang Yimou, shot on location in the Chinese countryside with an entirely non-professional cast. When the elderly teacher at a village school has to go away to visit a sick relative, he hires a teenage girl from a neighbouring village to be his substitute. Promised a bonus (I think it's 50 RMB!) if she can ensure that all of the children remain in school, the girl is distraught when one young boy runs away to 'the big city' to try to earn money to help his invalid mother. With almost no money, and no experience of city life, she journeys to the city herself to try to find him and bring him back to school - and, amazingly, she succeeds. Some find this film a bit too trite and sentimental, but I found it utterly, utterly charming (although it is also a devastating reminder of the depths of poverty in rural China: the entire school goes to work in a brick factory for a day, in order to earn the bus fare for a 30-mile journey).
6) The Emperor and The Assassin (Jing Ke Ci Qin Wang)
(Dir. Chen Kaige, 1998)
The only historical epic to really impress me, this is the same story as Zhang Yimou's Hero - a famous plot to assassinate China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang - but told in a more straightforward and realistic fashion.
7) Balzac and The Little Seamstress (Xiao Cai Feng)
(Dir. Dai Sijie, 2002)
Author Dai Sijie directs the film version of his fictionalized Cultural Revolution memoir: two teenage 'intellectuals' from the city are sent to a remote mountain village for "re-education" - and, of course, they both fall in love with the beautiful tailor's daughter (it's the irresistible gamine, Zhou Xun - how could they not?). Nothing very deep, but a charming bit of fluff.
8) Beijing Bicycle (Shiqi Sui De Dan Che)
(Dir. Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001)
Another look at the plight of migrant workers. In this one, a peasant newly arrived in the capital finds himself a job as a bicycle courier. Half of his meagre earnings go towards paying for the expensive mountain-bike his company has provided for him. When the bicycle is stolen, his world falls apart. He begins an obsessive search for it - and, improbably, he finds it again; but now it is owned by a wealthy teenager, a schoolboy at a private school, who bought it at a secondhand market and refuses to part with it. It's a marvellous portrait of Beijing in the Noughties, and a bleak reminder of the desperation of the very poor.
9) Chicken Poets (Xiang Ji Mao Yi Yang Fei)
(Dir. Meng Jinghui, 2002)
Two university friends live together on a farm on the outskirts of Beijing, in the shadow of the airport. One, a go-getting entrepreneur, tries to make his fortune by breeding rare black chickens. The other, a would-be writer, makes a Faustian bargain with a mysterious CD vendor who gives him a magical CD-ROM which enables him to become a successful poet, the darling of the literary scene. There's not really much story to this, just a meandering succession of surreal episodes: but it's so weird and quirky and stylish that it lingers long in the memory.
2) Kekexili (released in the US as 'Mountain Patrol')
(Dir. Lu Chuan, 2004)
Well, even if Lu Chuan may not be a nice chap, and may not have been the sole or principal director of the marvellous Missing Gun, he surely was the man at the helm for this fantastic action adventure. It's a Chinese 'Western', based on a true story about a group of Tibetan vigilantes which formed in the mid-90s to try to fight the plague of poaching of the endangered Tibetan antelope. It's breathtaking to look at (shot entirely on location in the Kekexili region of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau), morally complex, and compellingly tragic.
3) Keep Cool (You Hua Hao Hao Shuo)
(Dir. Zhang Yimou, 1998)
A little-known gem from the famous director, which I only found out about through personal recommendation from a translator friend. It was apparently shot on a shoestring budget in the space of a few weeks, a fill-in between other more expansive projects. It's filmed almost entirely on location on the streets of Beijing, and with a largely non-professional cast. There's an almost Dogme-like simplicity and directness about it, much of it being shot with hand-held cameras, in a jerky, hyper-kinetic style that is unimaginably removed from the elaborate choreography of colour and movement that is the trademark of his most famous films. It starts out as a breezy, if offbeat, romantic comedy, but evolves into something much darker: the entire second half of the film focuses on the two principals sitting together in a restaurant, debating the pros and cons of violence and murder. It is, in fact, a very black comedy; but, for once, the humour translates, and even Western audiences will find it laugh-out-loud funny. And it has superb performances from the two leads, Jiang Wen and Li Baotian.
4) Blind Shaft (Mang Jing)
(Dir. Li Yang, 2003)
Li Yang began his career in documentaries, and this, his first feature, has a gritty, slice-of-life feel to it. It's an extremely dark drama about migrant workers in China's largely unregulated and appallingly dangerous coal-mining industry, and is purportedly based on a true story of two such workers who develop a method of scamming money by murdering fellow workers below ground and then faking an accident and demanding compensation - or hush money - from the anxious mine owners for the death of their 'relative'.
5) Not One Less (Yige Dou Bu Neng Shao)
(Dir. Zhang Yimou, 1999)
Another rather untypical, 'experimental' venture from Zhang Yimou, shot on location in the Chinese countryside with an entirely non-professional cast. When the elderly teacher at a village school has to go away to visit a sick relative, he hires a teenage girl from a neighbouring village to be his substitute. Promised a bonus (I think it's 50 RMB!) if she can ensure that all of the children remain in school, the girl is distraught when one young boy runs away to 'the big city' to try to earn money to help his invalid mother. With almost no money, and no experience of city life, she journeys to the city herself to try to find him and bring him back to school - and, amazingly, she succeeds. Some find this film a bit too trite and sentimental, but I found it utterly, utterly charming (although it is also a devastating reminder of the depths of poverty in rural China: the entire school goes to work in a brick factory for a day, in order to earn the bus fare for a 30-mile journey).
6) The Emperor and The Assassin (Jing Ke Ci Qin Wang)
(Dir. Chen Kaige, 1998)
The only historical epic to really impress me, this is the same story as Zhang Yimou's Hero - a famous plot to assassinate China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang - but told in a more straightforward and realistic fashion.
7) Balzac and The Little Seamstress (Xiao Cai Feng)
(Dir. Dai Sijie, 2002)
Author Dai Sijie directs the film version of his fictionalized Cultural Revolution memoir: two teenage 'intellectuals' from the city are sent to a remote mountain village for "re-education" - and, of course, they both fall in love with the beautiful tailor's daughter (it's the irresistible gamine, Zhou Xun - how could they not?). Nothing very deep, but a charming bit of fluff.
8) Beijing Bicycle (Shiqi Sui De Dan Che)
(Dir. Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001)
Another look at the plight of migrant workers. In this one, a peasant newly arrived in the capital finds himself a job as a bicycle courier. Half of his meagre earnings go towards paying for the expensive mountain-bike his company has provided for him. When the bicycle is stolen, his world falls apart. He begins an obsessive search for it - and, improbably, he finds it again; but now it is owned by a wealthy teenager, a schoolboy at a private school, who bought it at a secondhand market and refuses to part with it. It's a marvellous portrait of Beijing in the Noughties, and a bleak reminder of the desperation of the very poor.
9) Chicken Poets (Xiang Ji Mao Yi Yang Fei)
(Dir. Meng Jinghui, 2002)
Two university friends live together on a farm on the outskirts of Beijing, in the shadow of the airport. One, a go-getting entrepreneur, tries to make his fortune by breeding rare black chickens. The other, a would-be writer, makes a Faustian bargain with a mysterious CD vendor who gives him a magical CD-ROM which enables him to become a successful poet, the darling of the literary scene. There's not really much story to this, just a meandering succession of surreal episodes: but it's so weird and quirky and stylish that it lingers long in the memory.
10) Er.... I really can't think of any more.....
oh, I suppose maybe Suzhou River (Suzhou He)
(Dir. Ye Lou, 2000)
It's a long time since I've seen this, but I recall it as a very unusual meditation on the nature of identity, and on obsessive love (it has been likened to Hitchcock's Vertigo), and also as a very striking depiction of the poorer, seamier side of Shanghai that one rarely sees. And it's got the lovely Zhou Xun in it; she makes almost anything watchable.
Even here, I was cheating a bit, in that I saw The Emperor and The Assassin and Beijing Bicycle back in England before I moved here. It's also rather alarming to note that these films are all at least 5 years old, some of them over 10 years old. There's really been nothing decent recently; or at least, nothing that I've seen (I do miss the old Cherry Lane Movie club, which showed recent Chinese films with English sub-titles - it's been virtually defunct for the past couple of years).
Thumbnail reviews of these selections to follow later (possibly). I have a lunch date now.
OK, done now (very long lunch date!).
4 comments:
You know my beef with Lu Chuan (motherfucker still owes me 20,000 yuan for the translation I did of his shit-ass Nanking screenplay), but even leaving that aside, 'The Missing Gun' is generally acknowledged to be more of a Jiang Wen film than a Lu Chuan film, as it was written and directed "with heavy input" from Jiang, who was at the time barred from filming thanks to Devils on the Doorstep.
As for Jiang Wen films: His 阳光灿烂的日子 In the Heat of the Sun is hands-down my favorite Chinese film. I haven't been able to find a copy with English subtitles, but there must be one out there, since it went to Cannes and won awards. It got named the #2 film in the 100 years of Chinese cinema retrospective a couple of years back. (Springtime in a Small Town is #1; the film didn't do a whole lot for me but I can understand the appeal.)
There are a couple of Feng Xiaogang films that, while they will never rate as classics of the cinematic arts, are entirely enjoyable and well-made. I'd recommend the first 3/4 of the film Dawanr ('Big Shot's Funeral,') and particularly the scene set in the mental asylum, for some of the funniest, most self-aware commentary I've seen in Chinese films, and Jia Fang Yi Fang (I think the English title is 'The Dream Factory') and Wan Zhu (or maybe that one's 'The Dream Factory') are also very enjoyable.
I found 'Big Shot' a bit of a bore, although the final joke is good - and Ge You's always tremendous value.
Haven't seen In The Heat Of The Sun yet. Got to check it out.
Have Devils On The Doorstep, but have never got around to watching it.
Interesting. When I read the post's title two films sprang to mind and both make your list at 7 & 8 respectively.
I saw Beijing Bicycle in a deserted (except for me and my popcorn) cinema in Birmingham. Thoroughly enjoyable flick.
The Little Seamstress was shown on Channel4 shortly before I left old Blighty for China. As you say, 'charming bit of fluff'.
I would add Lost in Beijing to my own list. A poignant and humorous look at a slice of Beijing life the authorities didn't want on their radar during Olympic year. Hence its subsequent ban.
It was a low budget movie, but beautifully shot and acted - just the kind of movie that can promote and show off the depth of artistic talent in China. But along came the CCP with a large pair of scissors and not only censored (before a complete ban) the film, but punished the makers by 'exiling' them from film-making for a number of years (presumably for not making a 'harmonious' contribution to the arts). Anyway, it's readily available online or at your local DVD oulet.
Thanks for the recommendation, Stuart. I hadn't heard of that one.
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