CHINA-CINEMA: The Emperor’s New Test

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Jul 16 1996 (IPS) - “I believe every intelligent person will like the movie,” said director Zhou Xioawen in front of a mainly foreign audience after the pre-premiere screening of his new film ‘The Emperor’s shadow’.

That is how the movie, which opened for the large public in Chinese capital this month, became an intelligence test for Beijingers.

But instead of the challenge of intellectual puzzles, as one might have expected, ‘The Emperor’s Shadow’ offers a spectacular vision of China during the reign of Qin Shihuang – the cruel founder of the country’s imperial system, who in 220 B.C. succeeded to unify numerous warring states in the Middle Kingdom under centralised power.

To revive the epoch of this most significant tyrant in Chinese history, the director included China’s two most famous male actors in his cast.

Jiang Wen, whose emphasized masculin charm in films as ‘Red Sorgum’ and ‘Black Snow’ gained him the fame of mainland’s sex symbol, had to put on 20 pounds in order to take the role of the Emperor.

The other male lead – Ge You – won the best-actor prize at the Cannes film festival in 1994 for his performance in Zhang Yimou’s ‘To Live’ and inside the country is renowned for his merits as comic actor.

The two superstars appear on the screen in a bid to embody the confrontation of two major forces, engendering and upholding Chinese civilization – absolute power and refined art.

The Emperor did not only want to reign over the whole country – he wanted to have the hearts and minds of his people under control as well. For this purpose, he had Confucian scholars buried alive, their books burnt.

He saw music as the magic glue, which would hold the tormented country together and consolidate his rule. Thus we see the Emperor ironically underwriting the Confucian doctrine, which states that arts – and music in particular – have undisputable power over the people’s souls.

The Emperor’s childhood friend – the talented Musician – is the one who has to compose the national anthem for the unified country and make people forget bloodsheds and differences. Despite being repelled by the terror and mass death moulding the new state, the musician decides to write the song, in return for the lives of thousands of prisoners the Emperor has decided to behead.

The sacrifice turns out to be futile, as mass executions and tortures are set to continue for the sake of a unified and everlasting state.

Unfortunately, what could have been an attempt to explore the sensitive question of the role of the intelligentsia in China’s 5,000-year history, became a bloody romance with the intrusion of the Princess – the favourite daugter of the Emperor – in the relationship of two men.

“I don’t recognize the boundary between commercial and art films,” commented Xiaowen. “What is important for me is the large audience, and what I try to do is to make my films ‘haokan’, or nice-looking, interesting.”

This maxim of the director corresponds with Chinese aesthetical tradition, where a performance is required to be spectacular and beautiful. And ‘The Emperor’s Shadow’ does have grandiose settings and gripping images of the Middle Kingdom two millennia ago.

Massive Chinese-style fortresses, a grasping panorama of the Yellow River, love-making scenes on the altar in the ancestral temple – everything one could have fancied about that obscure time is here. No expense has been spared on the preciseness of the sets, costumes and props.

The film’s five million dollar budget – huge by Chinese standards – is backed by the Hong Kong Ocean Film Company Ltd. and it is said to be the biggest Hong Kong film project ever done in China. Producer Jimmy Tan hopes that the movie will do well abroad and will have financial success especially in the United States.

“In Cannes, Francis Ford Coppola saw it and liked it a lot,” said Tan. “I think a lot of Americans will enjoy it. The film is about human values, about the spiritual life of the great figures.”

A warm welcome in the West, however, does not necessarily mean the movie will be affectionately accepted by mainland audience and critics. No doubt, the all-star cast, good publicity by the Ocean Film Company and traditional inclination of Chinese public towards historical stories will make for the box office of the film.

But even before its official release, Chinese officials started to criticize ‘The Emperor’s shadow’. The film was deemed to “distort history” in search for international prizes and high revenues.

The official newspaper ‘Guangming Daily’ accused the director of betraying historical fact and using a potpourri of violence and sexual innuendo as “magic weapon” to get the movie sold.

“The film includes a totally gratuitous scene in which the Musician ravishes the emperor’s crippled daughter, after which she is miraculously able to walk, which is plainly absurd,” the newspaper said.

The commentary goes on condemning the trend of distorting history by some Chinese film makers as national nihilism. “If this trend continues, Chinese history will have been all but obliterated in a short time. How will we make our descendants feel proud of our history?”

This new film is likely to revive the debate over controversial films of the Fifth Generation directors Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. In the early 1990’s, their films, including highly- acclaimed ‘Ju Dou’, ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ and ‘Farewell to My Concubine’, gained China international recognition in film making, but inside the country were branded as betrayal of the national spirit.

Movies which appeal to Western tastes, undermine national dignity, claim Chinese critics, to whom ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ sounded as ‘Raise the white flag’.

And neither Zhang Yimou nor Chen Kaige dared to explore historical material going further back than the early years of the 20th century. So what can one expect to be said about a film which tries to deal with the sacred embryo of Chinese history?

Maybe it is in anticipation of what is going to come, that director Zhou Xiaowen rushed to label all critics of his movie as unintelligent.