Chinese Film
Critiques
As China has
emerged from the shadows of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese cinema has started
to take off. With this leap out of the Cultural Revolution and with the
advancement of technology over the years, Chinese cinema has substantially
improved the quality of their films and the growth rates have been off the
charts. According to an article on CNN, “Last year, the country's box office receipts increased 30% to over RMB 17 billion ($2.7 billion), making China the world's
second-largest box office” (Lai). The reforms, such as the Open Door
Policy, that have occurred in China have given the Chinese cinema a new look
with Western ideals influencing Chinese cinema. With films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Western
influences played a role on how the movie was filmed. The direct of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee,
was criticized for the making of this film because of the way he tried to
incorporate Western influences into the film. Crouching, Tiger Dragon, was not the only film in China that
received criticism, but so did the films Devils
on the Doorstep and The City of Life
and Death. These two films received criticism for the way they depicted
sensitive historic events in China. With these films receiving such criticism,
I am going to look deeper into why these films were criticized. Through the
films Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
Devils on the Doorstep, and The City of Life and Death, and through
a series of interviews with ten mainland Chinese citizens, I am going to
analyze these films to see why they were criticized.
Devils on the Door Step is a Chinese
film that won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It is a black
and white film that is taken place during the second Sino-Japanese war and is
about a group of peasants who house two war captives, Hanyana, a Japanese
soldier, and Hanchen, his Chinese translator, that were brought upon them by a
mysterious man. They are to keep these two captive until the New Year when the
mysterious man would then return to get them, but the man never comes to
retrieve them. The peasants and the villagers are ambiguous to how to deal with
the two and resolve to kill them. Ma, the man who takes the prisoners in his
house, hides the prisoners so that they are not killed, but Ma is later caught hiding
the prisoners. The villagers decide to return the prisoners back to the
Japanese and the Japanese then destroy the village and in the process kill many
Chinese peasants. Ma tries to kill Hanyana but is brought down and then is
later executed by being beheaded by a Japanese sword. The last scene in the
movie is Ma having his head chopped off, rolls around and the eyes blink three
times and then red blood covers the screen. So what lead to the film being
criticized? Much of the criticism was due to the film’s background about the
Sino-Japanese war, which was an extremely sensitive time for the Chinese. The
film shows Japanese killing Chinese citizens, which was another reason the film
received criticism (Filming the anti-Japanese war, 113). The mockery of Chinese
peasants and how they deal with the prisoners was another reason that raised
criticism for the film. The film
appeared to show that the Chinese peasants were injudicious and foolish,
especially when it came to the problem of dealing with the two prisoners.
Another criticism was that individuals acted to profit from the grief of war
(Filming the anti-Japanese war, 115).
Because of all these reviews and criticism on the film Devils on the Door Step the film became
a popular debate for the Chinese. To some critics, Devils on the Door Step expresses the message “that Chinese people
today have lost some of the passion for life displayed by their ancestors”
(Filming the anti-Japanese war, 115). With all of this criticism, the film was
taken out of China because the Film Bureau had not passed it (Filming the
anti-Japanese war, 113).
Not
only did Devils on the Door Step
receive much criticism, but also did the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2001.
It is a martial arts film that is
about Li Mu Bai, a great warrior, who decides to turn in his great sword, the
Green Destiny, to a good friend. The sword gets stolen and Li Mu Bai must
retrieve the sword but at the same time is trying to revenge on Jade Fox, who
killed his master. Li Mu Bai is accompanied by his love Yu Shu Lien to retrieve
the sword and defeat Jade Fox. Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a huge box office hit globally, especially to
Westerners, but many Chinese did not enjoy the film. Even though Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Film many critics condemned the film. One
criticism was that the film’s supposed cultural inauthenticity. Ang Lee, who
directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
was born in Taiwan and had “no direct experience with mainland China” (Klein,
23). With martial arts being an extremely popular art in China and Lee lacking
the true knowledge of martial arts, some critics said that the wuxia, a form of
martial arts where swords and other various weapons are used, were unimpressive
throughout the movie and that the actors lacked real martial arts (Klein, 36).
Critics also said the influence of Hollywood films destroyed the art of the
traditional Chinese martial arts. Many film critics and viewers did not like
how Lee tried to use transnational cinema by trying to combine Hollywood with
Chinese cinema. In the martial art fighting scenes, Lee attempted to add in
Hollywood music to help intensify the martial art fighting scenes and was
criticized for doing so (Klein, 32). Another criticism that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon received was the use of Mandarin to
reach across the diversity of the Chinese diaspora. Of the four main actors,
only one spoke fluent Mandarin, even though they are all ethnically
Chinese. The others either had a Taiwanese
accent or lived in Cantonese or English household. Because of the diaspora, the
actors were not all Chinese in the same way (Klein, 36). The linguistic
difference hindered the reaction among Mandarin speakers, who found the accent
of the actors to be comical (Klein, 37). With all the criticism, people found
this film to not be a true Chinese film.
Not
only were Devils on the Door Step and
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
criticized, but so was the movie City of
Life and Death. Directed by Lu Chuan, City
of Life and Death is a black and white documentary/drama, in which Lu Chuan
spent two years of research that observed witness’s testimonies, is about one
of the most tragic events to happen in Chinese history, “the Rape of Nanking” ("A Difficult but Necessary
Trip to Brutal 'City'”). In 1937, Japanese soldiers raided the Chinese
city of Nanking, in modern day known as Nanjing, and more than 200,000
civilians were rapped and killed in “the Rape of Nanking” (Movshovitz). Lu Chuan
tried to keep his focus on the horrors of the war and kept the dialogue to a
minimum to help emphasize the killing of thousand of Chinese, in which one scene
in the move is described as an
execution of a thousands falling bodies across the frame like an ocean wave (Slant
Magazine). As the Los Angeles Times said, “women were raped repeatedly, men bayoneted, systematically buried
alive, incinerated. Huge seas of corpses, severed heads displayed on wires, a
massive pile of naked women carted off for disposal” ("A Difficult but Necessary
Trip to Brutal 'City'"). The
film opens up with Japanese troops breaching the wall that surrounded the city.
In this opening scene, we see the Chinese civilians trying to escape the city
but Japanese soldiers refused to let them escape from the city. In other
scenes, we see Chinese heads hanging from a rope swinging around like ornaments
and Japanese soldiers burying Chinese men alive (Dargis).
With the
horrors and disturbing scenes throughout City
of Life and Death, the film has stirred up some controversy for both the
Chinese and Japanese. In the film, one of central characters is a sympathetic,
humane Japanese soldier. Because one of the central characters was a Japanese
soldier, many Chinese despised the film because it was such a tragic event in
Chinese history and it portrayed a Japanese as sympathetic when they were the
ones who caused it. In an interview on NPR’s website, Lu Chuan responded to
these criticisms of the Japanese soldier by saying, “So they hate this movie
because the traditional history education gives most of the Chinese people a
feeling that Japanese people are beasts, not human beings, not human beings
just like us. So, in my movie, it's the first time I show the humanity of
Japanese soldier. So the Chinese audience cannot accept it." (Movshovitz). The reason Lu Chuan
chose to show the Japanese soldier was to construct a portrait of human beings
and not a condemnation of the Japanese.
From
reading articles on Devils on the Door
Step, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
and City of Life and Death, I was
able to go into depth on why these films received criticism. With my
connections through my cousin’s wife, Wei, I was able to interview and get the
perspective of these three movies from ten mainland Chinese citizens. I wanted
to get their thoughts on how they felt about these films. Starting with Devils on the Door Step, out of the ten
Chinese citizens I interviewed, six enjoyed the movie. After compiling the six
answers, I was able to see their reasons for enjoying the movie. The main
reason they enjoyed the movie was because the movie provided comic relief,
which released the tension from the intense scenes. One interviewee said, “If
it was not for the comic relief, I don’t know if I would have enjoyed the movie
as much” (Schulenburg Interview). For the other four that did not enjoy the
movie, their reasoning for not enjoying the movie was that they felt the movie
attacked the Chinese and made them look weak during the Sino-Japanese war. They
did not despise the film as they did enjoy some parts of the movie, but overall
they did not enjoy it as much. After asking them about Devils on the Door Step, I then proceeded to ask them what their
thoughts were on Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon. The results on this film were different than from Devils on the Door Step. Out of the ten
I interviewed, only three enjoyed the movie. Their reasoning that they enjoyed
the movie was because they thought the plot of the whole film was intriguing. They
thought the story line was good but for the other seven, they thought
differently. After analyzing the other seven’s thoughts on the film, they all
thought that it was terrible. They could not deal with martial arts fighting
scenes as they thought it was “cheesy”. One interviewee responded by saying, “With
the characters floating around on roof tops and running sideways on walls and
the way they spoke Mandarin, I couldn’t help but laugh” (Schulenburg Interview).
One interviewee said, “I never finished the movie because I did not find it
interesting to me” (Schulenburg Interview). After I finished interviewing about
the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
I then asked them on their thoughts on City
of Life and Death. Out of the ten, only three enjoyed the film. Their
reasoning for enjoying the film because they “liked war movies”. This was the
only reason why they liked the movie. As for the other seven, their reasoning
for not enjoying the movie was because they could not handle the horrific
scenes throughout the film and despised how they portrayed the Japanese soldier.
Two of the interviewees had to look away from some of the scenes because they
were so graphic. Another interviewee said, “It was ridiculous how they viewed
the Japanese soldier. Lu shouldn’t have put a sensitive Japanese soldier
because they were far from that. They were the reasons for the tragedy at
Nanking and the loss of thousands of Chinese people” (Schulenburg Interview).
Through
the reviews and interviews on the three films, we can see why these three films
were criticized the way they were. As we can see in the reviews on Devils on the Door Step, the criticism
raised much on the topic of the Sino-Japanese war, a sensitive time for the
Chinese. Another criticism was the way they portrayed the Chinese peasants as
foolish and it made China look weak. With the interviews I organized, we can
see that four of the ten did not enjoy the movie because they thought it made
the Chinese look weak during the second Sino-Japanese War. For Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, we can
see that the movie received much criticism for the martial arts being poor,
being influenced by Hollywood, and for the horrible Mandarin spoken. The
interviews seemed to go along with these criticisms, as seven of the ten
interviewees thought the movie was horrible. The same goes with the film City of Life and Death. City of Life and Death received criticism
for the way they portrayed a Japanese soldier as sympathetic and the graphic
scenes during “the Rape of Nanking”. The interviews went along with the
criticism as we saw that seven of them did not enjoy the movie because they
could not withstand the graphic scenes of the movie and hated the portrayal of
the Japanese soldier as sympathetic. With reading these reviews and
interviewing mainland Chinese citizens, I was able to get a better look as to why
these three films were criticized.
Works Cited
Lai, Alexis. "Blockbuster Growth in China's Film
Industry." CNN. Cable News Network,
19 Feb. 2013. 03 May 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/19/world/asia/china-film-industry- advancer/index.html>.
I chose to use this website
because CNN is a credible source and I used it to show how China has the
second-largest box office.
Klein, Christina. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon": A Diasporic Reading. Austin: University
of Texas, 2009.
This book was a reliable source
in which helped me talk about the film Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It helped me provide the framework to my paper by
providing me with the criticisms that the film received from film critics and
viewers.
Ward, Julian. "Filming the Anti-Japanese War: The
Devils and Buffoons of Jiang Wen’s
Guizi Laile1." New Cinemas. Vol. 2. : Intellect Ltd Article, 2004.107-17.
This book was a reliable source
in which helped me talk about the film Devils
on the Door Step. It helped me provide the framework to my paper by
providing me with the criticisms that the film received from film critics and
viewers.
Dargis, Manohla. "A Tale of Nanjing Atrocities That
Spares No Brutal Detail." The New
York Times. The New York Times, 10 May 2011. Web. 03 May 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/movies/city-of-life-and-death-from-lu-chuan-review.html>.
I chose to use this website
because New York Times is a credible source. I used it to help me receive a
better idea of what City of Life and
Death was about.
Movshovitz, Howie. "The Horror Of War In The 'City Of Life
And Death'" NPR. NPR, 03 May 2014. <http://www.npr.org/2011/06/21/137296321/the-horror- of-war-in-the-city-of-life-and-death>.
I chose this website because it
had good interviews with the director Lu Chuan and how he responded to the
criticism City of Life and Death
received.
"City of Life and Death | Film Review | Slant
Magazine." Slant Magazine. 03 May 2014.
<http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/city-of-life-and-death/5509>.
I chose this website because it
gave good examples of how the film City
of Life and Death was depicted by the viewers. It helped describe the
tragedies of the film.
"A Difficult but Necessary Trip to Brutal 'City'" Los
Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times,
17 June 2011. 03 May 2014.<http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/17/entertainment/la-et-city-of-life-and-death-20110617>.
I chose this website because the
Los Angeles Times is a credible source and it helped me reveal how tragic the
film City of Life and Death was.
Schulenburg, Wei. Personal Interview. 7 March 2014.
This was an interview I
constructed with my cousin’s wife, Wei, and nine of her Chinese companions. I
used this to help me get a better perspective of the Chinese thoughts on the
three films.
