If a tree falls on a deserted island, does it make a sound? If a filmmaker is allowed to make movies in Shanghai, only to have them banned in Beijing, does it make sense for him to keep banging his skull against the great wall of Chinese censorship?
Trying to answer either of these brain teasers requires some head scratching. For director Chen Kaige coming to grips with the latter question also engenders a great deal of emotional pain.
“I spend three years to make a film, `Temptress Moon,’ and it is banned,” says Chen, whose frustration is evident in the way he emphasizes the word “banned.” “It doesn’t make any sense.”
What makes the situation even more perplexing for the filmmaker and his many admirers worldwide, is the fact that Chen has been down this same road several times in the past 13 years. Government criticism greeted his first two films — “The Yellow Earth” and “The Big Parade” — while “Life on a String,” “Farewell My Concubine” and, now, “Temptress Moon” all have been denied access to the largest national audience on Earth.
Happily, viewers outside China have been able to judge for themselves the merits of Chen’s creations. Sumptuous and thought-provoking, they are the work of an accomplished filmmaker and consummate storyteller.
In 1994, “Farewell My Concubine” — the sweeping, passionately told saga of two orphans who devote their lives to the Peking Opera — shared the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or award with Jane Campion’s “The Piano.” Interwoven into the plot of Chen’s epic spectacle was pointed criticism of government policies from 1925 to 1977.
Less overtly political, “Temptress Moon,” which opened in Chicago on Friday, is a lavish family drama that chronicles China’s tumultuous transition from dynastic rule to the formation of a republic, beginning in 1911. While much of the film is set within the ornate walls of the Pang country estate, Chen — thanks to producer Hsu Feng — also was able to re-create 1920s’ Shanghai, a bustling mecca for Western industrialists, grifters and immigrants drawn to fast money and a decadent lifestyle.
For Communist Party officials grappling with China’s flirtation with free-market economics, it was clear what “Temptress Moon” (which stars Zhou Yemang and Gong Li as the opium-addicted heirs to the Pang fortune, and Leslie Cheung as a student-turned-gigolo) was trying to say. After the film was approved, financed and shot, it was banned for exhibition in China.
“There are two film bureaus in China,” Chen explained. “Until recently, the local bureau had the right to approve the movie without consulting Beijing. They lost those rights after Zhang Yimou’s `To Live,’ but not before I made a deal with Shanghai Film Studios.
“The people in Shanghai really appreciated the film, because it’s about their city. China and Shanghai in the ’20s are very similar to China and Shanghai in the ’90s.”
Thus, Chen isn’t surprised that censors saw the “Temptress Moon” as an allegory, even if the drama outwardly describes Pang family politics.
“They think that I’m using history as a mirror to reflect what’s going on now, and, yes, I am,” he asserts. “Shanghai is booming, just as it was in the ’20s, when there was corruption, prostitution . . . (and) life was barbaric but full of vitality.
“There’s a dilemma now in China: We don’t want to go back to the decadence and corruption of that time, but we also don’t want to return to the repressive period of Mao Tse-tung.”
Chen, who lives in Beijing, was in Hollywood recently to discuss future projects with studio executives. The U.S. release of “Temptress Moon” — which debuted last year at Cannes to lukewarm reviews — was held up by its American distributor, Miramax, ostensibly in an effort to capitalize on the transition of power in Hong Kong.
The filmmaker, whose artistic approach has more in common with European cinema than the chop-socky Hong Kong school, thinks he could fit well within the studio framework.
“The common wisdom is that I have to make a movie in America,” he said. “But I’ll only develop a picture that I love. Otherwise, I can survive China, I guess. I just want to have choices. In China, it’s not that definite that I can make films.”
Chen, who learned his English while a visiting scholar at New York University in 1987 (“From `ABC News’ and reading The New York Times with a dictionary. . . .”), inherited much of his love for cinema from his father, Chen Huaikai. Describing their relationship during the Cultural Revolution, the 45-year-old director recalls a period of unspeakable cruelty and absurdity.
“The people worshipped Chairman Mao and did everything he told them to do. They really showed the dark sides of their souls.”
The torment directed at older intellectuals and artists by party fanatics is documented in in “Farewell My Concubine.” When things got too out of control, Mao ordered the relocation of 20 million urban youths to rural areas for “re-education” by peasants.
In 1969, Chen went to southwest China, where he worked clearing forests on a rubber plantation. The positive result of Chen’s time spent being re-educated probably wasn’t the same one intended by the Gang of Four.
“We were doing very hard jobs, lacking food and any support . . . young girls got raped and young men committed suicide,” he said. “The good side was that we were able to make some sense about the disappointment of socialism.
“The party promised a better life for everybody — in the cities and rural areas. But, 25 years after the revolution, we saw that nothing had really improved. This was the turning point of Chinese politics.”
Now, Chen understands part of what made his father tick.
“I think you have to go through very difficult situations to appreciate human nature and love,” he said. “My father, who was denounced by me and the other `revolutionoids,’ understood that and was able to forgive me without saying anything. He was a great man.”
Getting exactly the right look for a film, especially capturing artistic and historic detail, would seem to be Chen’s personal gift.
“The secret is that cinema and myself understand each other,” Chen declares, stirring his after-dinner cappuccino. “I’m not only a film director . . . I think I’m a very good production designer.”
Since Chen clearly wouldn’t fit into that Hollywood pigeonhole allowed other imported Asian directors — those now churning out cartoonish action pictures — might studios instead be considering him for pictures that examine recent events in China — Tiananmen Square, perhaps?
Chen, for one, isn’t in a rush to push that button.
“We have to wait for the answer from history,” he suggests. “The whole world was focused on Tiananmen Square, but, I’m sure, people outside China missed a lot of the message about why things happened that way. I didn’t like a lot of the student leaders, who I saw as ambitious.
“I hope people will see the documentary `The Gate of Heavenly Peace’ by Carma Hinton. I don’t think I could say more about that event than she did.”
Thoughtful and articulate, Chen doesn’t appear to be the kind of wild-eyed anti-establishment filmmaker who would warrant continual censorship. And he predicts that the next generation of artists won’t have it any easier.
“Young filmmakers in China will have even more difficulties to overcome,” he said. “When we started, we had no financial problems. When the script was approved, the studios gave us enough money to do what we wanted to do. You didn’t have to consider the marketplace, because it wasn’t an industry supported by stockholders.”
The authorities, he added, admire Hollywood action-adventures, such as “Independence Day” and “True Lies,” because “they show `American spirit.’ They want `Chinese spirit’ . . . to create their own heroes. To me, it’s just propaganda.”
And, what about those Hong Kong artists soon to be absorbed under the giant red star?
“If their film industry continues to make action movies, it will be all right,” says Chen. “If they do something against the central government, that could be a different story.
“I don’t expect too much to happen. The Chinese government will try hard to create a good international image for themselves.”
A positive first step would be to give Chen a crack at the box office back home.
