The one:
Jiang Wen is a very well known Chinese actor, director and producer, he was born in Tangshan, Hebei province, in 1963. His father is a veteran from Korean War and his mother is a music teacher, he has a younger brother and sister. When he was young, he considered himself of not being handsome. He and his family moved to Beijing in 1973, where he met his best friend Ying Da during high school. Jiang Wen was influenced by Ying Da’s father, a famous stage performer at that time. After the high school, he applied for Beijing Film Academy but was rejected, whereas he was accepted by the Central Academy of Drama and he graduated with a degree of performing art in 1984.
He entered China’s film industry as an actor, his first main role was a “rightist” in director Xie Fei’s Hibiscus Town (芙蓉镇1985). Jiang Wen gained international recognition when he played the legendary hero in Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (红高粱,1987). While his performance in the television series Beijingers in New York (北京人在纽约，1993) made him immensely popular in China.
The beginning of the journey:
Jiang Wen is not only a versatile actor but also one of China’s boldest director. During the year 1992, Jiang Wen went to United States for a visit, where he met the American director Martin Scorsese, Martin had a huge impact on Jiang Wen and became his mentor. After the visit, Martin send him the shooting scripts of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. Jiang Wen acclaimed that Martin Scorsese is the only director who ever influenced his work behind the camera. From that visit, Jiang Wen’s interests shift from acting to directing.
In 1994, Jiang Wen wrote and directed his first film, In the Heat of the Sun(阳光灿烂的日子 1994). The film is set in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. It is told from the perspective of a teenage boy, Ma Xiaojun nicknamed Monkey. Most of the story happens during the summer break, Monkey and his friends are free to roam the streets of Beijing day and night because the Cultural Revolution has caused their parents and most adults to be either busy or away. It revolves around Monkey's dalliances with his roguish male friends and his subsequent angst-filled crush with one of the female characters, Mi Lan.
This film set a unique perspective of Cultural Revolution. It is very different from the point of view of the fifth generation directors (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang), which puts the era behind a larger historical backdrop. It creates a contrast between an adult world and a teenager’s world, which examines the cultural revolution from the personal perspective as a teenager.
The movie was a huge success at that time, it won the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival and six Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan, and a box office that broke the record in 1995 of 50million RMB.
Unsettled Destiny:
With the huge success from the first feature, Jiang Wen made his second feature film Devils on the doorsteps(鬼子来了 2000 ). He was the director, the lead actor and also a first-time producer.
The story is about the conflict between China and Japan in the Second World War. It is very different from the usual way in other films especially propaganda films which portraying Japanese as pure evil and Chinese as pure innocent, this film broke the traditions. It portrays Chinese villagers who capture a wounded Japanese soldier near the end of World War II. They treat him well until deciding to trade him for food.The film used black humor to reveal the Chinese treating their enemies as victims only to have their kindness repaid with the slaughter of innocents.
The film was inspired by a novella titled Survival by You Fengwei. However, the final screenplay was largely original. Jiang Wen decided to shoot the film in black and white in order to capture the details of the historical era depicted in the film. There were initial worries about the sales and distribution prospects for a black-and-white film, but the production eventually went ahead.
The Japanese cast members in the film, two of whom came to know Jiang Wen while on exchange in the Central Academy of Drama in the 1980s. They were initially worried about the depiction of Japanese brutality during the war, Jiang Wen spent two weeks talking to them, showed them the documentaries about the war, including some made by Japanese filmmakers, eventually they was convinced by Jiang Wen. Jiang also used many non-professional actors and actresses in the film, some of whom were also members of the crew. Jiang himself also played the leading role in the film, which he admitted was a tiring experience. He said he also came to distrust what most of the crew members said about his acting, especially when they were tired and wanting to finish for the day.
This film was on a budget of US$2 million, but the final expenditure exceeded this number by over 30 percent. Over budget for Jiang Wen is quite common, it almost appears in all of his films, so there is always a fight between him and the producing company, and in some worst case, he had to use his own money or borrow from his friends to finish the whole film. Finally the efforts were paid off, Devils on the Doorstep won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.
Most unfortunately, this film was banned by China for domestic screening and Jiang Wen himself was banned from directing films for five years in China. People always say actions and consequences, for Jiang Wen, he probably could see this coming. I had to admire the courage of Jiang Wen, because he took his film to Cannes even without the permission from the Film Bureau, so when the film draw too much attention, the Film Bureau started to realize they were tricked. This film was judged by the authority as “insufficiently patriotic” and “seriously distorts Chinese history”. Apparently, in this film, the Chinese soldiers do not hate the Japanese army enough and too much time is given to the Japanese national anthem and national flag and “demonstrating the power of the Japanese army this way hurts the feelings of the Chinese people.” The film also qualified as vulgar for showing a donkey on heat.
Consequently, the executive producer, Dong Ping, receives a two-year ban and is to have his name removed from Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which he co-produced. Devils at the Doorstep has also been denied a certificate allowing its release in mainland China. As a knock-on effect, the Chinese release of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, which does have a certificate, has also been postponed. The Chinese Film Bureau has called for the return of copies of Devils at the Doorstep from abroad, though this seems unlikely to happen as the film was post-produced overseas and the master copies are now outside China. For Jiang Wen, there was a mixed up feeling when he was standing at the top and bottom at the same time.
The Return
Since Jiang Wen was banned for directing in 2000, his interests shifted back to acting and producing. The film Xun Qiang (寻枪，2002) was made by the sixth generation director Lu Chuan(陆川), co-produced by Jiang Wen, Wang ZhongLei(CEO of the Huayi Brothers Media).
The film was adapted from writer Fan Yiping’s 1999 novella search for A missing gun. It starts as a small-town policeman, Ma Shan(played by Jiang Wen), wakes up one morning to find that his gun, loaded with three bullets, is missing. The loss of the gun precipitates an identity crisis that becomes more severe as he searches for the gun as the film progresses. All that once was familiar starts to appear distorted. He loses the sense of belonging he had in the place he lives, feeling disoriented and alienated from his family, relatives, former lover, friends, the police force, and the town. The anxiety prompts Ma Shan to retrieve his identity and reassert a lost subjectivity by searching his gun. In the end he recovers his gun, but at a great cost: he only succeeds in catching the thief by impersonating someone else, giving up his own identity, and indeed his own life. As the director Lu Chuan states, the anxiety Ma experiences after losing his gun is what the film tries to convey. To serve this aim, the film location is set in a small town, Qingyan, in Guizhou provence, rather than Guangxi provence, where the original story was set. According to Jiang Wen, the film crew first looked for a shooting location in Guangxi but found the scenery there was too beautiful, to much like a tourist site. By contrast, the humid and misty climate, the mountainous geography, and the low dim houses in Guizhou provence in southwest China well match the psychological ambience the film tries to create.
Missing gun is Lu Chuan’s directorial debut in 2002. This film created a national sensation, and within the first month after its premiere the domestic box office tally had reached RMB 9 million and the oversea rights were worth USD 1.5 million. However, the state official in charge of Putonghua popularization criticized the leading actor, Jiang Wen, who speaks Guizhou Mandarin in the film, for countering the national language policy and bringing the dialects on screen.
But like Lu Chuan argued in his rebuttal, “the fundamental function of film is neither propaganda nor pedagogy, but entertainment”; in his commercial blockbuster he was trying to revive the cinematic spirit of amusement, thrills, excitement, and suspense to make an enjoyable film. Despite the language official’s disapproval, the film received support from Han Sanping(韩三平), a good friend of Jiang Wen, and the head of the state-owned China Film Group and director and producer of numerous main-melody films. He was one of the co-producer as well. Han played a Sichuan Mandarin-speaking role in Missing Gun and facilitated its production and distribution.
Jiang Wen has a very strong opinion on dialect. He regard it as a language “which gives you a very different feeling”. He stresses that the importance of using a certain language or regional dialect is not because of the peculiar accent, but because people speaking different languages have different psychological outlooks on life. In this sense, “the accent becomes the content.” Recognizing the form-content duality of every sign in art, Jiang Wen claims “Beijing Mandarin, except for depicting characters in the Beijing area, is not suitable for portraying characters in other regions or in ancient times.” In many interviews, he has emphasized the deterring role native language plays in the characterization.
The same problem appeared again in Jiang Wen recent film, Let the bullet fly, which the film has two version, one is in standard Mandarin, the other one is in Sichuan Mandarin version. As the writer of the story is from Sichuan, and some of the dialogue in Sichuan dialect can convey a better feeling.
This film is a commercial success, however, there were rumors about the relationship between Jiang Wen and the new sixth generation director, Lu Chuan. Jiang Wen as producer and the lead actor, was accused of over-dominance than the director Lu Chuan, some audience even thought the style of the film was more similar towards Jiang Wen. Considering the fact that Jiang Wen had so much experience than the first time director Lu Chuan, the rumor was probably true to a large extent. He is entitled with top ten “戏霸”(despot actor) in China by some media as well. However, according to the interview from Lu Chuan, he was still appreciable that he had the opportunity to work with Jiang Wen even though they had disagreement.
Record Breaker:
Jiang Wen produced and directed his next feature The sun also rises(太阳照常升起 2007) after his five-year restraining order. The film was over budget, and Jiang Wen had to borrow money from his wife and younger brother. However this film was a flop in the market as the overall cost was 60 million RMB(12 million SG$), with a box office only 20 million RMB(4 million SG$), and Jiang Wen was not paid for being the actor and director.
The interesting part about this film is that in terms of the narrative structure, the film used circular narration which resembles the style of Quentin Tarantino. It turns out that Jiang Wen and Quentin are actually good friends. Their friendship begins during a visit in Beijing when Quentin was planing Kill Bill, he went on set to film The Emperor’s Shadow(秦颂, 1996), where Jiang Wen was playing the emperor. They are both independent filmmaker, they both love the violence aesthetic style. And we can see the influence on Jiang Wen’s next feature film, let the bullet fly.
Let the bullet fly is so far the most successful Jiang Wen’s film, he was the director, lead actor and one of the producers. It is successful not only due to its box office in 2010, which grossed 674 million RMB (US$110 million) in Chinese box office, becoming the highest grossing domestic film in China at that time, but also the hidden message this film was trying to deliver.
Let the bullet fly is a sensitive genre of Chinese political satire, but theories are flying that it accomplishes much more: eluding strict censorship to criticize China's current government. To many people’s surprise, this film was not banned and became a huge hit in the year 2010.
Unlike his ancestors like Zhang Yimou or Che Kaige, who came under fire with apolitical historical and Kung Fu epics that don't offend the government and meet growing market demand, Jiang Wen has pulled off and incredible feat by producing a commercial hit backed by the censors without sacrificing his artistic and personal integrity. Considering Jiang Wen has been banned before, at this time, the film proved him that he has the ingenuity and the courage to make a comeback with a controversial story but stay inside the tolerance of the authority.
Jiang Wen’s next feature film Gone with the Bullets(一步之遥), produced by China Film Group and co-production with Sony and its Colombia Pictures International, is set for release at the end of this year.
One of a kind:
Domestic film critics generally do not classify Jiang Wen as a certain generation’s director. For me, I think Jiang Wen is an anomaly between the fifth and the six generations, a connection point through the network of filmmaking in China.
The fourth genration of film graduates were before Cultural Revolution; the fifth generation is the film school’s graduates of 1982; the sixth generation is the film school graduate of 1989 and after. Jiang Wen entered the film industry in 1989. As a actor, he participated in the fourth generation of work Hibiscus Town (director Xie Fei), and fifth generation of work Red Sorghum(Zhang Yimou), and sixth generation of work Xun Qiang(director Lu Chuan). But Jiang Wen is more closer to the fifth generation director, as they share the common memory of cultural revolution, whereas the sixth generation directors were born after the cultural revolution.
In a sense, Jiang Wen’s works are different from the fifth generation films. The fifth generation’s main feathers were a profound sense of history, strong ethnic characteristics, distinct political criticism and color, and audio-visual language innovation and maturity. Jiang Wen’s film is personal and emotional. He used film language to express his inner feelings and passion. Nonetheless, even Jiang Wen does not agree with this points system, Jiang Wen is Jiang Wen, he shoots a Jiang Wen movie.
Jiang Wen’s character is imbedded in his way of making film, he has the defiant characteristics, perhaps it is due to the reason that he was born in a military family, which I think is crucial for his style. I noticed that the CEO of Huayi Brother Media Wang Zhongjun was also from a military family, he is a producer as well. In Jiang Wen’s film, we can see the male dominance, the tough guy characters, a confident man, it is like a general who is leading an army for a battle.
Jiang Wen has many friends, Han Sanping is one of his closest. Han Sanping, who just got retired recently, used to be the chairman of the state-owned company, China Film Group. And their close friendship was linked to the intense competitions in the Chinese market. China Film Group Corporation is the largest and most influential state-run film enterprise in China, but it is facing the challenge from the private media companies like Huayi Brother Media, which is getting more influential these days, they also have famous star director Feng Xiaogang. China Film Group only has Chen Kaige, who was quiet recently. It could be the reason that the head of China Film group, Han Sanping trying to give all his support to promote Jiang Wen, which could help the company in a long term run. It is also very interesting to notice that, in the film The Founding of a Republic, there is one scene when Han Sanping was holding an umbrella for Jiang Wen, which could be interpreted as giving support to Jiang Wen.
Jiang Wen is a smart tough guy who likes to break rules, he is bilingual as well. If I want to bring him into Singapore, I will probably introduce him with Lee Kuan Yew’s story. The story of how one man can make a difference could possibly draw his attention. Because they have similar characters, both have the courage to stand up, both are defiant to the old rules, both have the ingenuity to lead a team. I can also attract him to Singapore for some particular scene, as Jiang Wen is planning to make a trilogy of his “Bullet” series, and the time setting is around 1930s. There are some streets in Chinatown are suitable for this role. And as a co-producer, I will ask for the rights in Singapore of his film.
Reference:
http://www.baike.com/wiki/《让子弹飞》%5B电影%5D
