【2010.08.11 纽约时报】Letter From China: Filmaking in a Climate of Caution

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"Aftershock" is likely to be a major commercial success, but the film's director hints broadly that China's censorship system is keeping the industry from taking the risks needed to make great art.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/world/asia/12iht-letter.html
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN


BEIJING — First you see a tremendous swarm of dragonflies, which is one of those odd natural phenomena believed to prefigure an earthquake. Then there are some modest scenes of domestic life in the Chinese city of Tangshan on July 27, 1976.


An unsuspecting brother and sister squabble over a single tomato, until their mother settles the dispute by giving it to the boy.                     

Then at 3:42 a.m. on July 28, unmitigated disaster strikes.               

Buildings shake, the earth splits apart, bricks, concrete slabs and roofs cascade downward as a city of one million people is reduced to rubble in the space of 23 seconds. Among the victims are the two children we’ve already met, pinioned under a concrete slab, covered in dust, their lives ebbing away.               

So begins what is certainly the movie event of the year in China, and possibly the movie event of all time, commercially speaking, in this country. Called “Aftershock” in English, the movie depicts with impressive, extremely realistic special effects the devastating earthquake that hit the city of Tangshan 34 years ago, killing 240,000 people. More important, it then follows the emotional and psychological impact the disaster had on one family over the next three decades.               

“Aftershock,” directed by Feng Xiaogang, one of China’s most successful commercial directors, is being hailed as an emotional tour de force — or, depending on how you feel about it, a tearjerker of the first order.               

“You have to be very strong to see it, because it’s so realistic,” wrote one blogger, who identified himself as a survivor of the Tangshan disaster. “The movie makes you understand how precious life is.”               

The film’s backers are also happily proclaiming that “Aftershock” will mark a new stage in the international commercial prospects of Chinese movies. It’s not just that it has already broken the box office record for a Chinese film in the domestic market, topping $78 million since it opened.  It’s also the first Chinese movie to be made in partnership with IMAX, the Canadian company that specializes in huge-screen projections, and it’s expected to show on IMAX screens all over the world.               

“Our collaboration will promote the blossoming radiance of Chinese films on the world stage,” happily proclaimed Wang Dongjun, the chief executive of Huayi Brothers, the main Chinese partner in the production of “Aftershock,” said of the deal with IMAX.               

But is “Aftershock” really a great movie, heralding a new stage in the quality of Chinese films?               

Based loosely on a novel by the Chinese-Canadian writer Zhang Ling, “Aftershock” is something of a Chinese version of William Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice,” in which a mother is forced to choose which of her two children will survive the Holocaust.               

In the Chinese case, the mother of the two children trapped under the concrete slab is told by rescue workers that, in order to save one child, the slab will have to be moved in such a way that the other child will be crushed. The mother is pushed to decide — quickly, because time is running out.               

“Save my son,” she says, in an anguished voice just loud enough so her daughter can hear. A family drama of love, guilt, separation and redemption ensues that local audiences have clearly found deeply moving.               

But not everybody here is convinced that “Aftershock” is so great, one of those people being Mr. Feng, the director, himself, who in interviews with Chinese journalists has expressed, discreetly  but unmistakably, his frustration with the limitations still placed on expression in this country.               

“The movie gets just a passing grade,” one commentator on the Chinese Web site Sina.com said.               

“It’s a new version of the old model plays and operas,” a Chinese friend told me, referring to the showy productions once sponsored by Jiang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong, in which brave revolutionary stalwarts rescue the suffering victims of evil landlords.               

Most obviously in this regard, “Aftershock” is full of scenes of the glorious People’s Liberation Army marching under bright red flags to the rescue of the Tangshan earthquake victims, even though there’s a good deal of doubt about whether in  fact the P.L.A. had been able to render much assistance in the Tangshan earthquake at all.               

“You’ll notice that the people who told the mother one of her children had to die were ordinary rescue workers, not soldiers,” my friend observed. “If it had been the P.L.A., the director would have been required to have them lift up the slab, and everybody would have been fine.”               

In many ways “Aftershock” shows a delicate sensibility and a good deal of originality. That single tomato is a small case in point. It’s nicer than tomatoes were in those days of state-controlled markets, but the fact that the family only had one, and that the mother chose to give it to her son rather than her daughter, is a deft, realistic touch, one of many in “Aftershock.”               

There’s no doubting Mr. Feng’s ability as a film director, but all movies in China have to get the approval of the bureaucrats of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and the censors seem rarely to tolerate the sort of originality needed for any work of art to be great.               

That seems to be why Mr. Feng himself has expressed agreement with the notion that “Aftershock” is only pretty good, even if it’s also the best that can be expected of a big commercial Chinese film under the present circumstances.               

“Are you a master filmmaker?” Mr. Feng was asked by an interviewer for  Sina.com.               

“I’m not,” Mr. Feng replied. “This is not an era that can produce masters.”               

“Why not?”               

“Because we face too many danger points,” Mr. Feng said. “You can’t get too close to these danger points. You can’t just casually cross the stream. You have to jump from this rock to that rock and carefully try to move forward.               

“But sometimes there is no rock, and then you have to make a detour, because, if you just jump into the water, you might drown.”

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