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Beyond the Fifth Generation
An Interview with Zhang Yimou
Note: This interview took place in Hong Kong in late March 2007, during the Hong Kong International Film Festival.
BERT CARDULLO: Much of your adolescence and young adulthood was spent during the Cultural Revolution. How much has that influenced your adult life?
ZHANG YIMOU: I think my experience represents a wealth of assets for my life and my work. During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, I went from age sixteen to age twenty-six. I experienced a lot of chaotic situations, and I saw a lot of terrible, tragic things happening around me. From all that I got a deep understanding of human life, of the human heart or spirit — of human society, really — and I think that it benefits me today: in my work, in my thinking, and even in how I deal with personal problems.
The Cultural Revolution was a very special period of Chinese history, unique in the world. For many years, I wanted to make movies about that period — to discuss the suffering and to talk about fate and human relationships in a world that people couldn't control and which was very hostile. In today's political climate, such a project is impossible — as To Live (1994) has proved, at least in my native country — so I'll just have to wait.
You were born into a family that was affiliated with the Kuomintang. How much of a problem was that?
We were the children of what was called the "Black Five Categories" of family backgrounds. That was a special name given to us during the Cultural Revolution to indicate that we were not from mainstream families, but rather from a bad background — from low-end families. We were severely discriminated against at that time in so many areas. China was very political — far more than now — so whenever you wanted to do something, like apply for a job or enter university, you had to fill in a form and on that form you had to specify your family background. And then, based on what you put on the form, the administration people would classify you into different categories. If you belonged to a certain category, you were only allowed to do certain things and not allowed to do other things. It was hard, indeed very severe; your position in society really was determined by your birth.
Just speaking with you, I can feel your passion — not only for your work and your movies but also for China. Yet you have this love-hate relationship with the Chinese government and still, despite it all, you live in China. Why?
Actually, I don't see it as a relationship between myself and the Chinese government. Rather, it's the relationship between me and the Chinese soil, the country of China and the Chinese people. This land of China is where I was born, where I grew up, so you can never sever the ties between us. No matter what this country or this land has done to me, how badly it may have treated me, I will always see myself as a son of this land. And I would never betray my land, my country, and my people. I will be loyal forever to the land, like a son to his mother. So this is the main reason why I always want to stay in China. It's not about the relationship between me and the government; it's more about blood ties between me and the Chinese land, the nation itself. I'm always proud that I'm a director from China, and I'd like to come up with the best possible works to give back to my land and my people.
When I was young, boys often asked their fathers, "What did you do during the war, Daddy?" So let me follow up with the appropriate question for a Chinese of your generation. What exactly did you do during the Cultural Revolution?
In the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, I spent three years working as a farmer and seven as a worker in a factory. When the Cultural Revolution came to an end, I was still at the factory and I really did not want to work there any longer on the night shifts. It was a very tiring and difficult life, and I wanted to get out of that environment. The best solution at that time seemed to be to go to university. Even today that is true for most ordinary Chinese families — if their children can go to university, it could change their lives or their fate for the better. For there would then be a chance of a higher standard of living.
But you almost didn't get into university, correct? You were too old, twenty-seven?
Yes, I was five years older than a student should be to qualify for university. I had to write a letter to the Minister of Culture, who was in charge of all the arts-and-cinema colleges in China. I wasn't even sure myself if my application would be successful. But the Minister personally approved the letter and made a very unusual exception for me. Until then, I myself did not know what my future would look like. I think even the school thought I would be just an informal student who had no intention of completing a degree!
How did you get interested in film?
That happened right at this time: after I was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy in 1978. Before that, I was just an amateur photographer. I was admitted to the Cinematography Department on the basis of a portfolio of my photographs, and there I was exposed to many classics of world film. That sparked my fascination with the cinema.
There is a famous story about how you bought your first camera. Is it true? How did you buy that first camera?
Back then, I didn't have much money. I could save only five Yuan every month, after putting aside money for eating and basic living expenses. I really liked taking pictures, and wanted to own my own camera. But to buy a camera at that time, you needed to have at least 188 Yuan, or more than twenty U.S. dollars — a lot of money for me back then! I knew it would take me two to three years to save enough money to buy one. I had already saved for more than a year but it was far from enough. But during that period, it was also possible for people to donate their blood for money. So I decided to do that! I donated my blood to augment my savings. It took many months but I finally had enough money to afford my first-ever camera. That was in November or December of 1974, I still remember. With that new camera I began shooting photographs. So I guess you could say that was my first contact with the movie industry!
So you actually bought that camera with your own blood?
Yes, you could say that.
What kinds of films did you want to make when you graduated from the Academy?
Films that were completely different from traditional Chinese films, of course. My friends and I were absolutely determined to make films that would get a powerful response, so we went against tradition with our first film, The One and the Eight. The costumes were in grays, whites, and blacks, and in both the location shots and the interior ones we carefully avoided bright colors, so that every shot was in the end a large black-and-white composition. We also composed boldly asymmetrical images. Natural light was used throughout, and most of the shots were very static.
When we made Yellow Earth, I developed the same style further, with yellow, red, black, and white as the dominant colors in striking, simple blocks. The lighting was soft. I tried to keep the compositions uncluttered and direct, with as little camera movement as possible, so as to provoke powerful, deep emotion. In both films, at the same time as we were trying to create a new style, we were also trying quite deliberately to suggest deep meanings or to make strong implications. Of course, if we were making those films again today, we would pay more attention to character and we might be a bit more assured. But that was the best we could do in 1983.
I understand that you already wanted to take up directing after you shot Yellow Earth for Chen Kaige. Do you think this was the result of Chen's influence on you?
We worked very well together. Back then, we all shared a common vision, and we all influenced each other a great deal. But as for wanting to be a director, that developed while I was still at the Academy. You could say it was a long-cherished wish of mine, because it was the best way to develop my individual creativity. All artists want to express themselves and get a response. Being a director is one of the best ways to do that. I'm obsessed with film, and I hope to express my artistic ambitions through the films I direct.
In a number of films that you've worked on since Yellow Earth, you've been a cinematographer (sometimes uncredited) and a director. Which role do you feel suits you best?
Director, of course, because it's the natural extension of being a cinematographer. And, as far as my acting is concerned, I became an actor only by chance. I'm not trained as an actor; from an actor's point of view, I don't really understand acting. I do have a special fondness for my own performances in Old Well and Terracotta Warrior, but directing is my true vocation. Although it is very stressful, it holds my interest the most powerfully.
Are visuals more important to you than plot?
Actually, both complement each other, so we should not exaggerate the importance of one over the other. You know this — you are a film critic! Chinese moviegoers themselves appreciate a good balance, so we should try to achieve a perfect combination of thematic content and visual style; those would be the best works. Having said that, I know that highly visual movies can have an extraordinarily strong impact, so I do believe that visuals deserve a lot of attention as well.
Let's talk about the colors that you use in your movies.
Ever since I made my first movie, I have tended to use very rich colors and visuals. And this hasn't changed. Maybe it's because I'm Northern Chinese. I was born and grew up in the northern part of China, and I was heavily influenced by the local folk art and the regional environment there. So I guess my attraction to color could just be a matter of where I'm from!
Can you walk me through the process of choosing or writing a script and then putting it onto a storyboard? What goes through your mind at this time? How do you proceed?
The first step is to find an interesting screenplay, and that's like shopping in a store. When you're first walking around in a shop, browsing, you don't necessarily know what you want or what you're going to buy. Not until something really catches your eye, like a special item or certain clothes. Then you consider whether you have enough money to pay for it. If you do, you get it, and you get it because it interests you; it doesn't matter if you already have a similar item.
Now once you have the screenplay, then you do research — perhaps you spend a lot of time trying to make the screenplay feel right, while at the same time keeping it historically accurate and as interesting as possible. Sometimes it takes me as many as three or four years just to finish fixing or rewriting a screenplay to my satisfaction. But once that's done, you can look for investors, trying to convince them why you want to make that movie and why you think it's a good idea for them to finance it. And this is a lot easier to do if you have a very good screenplay.
Where do you get your ideas? Do you get them just by walking down the street or even by watching movies?
It's hard to tell where inspiration comes from. Very often, it comes when you least expect it. Perhaps you get a tiny detail or a specific image in your mind and you find that image beautiful. Or, sometimes, inspiration comes from another person: something that another person says or does moves you. You find yourself touched and your feelings give you an idea that you can use and develop.
And sometimes the ideas come from watching other people's movies, because I really love to go to the movies myself. Whenever I see a very beautiful movie I become sleepless at night. I'll be lying there thinking that the person who did the movie did such an excellent job — why can't I do that, too? Can I do something as good? So then I try to learn from other directors, learn from their different approaches to angles and perspective and adapt them to my own work. So that's another place where I get my ideas.
As a director, what do you feel that you've accomplished thus far in the Chinese cinema?
The filmmakers who started making movies in China in the 1980s, including me, are known as the Fifth Generation, and it's said that we have made a contribution to the development of Asian cinema. Of course it's nice to hear that sort of thing, but all I did as a film director was to shoot my own movies. However, I think it's clear that the Fifth Generation did manage to extend the influence of the Chinese film industry throughout the world. The reasons it was able to do so are rooted in the special conditions that existed in China at the time. The Fifth Generation did not have to worry about a movie's financial potential; they could follow their artistic impulses and create a movie they liked. That's because in those days the government paid for production costs.
Nowadays, film directors — myself included — have to go out and collect the capital they need for their movies by themselves. If you don't think about a movie's financial potential before making it, you won't be able to cover your costs and no one will fund your next movie. So the economic environment surrounding Chinese cinema has changed.
Has the Chinese people's perception of movies changed as well?
China is very rapidly progressing in its economic development, and along with this the Chinese people's perception of movies has also changed, so that entertainment movies are increasingly in demand. I believe there's a strong relationship between the development of commercial cinema and the strength of the native economy. When a country's economy is stagnant, its popular culture becomes stagnant as well. The overwhelming strength of the American movie industry, for example, is directly related to the United States' economic power and influence.
Every country, of course, has movies that exist as works of art. But I believe that movies are both works of art and mediums of entertainment. In today's world, the main trend in movies is to make them highly commercial entertainment vehicles. And right now, no country's movies can resist the power of Hollywood's entertainment-oriented industry. Therefore, our major challenge today is to discover how each country can protect its own movie industry.
If you do think about the audience's tastes, which audience do you think about more? The Chinese audience or the Western one?
I don't understand foreign audiences because I cannot speak a single word of English; without a translator here beside me, we ourselves would not be conversing. So, I really don't know what Western audiences like to watch. But of course I am delighted if Western audiences are able to see my films and understand them.
In China itself, people sometimes say of me that I'm a director who makes movies for non-Chinese, but when I have the chance, I tell these people, "Since I can't speak English, I make movies for the people of China." Moreover, from my first movie Red Sorghum (above, 1987) to my most recent work, my films have made money not only abroad but in China as well.
Hero was certainly a huge commercial success both in China and around the world. Did you set out to make it as big a hit as possible?
I never expected that it would be so popular internationally. I am more in the habit of judging the tastes of Chinese audiences. I couldn't have predicted that so many foreigners would like it, and I have been thinking about this a lot since completing the movie.
In China, though a lot of people went to see Hero, there was some negative response, wasn't there?
Yes. The Chinese often look beyond the content of the film, at the ideology represented by it. Chinese education prioritizes content over style: if the filmgoers disagree with a film's ideas, the style must be poor, too, according to their thinking. I don't see it like that; and I think they are missing the point. The form and style of Hero are really special, and this is what attracts international audiences, who have no idea about any critique of Emperor Qin that may be found in the film — they are attracted by the form, the style, the tone of the movie.
To what extent did you try to make this film appeal to a Western audience and their idea of China as an exotic place?
You can't really proceed in that way. One's appreciation of a good film is something universal. It is about feelings, characters, stories, colors, scenery, beauty — all of which are common to every human being, especially feelings. As long as the film appeals to human emotions, all audiences will enjoy it.
Specifically to address your question about my making Hero to appeal to a Western audience, I have to say that since I was very young I'd always liked reading martial-arts novels, but in the early years of the Fifth Generation, no one wanted to make these kinds of movies; everyone considered them as mere entertainment, too low-brow, and as lacking in any artistic value. So even though I liked them, I'd never dared to think of making one.
Let me add that Hero, as a martial-arts film, conveys my idea for this genre. Personally, I think China's martial-arts films are different from Western action films. The most important difference is that China's martial-arts films place a lot of importance on aesthetics, even poetry — the beauty of the whole story, you could say. I think that this really distinguishes martial-arts films from action movies. Ever since I was little, I have watched martial-arts competitions year after year. The aesthetics of the actions of these masters really was a big component in their final scores. So when I make martial-arts films, I try to differentiate them from the West's action films by placing lots of emphasis on aesthetic appeal to the eyes. This is what I feel will be my signature mark on the martial-arts genre.
How do you think Hollywood has influenced the film industry in China?
In mainland China, almost every year we're seeing around twenty Hollywood films, so there's a big impact on the younger generation and on young filmmakers in China. I think the best part about Hollywood films is that they've always had really good publicity and marketing, and they also usually have a good and touching story. But for Chinese films, we need to invent and retain the nationality and the flavor of the Eastern.
I think it would be good for a Chinese marketing system to be able to compete with Hollywood, but this is really difficult to do. Not only Asian films want to fight Hollywood, the whole film world wants to fight Hollywood. When you go around the world and talk with film practitioners, this is always the topic that comes up — how to fight the invasion of Hollywood's commercial films and how to protect your own national films. Both artists and governments are talking about the same thing. Hollywood will not easily give up the market it has seized. Hollywood is really smart and has gotten all the good directors from all over the world. It has got some of the best directors in China, including martial-arts instructors from Hong Kong, to help them. So much so that we can't even find qualified people to work on our films because Hollywood is paying them more money. They are employed in Hollywood permanently, designing martial arts postures! So Hollywood is really digging up talent all over the world, and it attracts these talents with lucrative salaries. It has also continuously changed its tactics and tastes over time to make money from all over the world. This trend has a strong momentum and one can't really reverse it. Hollywood, as everyone knows, has been built up over many years. No one can fight the Americans in the area of pooling resources and money.
A more serious problem is that Hollywood has cultivated its own new generation of international audiences for its commercial films. In China, young people like only Hollywood hits. They can easily name all the Hollywood stars. If you ask American young people, "Who among you can name Chinese movie stars?" — well, no one can do it. How many Chinese films, after all, do you see every year in the American market? There is just a handful. We can see from China that Hollywood unquestionably has a young generation of followers from all over the world. We feel as a result that our national film industry is under pressure, because we know that the most important audiences for films are young people. This really presents us with a challenge, and we have always taken it to be our responsibility to make good Chinese films and do our part to attract the Chinese audience. For instance, we show them Hero — whether they like it or not! — and we present it to them in Chinese color, with a Chinese cast playing Chinese characters.
What do you think of the Oscars?
I've been to the Oscars twice. And sitting there during the awards ceremony, I felt as if it were a purely American game. It really didn't have a lot to do with American film style and standards — just American economics, American business. I can understand why European directors say Hollywood is poison. And it's sobering for me to sit in the Third World, watching the Old and New Worlds argue about how European movies have no values while American movies have no culture.
What are your favorite American movies? And what do you think of Asian Americans in Hollywood?
Given that there are many American film genres, I spend most of my film time watching American films; besides, American films take up a large part of the world market, as we all know only too well. Wherever you go to movie theaters around the world, what you see are mostly American films, especially American commercial films. There are many American directors and actors that I like a lot. But, of course, there are good ones and not-so-good ones. I am not against Hollywood's commercial films, as I hope I have made clear; I watch them very often and often find good ones among them. One can't really make a generalization about Hollywood. I am not like the French and the Italians who are hostile to Hollywood, calling it all junk. I have varied taste, and I watch a lot — whatever catches my attention. The most recent American picture I saw was here in Hong Kong. It was a sci-fi film, mixing ghosts, vampires, and the like, all into one big stew. I don't remember the name of the film because it was translated into Chinese. But I really liked the computer animations and special effects.
There are many foreign directors who are seeking to further their careers in Hollywood. It is true in many countries that directors, once they make their names known in their own country, are immediately brought over, or drafted, by Hollywood. I think these are all personal choices on the part of the directors themselves. The large market that Hollywood can provide constitutes a great temptation to many filmmakers. An audience of 20,000 is very different from an audience of two million. It's natural, therefore, that lots of directors want to develop their talents in Hollywood, where they will have more space, so to speak, and a larger audience.
Ang Lee and John Woo are examples of Asian American directors — and successful examples, too. I think they made the right choice in going to Hollywood. But often, I myself have been asked whether I wanted to go to Hollywood. My answer is that I am not suitable for Hollywood. First, I don't know the language. Second, the films I make are all based in China. If I go to the United States, I can't really make the films I want. So I know myself, and know that I can't really be separated from the land where I grew up. I can only stay in China and make movies there.
Do you feel that Chinese films are having an influence on Hollywood?
I used to think many Hollywood action movies were pretty stupid, but now those movies are becoming much better visually. Like John Woo's — his martial-arts pictures are quite poetic. Many big American movies are beginning to have Chinese Kung Fu scenes — The Matrix, for example. The action sequences in these films are now more beautiful, more rhythmic, and I think that this is because of Chinese influence. It's great to see Chinese aesthetics affecting Hollywood in a positive way. Kung Fu can influence people all over the world; it inspires hope, and it can help people learn about traditional Chinese art. Any Chinese person would be proud of that.
Which do you feel has had the greater influence on you, Western cinema or Chinese culture?
Western film has probably only influenced me with regard to cinematic form and technical matters, but the influence of Chinese culture — the Chinese spirit and Chinese emotions — is absolutely basic to me. That's because I'm one hundred percent Chinese, and so are my films.
What should Asian movies be?
South Korea is doing the most interesting work in Asian cinema right now. I watch almost every South Korean movie that comes out, and there are a lot of movies from South Korea that I like. Even if they don't succeed on the same level as Hollywood, in recent years what I think has made South Korean movies a success is that, while presenting political and other issues of great interest to the general public, they produce entertaining pictures that find a place in the market. And you can't forget that they express something uniquely Korean as well.
The young Chinese directors of the Sixth Generation need to do like the South Koreans and spend more time thinking about the needs of their era and their viewers. Young Chinese directors don't go much beyond trying to express their own individuality. Individuality is also important, of course; but because movies are a mass art, you can't use them simply to reveal your native individuality or special ego. If a lot of people don't go to see your movies, you'll never find anyone to fund your second or third movie.
I think the South Koreans succeeded by capturing the audience of their own country. China's young directors could learn a lot from South Korean directors — and I could as well. I am learning from them.
As you know, House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Hero (2002) have been read in certain quarters as political allegories about contemporary China. The latter was even interpreted by some as an apology for modern Chinese imperialism. Hero portrayed the King of Qin [China's first emperor, and the man behind the building of the Great Wall] as a wise, temperate ruler who has a capacity for humility and forgiveness, even if he did sometimes kill his subjects in the name of progress. Conversely, House of Flying Daggers is far less sympathetic toward its emperor. We never see him, but we learn he is incompetent, that his soldiers are brutal, and that his government is riddled with corruption. The film may be set in 859 A.D., but with its depiction of an imperial army ruthlessly tracking down a shadowy terrorist organization, it, too, seems to have a contemporary resonance.
I am surprised that you see political references in these films. The objective of any form of art cannot be political. I had no political intentions in making these two movies. I am not interested in politics.
But at the start of our conversation, you declared your great ambition was to complete a series of movies set during the Cultural Revolution.
It's not that I want to make political films about the Cultural Revolution, but instead, with the Cultural Revolution as the background, I want to show the fate of people, their love and hate, their happiness and sadness, and the most valuable things in human nature that survived this recent period of Chinese history. I really like stories that reveal the way people lived, not how or what they believed; and I think that To Live achieved this aim.
What are the difficulties involved in making movies in China?
Censorship is one of them, of course. Critics say, for example, that I'm not being sharp enough or not cutting deeply enough in my films. But every director in China knows in his heart how far he can go and how much he can say. If anyone tells you that he always says what he wants to say or films what he wants to film, he is lying. Even underground movies have a limit past which they cannot go. I hope in the future we have more freedom and artists are given more space. But the question now isn't whether you're good at balancing things: you have to balance what you say against what you cannot say. This is a reality you have to face.
Over the years many people have talked about the difficulty of making movies in China, but each person has his own story to tell. In my case, my movie To Live has yet to be shown in China. I'm not sure of the exact reason, but it may be because it deals with forty years of Chinese history, including the Cultural Revolution — whether as background or not.
Could you tell me something about the evolution of your movies?
My early movies laid stress on beauty of form and concept, but I then moved on to deliberately focusing on human emotions, particularly human warmth. And the reason I deal so much with Chinese peasants is that China is an agricultural country. Personally, I love the simple emotions of farmers. If you investigate everyday life in China, you'll see that the heart of China is in its agricultural villages.
Also, because my movies frequently have the theme of "searching," I've made a lot of movies where the heroine in particular searches for or pursues something in society or in the wider world. As for Hero, which explores the theme of heroism, some people may wonder if I was copying Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I had started Hero long before Lee's picture came out. Unlike my previous films, Hero marks a change for me, because it is a grand-scale entertainment movie with beautiful sound, visuals, and costumes, and it depicts a rich tapestry of romantic and tragic relationships. My hope in this film, as I have tried to make clear, was to help give Chinese cinema greater international influence in the realm of big-budget entertainment movies — the main trend in the movie industry right now.
Well, it seems to me you have always emphasized the spectacular aspect of cinema, even in your smaller-budgeted films (let us call them!). Or, to put it another way, ever since your debut with Red Sorghum, you have quite consciously sought to make your films look good. That itself seems to indicate a special concern for the audience.
That's true. I always insist on visually striking films. A film must look good, and you have to work through what "looking good" means. You cannot afford to get self-indulgent or too isolated and self-involved. But I must emphasize that the "looking good" I'm talking about is not at all the same as the kind you find in Hollywood commercial filmmaking. What I make are still works of art, of visual art.
A film like Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), though, is nothing like Ju Dou (1990) or Raise the Red Lantern (1991), those intimate, Oscar-nominated period dramas that brought you to the attention of Western audiences during the early 1990s. Today, some of your longtime devotees are scratching their heads over your newfound affinity for martial-arts flicks, big budgets, and computer effects. Curse cost $45 million to make, a huge sum in China, so I have to ask, are you just chasing the money now?
Well, you can't duplicate the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. That kind of phenomenon can happen only once. This film genre actually has a long-standing tradition in China, beginning with Bruce Lee. It's popular among Chinese audiences, especially the youth. That's why Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li are such movie icons. And this is the reason so many Chinese directors want to make movies of this type. It's our one fighting chance at competing with Hollywood. You know, Hollywood is not just big in China: in fact it has eaten up 95 percent of the Chinese market, and our native industry has gone through some serious soul-searching as a result. Nearly all of my fellow Fifth Generation directors, who began working in the 1980s, have now expanded their repertoires to fit the increasingly international and commercialized film climate. But my own feeling is that there's no need to impose artistic limits, or commercial restrictions, on Fifth Generation directors. Nowadays, it's increasingly difficult to differentiate between art and commerce, anyway. The direction in which we're heading is probably to make artistic films that also attract a wider audience. We have to compete with Hollywood films; we can't simply indulge our artistic impulses and neglect the audience. Making commercial films is a good exercise for Fifth Generation directors. Once you are adept at the mainstream approach, you can rejuvenate your artistic spirit by doing something else. Otherwise, you'd just be making films that earn awards, but that no one would go to see. And you have to remember, or I have to reiterate, a filmmaker must make sure that his investors break even: this is also a director's responsibility. I have a pretty good record in that regard, therefore I have never worried about money.
What is the difference for you between making a big-budget film and a small-scale one?
Shooting a big-budget film gives the director a huge sense of responsibility. You can't experiment too much with things that are very personal, things that other people wouldn't understand — you just can't do too much of that. But if I am shooting a small-scale or intimate movie, I can try something that is very personal, artistic, and unique in style, without considering whether or not it will be accepted by the masses.
It's always been challenging for me to direct different kinds of films: before, I was doing films on a small scale, with a small budget, treating ordinary people's lives; but Hero and House of Flying Daggers are huge-scale films that are as different from Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern (right) as heaven and earth. For me, it's always great to face such different challenges. That makes me grow as an artist, and it makes me develop and learn and enhance my filmmaking skills. I agree with what the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa said upon accepting the Oscar in 1990 for lifetime achievement: he said more or less that he was still learning how to make films, and that he had to continue working if he was ever going to be able fully to comprehend the art of cinema.
Many of your films are set in the past at some distance from contemporary, everyday life. Why is that?
It probably has something to do with the novels I have picked. A number of my films are such adaptations, and it so happens that most of the novels I have read are set in the past. For example, Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern were adapted separately from novels by different authors that I like very much, but I guess this has given people the impression that I specialize in historical films. Actually, I'm always looking for different material. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) is about the life of farming people today, for instance, and I have also done two films about contemporary city life. Artistically speaking, I just want to keep moving on.
Yes, but what is it that interests you so much in making period pieces?
Most of my films are in fact historical in nature, so this is a good question. Since the very first film I made, Red Sorghum, I have really liked historical stories. But at the time I made this film, the main reason I decided on that time period was that China had very strict censorship. When you make a film, especially about a tragic story, you have to put the characters under a certain pressure from society, and then you have to show that the characters fight their fate and resist their social as well as personal tragedy. But what kind of pressure are you going to put them under? Obviously, there would be a political problem involved in depicting such outside pressure in contemporary Chinese society. Such films would not gain easy approval from the censors. So I decided to set Red Sorghum at a time in the past, when China was under feudalism. This way the subject became easier to deal with. My original idea wasn't really to make a political statement, but the story does require strong external pressure so that the fate of the characters can be realized. And that pressure had to come from a societal or social background.
Today, a number of Chinese directors resort to this method when they have a story to tell. They simply trace time backwards and place the story in a safe period where it will be easier to make the film — because it will not cause them any political trouble. In doing things this way, it is not necessarily that we have a special or sentimental attachment to a certain time period. Sometimes, as I have indicated, we pick such a time period solely for the purpose of implementing a "political" plan. That was what happened to me at the beginning of my career, and so I made several historical films. After some time, you just get used to it, and actually I find historical stories more interesting. With them, one simply has a larger space in which to give free rein to one's imagination.
Curse of the Golden Flower, your third action film, takes place in the Later Tang dynasty, more than 1,000 years ago. Yet the film is based on a modern Chinese drama, isn't it?
Yes, indeed, it's based on a modern drama called Thunderstorm, which is one of the most famous works from the canon of contemporary Chinese literature. It was written by Cao Yu and set in the 1920s and '30s. It's so important, in fact, that students of dramatic art in China are actually trained by using this text. It's part of their basic repertoire, and they must all perform Thunderstorm during their student days. So this is a work with which I've long been familiar, and it's so popular it's performed virtually every day in China. If you picked a random day, like today, in some city in China you would find a production of Thunderstorm.
And it's a story about the way that people are twisted and pushed as they struggle to survive under the feudal system in China. It has strong characterization — very powerful characters are featured here — and I thought it would be interesting to take this modern play and transpose it to pre-modern China, to the Tang Dynasty. Not just any dynasty, mind you, but the most glorious, vibrant, and colorful of dynasties, where all the external beauty would be heightened because it is juxtaposed against the dark portrait of humanity that the play is offering up.
What is the relationship between this film and a film of yours like Hero?
I think the major difference between this film and Hero, as well as between Curse and House of Flying Daggers, is that the earlier two are really very much in the tradition of traditional martial-arts films. Curse of the Golden Flower, however, is quite different because it's more of an amalgamation of a melodrama and an action film, and that's something I quite consciously endeavored to achieve. The plot and the characterization, as I've said, both come from the original play, Cao Yu's Thunderstorm; it's the setting, the period, that I have changed.
Have you found that the final film product you end up with is often very different from the idea you started out with?
There are some differences from what I imagined by the time I complete a project, but the basic idea doesn't change. There are all kinds of reasons why you have to make adjustments — everything from the actors to the lighting, the sound, and the cinematography. In the case of Raise the Red Lantern and The Story of Qiu Ju, it was only when the shooting started that I got an overall sense of each film, but with To Live and Red Sorghum, I knew from the very outset where I was headed. Every film is different and requires a different response.
With Shanghai Triad (1995), you were looking for something exceptional from the start.
Yes, I wanted the unusual, the unconventional, the uncommon, something individual and special. But sometimes even I want the familiar. In To Live, for instance, I used a traditional popular narrative, deliberately aiming for the familiar.
You seem to be particularly indulgent towards actors. How do you normally work with them?
I understand what you're getting at. You're thinking of the way in which so many of my shots work on account of the acting. You can put all sorts of demands on actors, but it only works if they are able to accept those demands. So I feel it's vital to respect the actors as individuals from the outset, and to make sure that they understand the way I think and work. I don't believe any actor anywhere in the world can do everything. Actors bring their own temperament, character, experiences, and acting habits to bear on every performance. They need your respect, and sometimes they also need your guidance. I often find that what the actors are able to give me on the set far exceeds my own imagination, but at other times what they give me doesn't fulfill what I had hoped for, or is even completely different from the way I had imagined their performance would be. At those times, the director has to develop the best aspects of the performance or change plans according to what the actor is able to deliver. When you're making a film, it is relatively easy to control things like the costumes, props, sets, lighting, colors, and camera movements, but the main thing is the actors, because they're giving life to what had only existed before in your imagination.
You worked with Gong Li for over eight years, producing a string of films that fascinated the world. Your personal relationship with her has now ended, but will your working relationship continue?
Of course it will — and it has continued recently in Curse of the Golden Flower — because I still feel she is a very special, very rare actress. She has excellent instincts and is very talented technically. As long as the right scripts and the right roles come along, we will go on working together.
Lots of people keep advising you to learn English, and then go overseas to make movies. Do you think you might follow their advice?
I've never wanted to go to the West to make movies. Let me say this once again: my roots are in China, and I can only make Chinese films in Chinese. That's one thing that will never change. My sole ambition, as I've indicated, is to make different films in different styles. And I also hope that they will reach even ever larger audiences all around the world.
Let's talk for a moment about Happy Times (2000), which itself is different in so many ways from your previous work, despite the fact that it's your second film set in a modern city. How did you first get involved in this project?
It's adapted from a short novel. I loved the story, which is about dreams, how to fulfill a little girl's dream. In adapting the novel I saw an opportunity to make a different film, and not simply to repeat what I had done before. In the novel, the material world is fake but the spirit is very real, and it was this premise that attracted me. I used a very different method to shoot this film, and many people have told me that it looks as if it had been shot by a first-time director. I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible. I didn't want to use any sexy camera movements or to define anything visually in a deliberate way, which is very different from what I've done in the past — which is to try to shoot from the most beautiful angles. The shooting time for Happy Times was much shorter than usual; it took only about forty days to finish the film. I think that's one of the reasons it looks as it were made by a first-time director.
What were you most concerned about before shooting the film, considering the fact that it is visually less complicated than your earlier work?
I spent most of my efforts training the young actress who portrayed the blind girl. I had never shot or portrayed any blind characters in my films, so we spent a lot of time training the actor. I also visited several schools for the blind to understand how they function. And we were able to find a nineteen-year-old blind girl, who, just as the film depicts, went blind when she was ten. We got this blind girl's family to agree to let her live with Dong Jie throughout the production in order to have the actress learn to play the blind character. I was giving homework to Dong Jie every evening. I would tell her, "I'm going to shoot you looking for things for five days." So you have to ask the real blind girl how to look for things, and then in between I would give Dong Jie a quiz. I asked the assistant director to shoot her looking for things with a video camera, just to see if she was getting everything right.
I know in the past you've cited certain filmmakers as influences on your work. One person I know you have mentioned is Abbas Kiarostami, and also the Italian neorealists of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Were there any specific influences on you when you were making this film, Happy Times?
No, but in the general sense, there are many directors who have influenced me. I'm a real film buff, as I've already said. Going to the movies is my only habit. So when I see any great work, that great work will become my new model. I don't believe anybody is a born filmmaker; we all learn from the past, from past masters. As for Italian neorealism, we watched a lot of films from this movement when we were at the Beijing Academy. Obviously, it interests me a great deal.
As I implied earlier, while your films rarely have overtly political content, they can always be read as political. At least that's what I think. Do you think Happy Times can be read from a political point of view?
Because China is a very political society, you can read the political situation into any Chinese story if you want to. But Happy Times is not a political story; rather, it is a story about life. However, there are many details in the film that reflect today's society, such as everybody trying to make money. Money is very important in Chinese life today. For example, in the film the mother only sees money, not people: whoever has money can be her boyfriend. This kind of satire can be read politically as well, I grant you that.
Happy Times is generically described as a comedy, even though there is a lot more than just comedy in it. Do you think that you are going to return to comedy in the future?
No, not really. I personally prefer tragedy. And, like you, I think Happy Times in the end still has serious or even tragic elements in it: you could call it a bittersweet comedy. I guess I probably reflect Chinese sentiments better through tragedy.
Could you talk a bit about the role of women in Chinese society, since you always have strong female leads?
Asking about the position of women in Chinese society requires a large answer, because there are millions and millions of Chinese women out there; but let me just talk about the role of women in the context of big cities. In the big cities, the male and the female are equal, but there are still lots of problems in the countryside. Men still look down on women there and women face a lot of pressure because of tradition; and we need to protect women's position and their rights in the countryside, as well as in the big cities. In the films I've been making, it wasn't my intention to make female-themed movies, but people have drawn that conclusion; and, looking back, yes, maybe they are right and maybe that's why people have called me a women's director. I'm always interested in female stories, but, dramatically speaking, maybe it's easier for me to capture the female as she fights back against society and adversity. In any event, a number of my films deal with this feminine theme: what can be called an anti-patriarchal and anti-feudalistic one.
I'd like you to compare your start in filmmaking with that of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, because I'd like you to expand a bit on the negative comments you made earlier about this new generation of directors.
Looking back now at films like Yellow Earth and Red Sorghum, I can tell you that they both have warm blood and intense life, which are missing from the works of the Sixth Generation. I think this is because the Sixth Generation was subject to too many practical considerations. They cannot be resisted these days: the need for money, the dilemma caused by censorship, the awards offered at international film festivals. At a very early age, therefore, the young artists of the Sixth Generation knew much more and saw things more clearly than we did. And I think that this is bad at a time when you are just getting started in film. It is not that Sixth Generation filmmakers are not talented. Judging by their works, I should say that they are quite talented. What they lack is will. In the last analysis, our first films — those of the Fifth Generation — were not necessarily the result of talent. I now firmly believe that, no matter what you pursue, will is needed in addition to talent — a strength from the bottom of your heart. Deliberate calculation is no good. Some Sixth Generation directors I know are too smart. They understand too many things; they are so well informed about the outside world and so familiar with the path to success that their filmmaking as a result becomes an unemotional process.
When Chen Kaige and I were making Yellow Earth, he knew little about the outside world, but he had an urge to talk about culture and history. At that time I knew this picture would be outstanding. People say it was because of my cinematography, but no matter: the director's intention was expressed, and a very ardent intention it was. His emotions were expressed in a work that was otherwise supposed to be concerned with contemporary politics. That to me is the most crucial. Now I judge a film not by how much philosophy or thought it contains; in fact, the more philosophy it contains, the more I dislike it. I revert to the most basic elements in watching a film. I don't just watch how skillfully the story is told or whether the actors perform well; I look for the director's inner world, whether his emotions are strong, and only then do I look for what he is trying to say. If his emotions are strong, whether they are expressed in a tragedy or a comedy, he will move the audience. That is what I call strength or willpower.
What is it that you want people to remember most about your films?
The visual spectacle. I've tried using realism — the spareness of realistic style — before in my movies, in the cinematography. But I am most in love with the Chinese style of visual presentation. If in twenty years, after I've made a lot more films, they write one sentence about me in a textbook, I'd be satisfied if they said: "Zhang Yimou's cinematic style is strongly visual in a distinctly Chinese fashion."
For you, what is the most important thing to keep in mind in the creation of film art — of any art?
To create art, one must always remember that the subject of people in misery has the deepest meaning, the deepest resonance. Human beings in misery constitute the most important subject of art, be it film art or any other kind. That's because strength is born from such suffering — like the strength of the Chinese people.
November 2007 | Issue 58
Copyright © 2007 by Bert Cardullo
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