Film Studies in China

Selected Writings from Contemporary Cinema

Contemporary Cinema (China Film Archive), Chase Coulson Christensen

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781783208289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Film Studies in China is a collection of selected articles chosen from issues of the journal Contemporary Cinema published throughout the year and translated for an English-speaking audience. As one of the most prestigious academic film studies journals in China, Contemporary Cinema has been active not only in publishing Chinese scholarship for Chinese readers but also in reaching out to academics from across the globe. This anthology hopes to encourage a cross-cultural academic conversation on the fields of Chinese cinema and media studies.
 

Chapter 1

The Culture and Aesthetics of Huo JianQi’s Films

Zhang BinNing

Regardless of whatever lens he is viewed through, Huo JianQi is a unique figure in Chinese cinema. It could even be argued that in a contemporary Chinese environment that clamorously extols industrialization, he and his films lead an almost obsolete existence, out of step with modernity. Throughout his career, Huo has calmly but firmly criticized the successes and failures of China’s cinematic creations, while striving to uphold Chinese cinema’s cultural responsibility. His characteristically clean and aesthetically pleasing visuals; his prosaic narrative rhythm; his restrained yet affective sentimentality and his understated expressiveness collectively point to traditional Chinese cinema, which was profoundly and emotionally significant in Chinese culture and attached to the humanistic tradition.

Once upon a time, the Fifth Generation directors were the gods and gurus of Chinese cinema, worshipped and eulogized. In both their native China and in the West, their works were considered masterpieces that boldly left behind relics of cultural heritage, whilst transfixing the entire world’s gaze. The Fifth Generation directors, led by Zhang YiMou, Chen KaiGe and Tian ZhuangZhuang, et al., began their box office reign in the mid-1980s lasting until the close of the year 1994, when the first profit-sharing movie, The Fugitive (Davis 1993), was imported. The year 1994 marked the beginning of a ten-year period when the Fifth Generation directors experienced equal measures of radiant splendor and biting reproach on the international stage, much in the same vein as China as a nation was experiencing at that time. What set Huo JianQi apart from his Fifth Generation counterparts, who were the apple of the media’s eye and often basked in the glory of the spotlight, was that he hailed from the Fine Arts Department of the Beijing Film Academy. As the favoured sons of the Fifth Generation shone brightly in the limelight, a certain Huo JianQi of supererogatory diligence dedicated himself to the work of artistic design behind the scenes. From The Clearwater Bay (Xie 1984), which saw him collaborate with reputed director of Third Generation prominence, Xie TieLi; to The Horse Thief (Tian 1986), which saw him collaborate with Tian ZhuangZhuang, the Fifth Generation director in possession of a great spirit of adventure and experimentation; to the films Half Flame, Half Brine (Xia 1989), Unexpected Passion (Xia 1991) and After Separation (Xia 1992), which saw him collaborate with Xia Gang, who was enamored with commercial movies, Huo JianQi set an excellent example, fusing audience and commercial demands seamlessly with the directors’ artistic aspirations, contributing to works of outstanding artistic design and finesse. In fact, through close examination of the form and style of the great Chinese films that oriented themselves towards the epic and the grand, such as The Horse Thief and After Separation, it is not difficult to identify Huo in the role of Art Director, elevating the overall artistic merit of those films through his influential creative input. The ruggedness, solemnity and desolation of The Horse Thief; the commercial undercurrent lying dormant but itching to skitter across the surface, symbolized by the insects that wriggle out of the walls of the tenement blocks and quadrangular courtyard houses in After Separation – all these seemingly random yet ingenious design features complete the films’ palpable aesthetic stylistics. Regardless of form or style, Huo’s art direction has both solid quality-control and accuracy of form, fully embodying his deeply realized and tightly controlled sense of film art design. It could be said that his future directorial transformation was founded on the experience accumulated through the germination process that his time working behind the scenes had afforded him. Moreover, it is most likely through this process that he realized the importance of the visual aspect of film-making. In his own words, it was probably the ten years of art direction that brought him innumerable gains:

[i]f one day I have an opportunity to make a movie, what kind of film should it be? Well, first of all, I’m going to make a film with a ‘cinematic consciousness’, founded on and an ‘audience consciousness’. (Huo 1996: 48–49)

Thus, the first step towards arriving at the ultimate goal of ‘aesthetically pleasing’ visuals is without a doubt an ‘audience consciousness’.

Pleasing aesthetics and a liberal use of different styles are his signature visual features, which complement the implied emotionality associated with the lingering sentimentality of the humanistic cultural tradition. Such a characteristic has even been interpreted as punctilious adherence to an outmoded tradition. This has not only become the totemic signifier of his unique personal style, but also the very reason he has been maligned and misunderstood. It is under the dead weight of this twisted and convoluted criticism that he has limped forward, though his is not necessarily a quixotic tale of intrepid tragicomic chivalry, Rather, his ever-present wisdom has been continually evident in his problem-solving skills during the making of films and his tenacity.

Misunderstanding and prejudice: A journey of persistence and quandary

Altogether, Huo JianQi has delivered twelve directorial efforts in twenty years, beginning in early 1995. Careful examination of the subject matter, style and form, and genre and structure, as well as of the values and ethics conveyed in his films, reveal that each of his films is highly distinctive. However, audiences and film critics judged the works as distinctively common. When talking to the director himself in a casual conversation, I found him to be particularly gentle and shy; when talking about his films however, he became almost boorish in his use of a one-word-fits-all term: aesthetics. Although each of his films contains some variation of soft and supple aesthetics, each follows its own distinct course. However, as for what may be revealed when comparing Huo’s works with others from the same period, in my humble opinion, such comparison prevents us from perceiving the deeper ideological meaning behind his films. Similarly, though Ang Lee is widely known as a ‘gentle soul’, his films are packed with power, punch and presence. As with Lee, Huo only swathes his films with a superficial layer of gentleness, and within there is a powerful message that persists and lingers long after the closing credits. It should be stated that, thus far, misinterpretation and preconceived notions about ‘aesthetic beauty’ have haunted Huo’s projects. The director’s canon has been polluted with bias,¹ and thus an even thicker and more uncuttable tapestry has been woven around his body of work. If we want to cut through this confusion, we must go back to the source: his directorial debut.

After making the transition to director, Hou’s first project was The Winner (1995), a remarkable film on all levels , even by today’s standards, which swept top honours at that year’s film awards. It received Best Debut Feature at the Annual Golden Rooster Awards and at the Beijing Student Film Festival; and Best Feature at the Huabiao Film Awards. It goes without saying what this must have meant to the rookie director. The Winner sets love as the focal point as it tells the story of a crippled athlete’s desire to live a normal life. The film’s narrative context is clear and appealing; the rhythm alternates between taut and slack; and, above all, the sharp and vivid visuals are deeply impressive. Most importantly, however, through The Winner we get a sense of Huo’s instinct for visual culture. For example, the use of slow motion repeatedly and even brazenly shows off Bing Shao’s body, presenting him as a handsome and confident young bodybuilder and creating a legitimate object for the audience’s lustful gaze. It should be noted that this level of awareness of visual culture was nearly unheard of in Chinese cinema at that time. In the Heat of the Sun (1994) also has a similar quality, but that is only my personal opinion. Moreover, the almost excessive use of lighting in The Winners reveals the director’s deliberate attempt to mimic the conventions of Hollywood commercial films. In other words, as soon as Huo splashed paint onto his palette, he had declared his own understanding of cinema: to use aesthetically pleasing images² to tell a vivid and moving story.

His next film was quite a radical departure from his previous works. Postmen in the Mountains (1999) brought international acclaim to Huo, and it is vastly different from The Winner. The main storyline concerns a postman father and his estranged son’s journey through the mountains delivering mail in the remote mountain town where they live. Thus Huo contrasts the traditional depiction of the Chinese father-and-son relationship with the poetic sombreness of the surrounding natural scenery, creating an immersive, aesthetic experience and an incomparable cultural character. Postmen in the Mountains has neither a plot with ups and downs, nor the magnificent and sumptuous visuals of a film like The Winner. The movie was a miserable flop on the domestic front, but received rave reviews in Japan. It was the film’s ‘aesthetics’ that later branded Postmen in the Mountains, like a scarlet letter. It is painfully obvious that, through defining Huo as an aesthetician, the media and critics have delivered a certain impression to mass audiences: that he is only concerned with self-expression and not with box office takings for these art films. If The Winner and Postmen in the Mountains have been compartmentalized into kings for two vastly different categories, we can thus see his follow-up films floundering between these two extremes: at times commercial, at times artistic. Huo’s films always display a distinctive artistic tone tinged with a flair for the vogue, and this along with his persistence and prowess have ensured his enduring legacy.

A Love of Blueness (2000), starring Pan YueMing and Yuan Quan, tells of the love between a young policeman and a stage actress stricken by a psychological illness. The narrative thread is fairly complex, with a dollop of suspense atop the main love story. Along with the film’s evocative title, a cyan-coloured dawn sets the ‘bluish’ tone of the film, imbuing it with a stylistic and penetrating vibrancy mingled with a touch of the melancholy that is characteristic of Chinese youth films. This particular stylization makes the film both powerful and tender.

Life Show (2002) is the most outstanding film in Huo’s oeuvre, in which the intensity of ordinary city life, coupled with dark and seamy cinematography, brings the coarse and fine textures of reality to life in equal measures. Through focusing on the bitter struggle of a single woman named Shuang Yang, who works in a night market, little by little the film portrays love and kinship as well as cruel social relationships. It weaves a rich and vivid tapestry that unveils the misery and hopelessness of the lives of the lower social classes.

Only when Nuan (2003) came out could we once again recognize the style and emotion of Postmen in the Mountains. Nuan tells a harrowing story of trust and betrayal and idealized dreams meeting frustrating reality. A young man named Lin JingHe returns to his hometown after a long absence, where he has a chance encounter with his first love, whose dark and absurd fate has been to transfer her unrealized dreams onto her children. The film’s tepid and unhurried pacing enhances the story’s broodingly melancholic and silently grievous atmosphere.

A Time to Love (2005) is a contemporary Romeo and Juliet story. Two young lovers who grew up together as playmates develop deep feelings for each other, but are kept apart and can only hope and pray for a time when they can reunite. To top it all off, a misunderstanding that occurred in their parents’ time has given rise to enmity between their families. The pangs of their perfect love give way to a bleak utopian-like film world devoid of true feeling as the young lovers are forced to live apart. The resulting story that emanates from the screen causes the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in anguish over these two innocent lovers who have cruelly played destiny’s fools.

Snowfall in Taipei (2009) tells the story of a female singer who suddenly lost her voice and now hides in a remote street. The film melds the hipster youth scene with vogue glamour. Unlike the above-mentioned films, The Seal of Love (2011) and Falling Flowers (2013) were adapted from historical events. The Seal of Love tells the legend of the deep love between Qu QiuBai and Yang ZhiHua, while Falling Flowers is about the life of a female writer named Xiao Hong – her concerns, fixations and perspectives. Although both stories take place during the tumultuous and unstable 1930s and 1940s, the films have a lively style and ingenious narratives, and are resplendent with an attention to detail that completely remakes reality in order to present a vastly different glimpse of history. The director indeed took great pains to elegantly reconstruct the original face of the Communist Revolution. Beyond that, he took great pains to make the leading man and leading lady into fashion icons (Wang 2011: 49).

Aesthetics and poetics: The establishment and demonstration of style

As previously mentioned, Postmen in the Mountains is not Huo’s only truly renowned film, but it is the piece that best represents and establishes his style. The film’s visuals, which are decidedly different from his others, have been the subject of scholarly debate based on their aesthetic and poetic scope. At the same time, Postmen in the Mountains has also become the standard by which Huo’s later films have been judged and analyzed, which to some extent has limited scholars’ analysis of his other films. In further dissecting the issue, we need to first distinguish formal beauty and aesthetics from his personal visual style. Second, we need to take into account the intangible and tangible stylistics, where the tangible belongs to the visuals and the intangible belongs to the poetics.

As we are all by now familiar, ‘style’ has been conceptualized as a kind of formal system (see Bordwell 2008). In filmic terms, it includes both the images and the narratives, and it also involves the configuration and usage of specific formal elements (aesthetics, lighting, camera shot, performance sound, editing, mise-en-scè...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on Translation
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: The Culture and Aesthetics of Huo JianQi’s Films
• Chapter 2: 12 Citizens: Twelve Chinese People, 1.2 Billion Voices: Successful Localization and Practical Application
• Chapter 3: Intellectual Property Rights Transfers in a Borderless Era
• Chapter 4: The Materialist View: Quality Editing Requires Editorial Integrity
• Chapter 5: The Most Important Aspect of Film-Making is ‘Discovery’: A Conversation with Director Jia ZhangKe
• Chapter 6: Film Culture Development in the Wake of New China’s ‘Pretonpian Society’: The ‘Netopia’ of Chinese Auteurs Constitutes a ‘New Force’ in the Industry
• Chapter 7: Spiritual and Physical Manifestations and Cultural Signifiers of Trauma in Chinese Anti-Japanese War Films
• Notes on Contributors
• Contemporary Cinema Editorial Board
• Notes on Intellect China Library Series
• Back Cover