Say what you will about the inevitable "change of heart" China's fifth generation has gone through over the last decade or so, but one of the most fascinating aspects of current Mainland cinema is exactly how some of those Beijing Film Academy graduates are approaching what is at the center of their transformation, the 主旋律 (main melody, and you know which "melody" it refers to) canon. Yet, and here is the most interesting point of the whole ordeal, it's not the notorious flagbearers of yesteryear who are leading this new movement. With Zhang Yimou turning to increasingly vapid blockbusters which please at home and titillate viewers abroad with orientalist flavor, and Chen Kaige mostly losing himself in a hodge-podge of terribly misguided Hollywood escapades, fruity Panasian blockbusters and festival-friendly syrupy innocence lacking everything that made those 15 years from the mid 1980s onward so rich and satisfying, the task of making a mark with what proves to be a little more than status quo has now been bestowed upon different names. Returning after what now seems a much too long seven year hiatus, Sun Zhou's latest spy thriller 秋喜 (Qiuxi) seems to be quite the good example of how sweet this "melody" can sound.
With its release suffering the aftermath of record breaking crowd pleasers like 建国大业 (The Founding of a Republic) and 风声 (The Message), it was sort of inevitable that Sun's long-awaited 45 million yuan return would suffer at the box office, in no small part because it's not such a black and white rendition of what the big suits and even audiences would expect, although by no means a counter-main melody pic. Some even argued that its title might be to blame, the much too parochial sounding moniker attached to maidens in the provinces (or unmarried Tanka like the titular servant), meaning autumn bliss. Clever double entendre it certainly is, as there is another kind of autumn bliss looming behind the corner, the arrival of Lin Biao's communist troops on October 14, 1949, liberating Guangzhou from Kuomintang domination.
It's October 1, not even six months after the KMT lost their capital Nanjing to communist forces, the icing on the cake of a series of successful campaigns (along with Huaihai and Beiping/Tianjin) which would seal the fate of the Chinese civil war. A familiar voice graces the radio broadcasts of a quiet morning in The Flower City on the Pearl River, Guangzhou. It's Mao Zedong, proclaiming the birth of the 中华人民共和国 (People's Republic of China), in effect singing the Kuomintang's swan song. Yan Haiqing (Guo Xiaodong) is an agent of the nationalist government, which since April and the Nanjing defeat had relocated to the Guangdong Province capital, with Li Zongren as the acting president. An endlessly conflicted scholar forced to carry a gun, Yan's 1940s-Hollywood noir-like gravitas betrays the fact he is indeed a communist spy, infiltrated into the KMT regime in an attempt to derail the KMT's homecoming party set for October 14's liberation (let's just say that blowing up the Haizhu bridge was not their only goal).
On the other side of the fence is Xia Huimin (Sun Chun, director Sun's brother), the ruthless KMT officer in charge, who deals with interrogations the Dirty Harry way, enjoys the company of fine women (even when, to his chagrin, they happen to be Guangdong Opera stars), and begins a frantic race against the clock to find a rather annoying mole within the system. Huangpu Military Academy alumni Huimin shows a peculiar kind of respect for underling Haiqing, perhaps because he displays the kind of purity and moral fiber he lost over the years, dealing with the atrocities of war and a fratricidal conflict which left little time for personal whims. But it's not just loyalty and nostalgia which dominates him, it's also an increasingly pungent sense of jealousy, for he could never regain the somewhat naive innocence pervading Haiqing's every move. The feeling is multiplied tenfold when he visits his house and enjoys dinner with him, prepared by his beautiful Tanka (boat people) servant Qiuxi, played by 南京! 南京! (City of Life and Death)'s Jiang Yiyan. With mounting jealousy comes the looming suspicion that Haiqing's refusal to use a gun or be open to the possibility of, like he says, "killing 1000 innocent people to find one culprit" might not come down to simple lack of character, but the fact he might indeed be the mole. And with October 14 right behind the corner, it can only make their relationship all the more complex and unnerving.
Sun, who spent a good portion of his career telling stories of Guangdong Province's people, recreates 1949's Guangzhou with admirable finesse, from the fantastic sets to the familiar sounds of Canton's heart and soul. We're essentially dealing with what is an old school Hollywood noir drenched in the pathos of the Chinese Civil War, but while the minimum requirements for a bonafide main melody flick are certainly there (KMT are the Colombian drug cartel-looking baddies, Mao and friends kick ass through devotion to their cause and personal sacrifice), Qiuxi offers a much more progressive and multi-faceted approach to the proceedings. Haiqing is not the kind of selfless, sanctimonious hero of many a main melody flick past, but he's instead a very flawed and three-dimensional character, just as addicted to opium and hesitation as he is to the fulfillment of his undercover duties; and, in all his gun-touting, no bullshit bravado, Huimin shows a human side as well, feeling the weight bestowed upon his shoulders and trigger-happy fingers without seeing any solution on the horizon, nor anyone at least taming those instincts of his (even his relationship with a Guangdong Opera starlet is flawed from the start). It's a step in the right direction for sure, in no small part because human frailty and decadence often take precedence over ideology and the greater picture here, making the film's political noir ambiance all the more alluring.
It's then regrettable that a few elements impede Qiuxi from becoming truly superior fare, one of which is rather troubling. Although the Chinese press has mostly compared this work to this year's CCTV drama 潜伏 (Undercover) starring Sun Honglei, with which the film shares some plot points and the period setting, Qiuxi is a lot more similar (in every sense of the word) to the underappreciated 2002 Korean spy noir 이중간첩 (Double Agent), sharing the same unquestionable merits along with its flaws. Just like Go So-Young was the weakest link in the gritty Han Suk-Gyu vehicle, Qiuxi is nothing more than a narrative catalyst here: she does matter in terms of storytelling, complete with clever allusions to her innocence and purity (through the use of white and other techniques), somewhat awkwardly connected in one of the final reels with the Chinese flag (they had to suggest the double entendre, right?), but her relationship with Haiqing never really takes off, it doesn't ring true enough to leave much of an aftertaste when the shit hits the fan. This, coupled with a few moments of less than satisfactory editing and subpar "bullet action" towards the finale, somewhat hurts the proceedings, maybe because the first half was so strong and filled with pathos that you were led to expect a lot more.
But it would be foolish to miss a film of this quality for a few annoying flaws. Guo Xiaodong, who also stars in Yuen Woo-Ping's return to the director's chair with 蘇乞兒 (True Legend), plays conflicted hero Haiqing with great subtlety, but the real show stealer is Sun Chun as Huimin, oozing charisma and a vintage James Cagney meets Milkyway-style nonchalance which turns every scene he's involved with into gold. And when you have fine actresses like Qin Hailu and Jiang Yiyan rounding up the cast, you know you're in good hands. Although its intents were probably much more ambitious, Sun Zhou's Qiuxi is likely to be forgotten down the line as an example of top notch entertainment with brains, something a little too ahead of its time (at least vis-a-vis the critical and popular response to main melody films) to move mainstream audiences, particularly at a time when bombastic flag waving seems to be what people are looking for. But, just like He Ping's return with 麦田 (Wheat), it shows that the fifth generation is not just content with churning out empty propaganda vessels and languid arthouse fare. It might not be the autumn bliss Sun was looking for, but I'll sure take it over countless stars blessing a fatuous parade taking the human character out of the pages of history....
RATING: 7.5
秋喜 (Qiuxi)
Director: 孙周 (Sun Zhou)
Screenplay: 王力夫 (Wang Lifu), 孙周 (Sun Zhou), 刘琛 (Liu Chen), 王熠 (Wang Yi)
Produced By: Guangzhou Pearl River Film Studio
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Release: 10/14/2009
CAST: 郭晓冬 (Guo Xiaodong), 孙淳 (Sun Chun), 江一燕 (Jiang Yiyan), 王雅捷 (Wang Yajie), 秦海璐 (Qin Hailu), 孙敏 (Sun Min)
With its release suffering the aftermath of record breaking crowd pleasers like 建国大业 (The Founding of a Republic) and 风声 (The Message), it was sort of inevitable that Sun's long-awaited 45 million yuan return would suffer at the box office, in no small part because it's not such a black and white rendition of what the big suits and even audiences would expect, although by no means a counter-main melody pic. Some even argued that its title might be to blame, the much too parochial sounding moniker attached to maidens in the provinces (or unmarried Tanka like the titular servant), meaning autumn bliss. Clever double entendre it certainly is, as there is another kind of autumn bliss looming behind the corner, the arrival of Lin Biao's communist troops on October 14, 1949, liberating Guangzhou from Kuomintang domination.
It's October 1, not even six months after the KMT lost their capital Nanjing to communist forces, the icing on the cake of a series of successful campaigns (along with Huaihai and Beiping/Tianjin) which would seal the fate of the Chinese civil war. A familiar voice graces the radio broadcasts of a quiet morning in The Flower City on the Pearl River, Guangzhou. It's Mao Zedong, proclaiming the birth of the 中华人民共和国 (People's Republic of China), in effect singing the Kuomintang's swan song. Yan Haiqing (Guo Xiaodong) is an agent of the nationalist government, which since April and the Nanjing defeat had relocated to the Guangdong Province capital, with Li Zongren as the acting president. An endlessly conflicted scholar forced to carry a gun, Yan's 1940s-Hollywood noir-like gravitas betrays the fact he is indeed a communist spy, infiltrated into the KMT regime in an attempt to derail the KMT's homecoming party set for October 14's liberation (let's just say that blowing up the Haizhu bridge was not their only goal).
On the other side of the fence is Xia Huimin (Sun Chun, director Sun's brother), the ruthless KMT officer in charge, who deals with interrogations the Dirty Harry way, enjoys the company of fine women (even when, to his chagrin, they happen to be Guangdong Opera stars), and begins a frantic race against the clock to find a rather annoying mole within the system. Huangpu Military Academy alumni Huimin shows a peculiar kind of respect for underling Haiqing, perhaps because he displays the kind of purity and moral fiber he lost over the years, dealing with the atrocities of war and a fratricidal conflict which left little time for personal whims. But it's not just loyalty and nostalgia which dominates him, it's also an increasingly pungent sense of jealousy, for he could never regain the somewhat naive innocence pervading Haiqing's every move. The feeling is multiplied tenfold when he visits his house and enjoys dinner with him, prepared by his beautiful Tanka (boat people) servant Qiuxi, played by 南京! 南京! (City of Life and Death)'s Jiang Yiyan. With mounting jealousy comes the looming suspicion that Haiqing's refusal to use a gun or be open to the possibility of, like he says, "killing 1000 innocent people to find one culprit" might not come down to simple lack of character, but the fact he might indeed be the mole. And with October 14 right behind the corner, it can only make their relationship all the more complex and unnerving.
Sun, who spent a good portion of his career telling stories of Guangdong Province's people, recreates 1949's Guangzhou with admirable finesse, from the fantastic sets to the familiar sounds of Canton's heart and soul. We're essentially dealing with what is an old school Hollywood noir drenched in the pathos of the Chinese Civil War, but while the minimum requirements for a bonafide main melody flick are certainly there (KMT are the Colombian drug cartel-looking baddies, Mao and friends kick ass through devotion to their cause and personal sacrifice), Qiuxi offers a much more progressive and multi-faceted approach to the proceedings. Haiqing is not the kind of selfless, sanctimonious hero of many a main melody flick past, but he's instead a very flawed and three-dimensional character, just as addicted to opium and hesitation as he is to the fulfillment of his undercover duties; and, in all his gun-touting, no bullshit bravado, Huimin shows a human side as well, feeling the weight bestowed upon his shoulders and trigger-happy fingers without seeing any solution on the horizon, nor anyone at least taming those instincts of his (even his relationship with a Guangdong Opera starlet is flawed from the start). It's a step in the right direction for sure, in no small part because human frailty and decadence often take precedence over ideology and the greater picture here, making the film's political noir ambiance all the more alluring.
It's then regrettable that a few elements impede Qiuxi from becoming truly superior fare, one of which is rather troubling. Although the Chinese press has mostly compared this work to this year's CCTV drama 潜伏 (Undercover) starring Sun Honglei, with which the film shares some plot points and the period setting, Qiuxi is a lot more similar (in every sense of the word) to the underappreciated 2002 Korean spy noir 이중간첩 (Double Agent), sharing the same unquestionable merits along with its flaws. Just like Go So-Young was the weakest link in the gritty Han Suk-Gyu vehicle, Qiuxi is nothing more than a narrative catalyst here: she does matter in terms of storytelling, complete with clever allusions to her innocence and purity (through the use of white and other techniques), somewhat awkwardly connected in one of the final reels with the Chinese flag (they had to suggest the double entendre, right?), but her relationship with Haiqing never really takes off, it doesn't ring true enough to leave much of an aftertaste when the shit hits the fan. This, coupled with a few moments of less than satisfactory editing and subpar "bullet action" towards the finale, somewhat hurts the proceedings, maybe because the first half was so strong and filled with pathos that you were led to expect a lot more.
But it would be foolish to miss a film of this quality for a few annoying flaws. Guo Xiaodong, who also stars in Yuen Woo-Ping's return to the director's chair with 蘇乞兒 (True Legend), plays conflicted hero Haiqing with great subtlety, but the real show stealer is Sun Chun as Huimin, oozing charisma and a vintage James Cagney meets Milkyway-style nonchalance which turns every scene he's involved with into gold. And when you have fine actresses like Qin Hailu and Jiang Yiyan rounding up the cast, you know you're in good hands. Although its intents were probably much more ambitious, Sun Zhou's Qiuxi is likely to be forgotten down the line as an example of top notch entertainment with brains, something a little too ahead of its time (at least vis-a-vis the critical and popular response to main melody films) to move mainstream audiences, particularly at a time when bombastic flag waving seems to be what people are looking for. But, just like He Ping's return with 麦田 (Wheat), it shows that the fifth generation is not just content with churning out empty propaganda vessels and languid arthouse fare. It might not be the autumn bliss Sun was looking for, but I'll sure take it over countless stars blessing a fatuous parade taking the human character out of the pages of history....
RATING: 7.5
秋喜 (Qiuxi)
Director: 孙周 (Sun Zhou)
Screenplay: 王力夫 (Wang Lifu), 孙周 (Sun Zhou), 刘琛 (Liu Chen), 王熠 (Wang Yi)
Produced By: Guangzhou Pearl River Film Studio
Running Time: 101 Minutes
Release: 10/14/2009
CAST: 郭晓冬 (Guo Xiaodong), 孙淳 (Sun Chun), 江一燕 (Jiang Yiyan), 王雅捷 (Wang Yajie), 秦海璐 (Qin Hailu), 孙敏 (Sun Min)
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