A non-obvious fact: the communists tormented China for less than 30 years, from 1949 to 1978. In 1949, Mao Zedong won a long and bloody civil war, driving Chiang Kai-shek’s army to Taiwan, and already in 1978, the wise successor, the Great Leader Deng Xiaoping, stopped the terrible experiment, turning China towards healthy capitalism. This period is well represented in the Chinese film To Live (1994). The action begins in the 1940s, in a still normal society, and then for several decades the scriptwriters drag an honest Chinese family through all the trials sent from above: expropriation of carpets, blast furnaces in every yard, persecution of educated people, etc. . The film turned out to be historical, and therefore scary. But still, it has a fundamental difference from destructive nonsense like our “Leviathan”: the film “Live” shows kind and decent people who try to remain that way even under communism. In total, I’ve watched about 25 Chinese films recently, mostly from this list (link), compiled by film critic Alexei Khromov. As it turned out during the viewing, my views on good cinema are fundamentally at odds with the opinion of the compiler of the list. So if both I and the original creative director liked the film, we can reasonably hope that you will too. By the way, remember the name Gong Li: she is an actress who has appeared in many of the films I mention below. Let’s start with films that I don’t recommend wasting time on. Firstly, The Wandering Earth (2019) mod seemed more like a tech demo to me than a full-fledged fantasy. Everything flashes like on TikTok, everything is too banal and too fast. Plus: good CGI and a heroic Russian cosmonaut, which is too little to fill a two-hour movie. I also don’t recommend “Sniper” (2021): there seems to be nothing to complain about, but after watching it there is a lasting aftertaste of wasted time. Finally, I do not recommend the famous “Chongqing Express” (1994), the plot of which can be characterized by the classic slogan: “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” It’s clear why Quentin Tarantino liked the film. Why anyone else should watch this movie is beyond me. Another thing is the action movie “Killer” (1989). It’s filmed naively simply, like in Doom or a similar computer game, but there is a plot and characters. In any case, I won’t recommend either “Killer” or the weird movie “Under the Hot Sun” (1994) because they didn’t touch my sensibilities, and because there’s no specifically Chinese taste: film execution. could easily have been transported to Mexico or Poland. Secondly, I do not recommend films about the Japanese occupation and especially films about the Nanjing tragedy. Yes, the Japanese behaved like real monsters during World War II, and the Chinese remember this well. However, looking at all these horrors is difficult: for a non-Chinese, it might be wiser to read the Wikipedia article about the Nanjing Massacre and leave it at that. I would especially like to mention the film “Devils at the Door” (2000), dear to Western critics. This is an arthouse in the bad sense of the word, so I would not release this film outside of festivals for my own audience. If you do decide to watch one of the films about the Nanjing Massacre, I recommend Flowers of War (2011). It’s also scary, but still shot with talent, and in color, and not in the monochrome tones usual for the theme of war crimes. I was also impressed by the epic “The Battle of Chosin Reservoir” (2021) – it is already about the Korean War, so the emphasis is on the heroism of the soldiers, and not on the cruelty of the occupiers. Third, I advise you to avoid watching the much-lauded film Farewell My Concubine (1993). In my opinion, the film would have been better titled “Brokeback Opera”: it deals with the suffering of minorities in traditional China, the film also contains elements of hard BDSM and several suicides. The icing on the cake: it is the only Chinese film to win the Golden Bough at Cannes. Now about the films that were useful for me to watch. Some of the films listed below fascinated me, others bored me, but together they gave me a lot of new knowledge and impressions about China, so that now I look at our glorious neighbor with completely different eyes than before the video began. marathon For example, did you know that there are harems in China too? Not improvised sirs, like those of Russian landowners of the 18th century or the chairmen of Soviet collective farms, but real, official harems? The film Light the Red Lantern (1991) is about exactly this: 1920s, provincial Chinese feudal lord, four wives of different ages who naturally form a “tight-knit group of women.” “City 24” (2008) is about a more recent time, about the Chinese analogue of our rapid nineties, when huge communist giant factories closed, leaving employees thrown out into the cold without a livelihood. This particular film takes place on the remains of an airline in Chengdu, which local authorities have decided to demolish to build a luxury apartment complex in its place. Our fans of the Soviet Union are outraged by such stories, while the Chinese, on the contrary, consider the closure of unprofitable and inefficient factories a reasonable step, since it created an excess of cheap labor, useful for the economy. By the way, you can put aside your handkerchiefs while watching: the film is presented as a documentary, but specially trained actors tell touching stories. “Thirst” (2007) is a colorful drama about the personal lives of revolutionaries and counterintelligence officers during the Second World War. For a romance to attract attention, there must be some kind of barrier between lovers: here it is, and one that sparkles. Another high-profile relationship drama is In the Mood for Love (2000). This is Hong Kong, 1960s, a story of two entangled hearts. It was beautifully shot, despite the fact that life in Hong Kong at that time was poor. The film is too long for my taste: it had to be cut three times. At the 44th minute there is an Easter egg, a Russian word on the clock. If I were asked to choose an educational film that would take the viewer by the hand through major periods of modern Chinese history, I would choose Earthquake (2010). The family story begins in 1976, in a town of poor cyclists, and ends in the 2000s, in a rapidly growing rich land of opportunity. I would call the film an excellent example of healthy patriotic propaganda, if not for a characteristic feature: one of the film’s heroines settles in Canada. This is a big problem in China – many people consider it normal to emigrate to Canada for a full life, leaving China behind as an insignificant, dirty collective farm where you can work, but you cannot live. The Chinese authorities are trying to fight the scourge of cosmopolitanism, but victory is still far away. Rural China in the 1980s is depicted in Qiu Jiu Goes to Court (1992). It’s hard for me to define the genre of the film, but the court battle was interesting to watch. It is strange to realize that at that time some Chinese had already launched satellites into space, while others were still living on the subsistence economy of the 19th century, and that to move between different eras it was enough to travel a short distance on a bicycle or. by bus. You probably know the films with Jackie Chan without me, “Drunken Master” (1978) and “Drunken Master 2” (1994). The plot about the first drunken master is a classic of the river-lake genre, that is, the genre where well-choreographed battles of skilled fighters unfold against the backdrop of a “historical” landscape of uncertain antiquity. The main villain in The Drunken Master is as colorful as those in the best Westerns, but I’m not enough of a movie buff to say with certainty who influenced whom. “Drunken Master 2” is already about English villains and trains, an important part of the history of real China. If Chinese directors hate the Japanese, they simply don’t like the British – and for good reason. Here I should make a big digression, describing in detail how Chinese films differ from Hong Kong ones, but I, perhaps, will limit myself to a small remark: Hong Kong returned to its home port only in 1997, so its film. the industry was significantly different from the “mainland”. Fighting can also be found in the film “Ip Man” (2008), about the teacher Bruce Lee. It looks quite fun, even if the viewer is indifferent to kung fu. Part of the plot is dedicated to the Japanese occupation, but this time the writers softened the past, without massacres and the like. The film, among other things, explores the Chinese concept of loss of face from several angles. “House of Flying Daggers” (2004) – again rivers and lakes, that is, a fictional Chinese Middle Ages, very beautiful costumes and unexpectedly Russian nature. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000) – the same thing, only with the romanticization of suicide, to which Roskomnadzor would probably react now. Connoisseurs call me an ignoramus who doesn’t know anything about sausages, but it seems to me that if you’ve seen one film in this genre, you’ve seen them all. However, for the film “Hero” (2002) I will make an exception. It would seem like one and the same thing: rivers and lakes, sword fights, constant wars. However, in essence, this is an excellent example of state propaganda, and one can really envy it. This concludes my short list. I haven’t decided what I’ll watch next yet. For ten years now, Western films have been so densely packed with agendas that after watching them, rainbow stripes appear on the screen. People praise Russian films, but I didn’t like the new “The Master and Margarita”, and I found the turbulent nineties at a conscious age, and therefore I don’t want to watch “A Boy’s Word”. Perhaps I’ll turn to the classics of the 20th century: there are many more works that I have long wanted to get acquainted with. Oleg Makarenkohttps://dzen.ru
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