Wang Jin has been a director of TV fiction series and of documentaries, a screenwriter, and a professor of documentary filmmaking at the department of photography at the Beijing Film Academy. Now he is the dean of the faculty of photography, and a professor of theory and practice of feature filmmaking. Wang brought his debut film to Udine, The Last Level (2004), as well as Invisible Killer (2009). He came to the attention of the public with stories that have dramatic twists and turns that provoked reflection on the problems reported in the news – problems that were little explored in mainstream films in China.
Based on a novel by the writer Fang Fang, his latest film, Feng Shui, which receives its European premiere in Udine, goes further, to explore the human soul in all its contradictions and complexities.
The film’s original title is taken from the novel 萬箭穿心, Wan Jian Chuang Xin, literally “Ten Thousand Arrows Pierce the Heart”.
In the English title, Feng Shui, the phonetic transliteration of the characters 凤水, recall traditional Chinese philosophy, the Art of Wind and Water, according to which the nature of things and the surrounding environment interact continually with the life of the individual.
What convinced you to make this film? The director Xie Fei aroused my curiosity about this novel. The title itself, “Ten Thousand Arrows Pierce the Heart” struck me to the core. In Chinese, it is a very powerful expression which conveys intense grief, unimaginable sufferance. I immediately took to the main character, Li Baoli (played by the actress Yan Bingyan). In Chinese novels of the past, and in film too, it is hard to find such characters. A woman with tragedy or suffering in her past is always shown in a benevolent manner, as someone kind, who reveals nothing. In Fang Fang’s novel, the woman reveals great personal drama, and this makes the story rather unusual. The character is interesting because she is hard to figure out: she’s neither nasty nor negative, she’s just complex, and this set me thinking. Not all literary works are suitable for big-screen adaptation, but this one contained extraordinary drama which lent itself well to a film.
The story, set in Wuhan, a densely populated city, full of life and colour, had certain touching elements that are certainly not plain and simple, not to be taken for granted, which persuaded me to find someone to write the screenplay.
How did you go about writing the screenplay? I worked with a screenwriter from Wuhan, Wu Nan; I had already worked with her in the past on the film The End of Year. We went to Wuhan together to meet the writer Fang Fang and to visit Han Zhan Jie, the most famous market in the city and the biggest openair market in the whole of China, one of the locations described in the novel. To cover it all requires days, it is a labyrinth of thousands of stands which sell things at the most cut-rate prices. The market draws crowd from every corner of China. The clothes manufacturers from the south and buyers from the north gather here. With a major port on the Yangtze river, the city is a crucial trading post. One of the characteristics of the market is that you’ll get elbowed out of the way by the throng and will end up filthy. The overall effect you get is of a dynamic place. In many ways, it is the mirror image of today’s China: dirty, chaotic, overcrowded, rough; all these characteristics make for its very dynamism. Visiting the market allowed me to feel and better understand her character and nature. If Li Baoli had been a wolf, she would have found her ideal forest. The writing of the screenplay did not require much time. We worked on an initial draft for about a month and a half.
How far is the screenplay from the original novel? The story is essentially the same. In the novel, the story covers a period of 20 years, while we chose to split the story into two periods for the film version: when Li Baoli’s son is eight years-old (the actor Wang Tiange) and when he is eighteen (the actor Li Xian).
This is a major departure from the novel which, on the other hand, follows the son from childhood to adulthood: he graduates, does a doctorate, finds a job and decides, at that point, to throw his mother out of the house. It would have been difficult to tell such a long story, because it would have required the actors to age on-screen and for the son to be played by various actors. Also, we didn’t really like the character of the son in the novel, he was described in heavy, negative tones, and his malice towards his mother was always underlined. If we had stuck faithfully to the novel, his cruelty would have been unforgiveable; for me, it described extreme behaviour for a person who was already mature, and aware of the consequences of his actions.
But if he had been younger, his state of mind and behaviour would have been more understandable, or tolerable. We all know that young people are impulsive and turbulent, they reflect very little, they get over-emotional easily. In the writer’s eyes, the character of the son is totally negative, unable to understand the efforts made by the mother, and guilty of deplorable acts like throwing her out of the house. It is almost as though he represents an entire generation that shows no gratitude towards parents who have sacrificed everything for their children.
This is something you often hear parents say, but which did not entirely convince us. Wu Nan, who is in her thirties, is especially unable to accept this viewpoint. Which of the two generations does the writer belong to? Fang Fang is almost 60 years-old.
Is the distance between the novel and the screenplay proportional to that which separates the novelist’s generation from the screenwriter’s? Maybe. Another change to the original story was made to Li Baoli’s gangster lover (the actor Chen Gang). In the novel, the character has spent years in prison and is now the owner of a bar. We found his fondness for Li Baoli unrealistic.
Li Baoli might have been attractive as a young woman, but her beauty would have waned after so many years of woes. She was presented as “an angel fallen from the skies”. But this seemed to us to be pushing things. Li Baoli has such a miserable, tragic life that the novelist almost wishes to give her hope. This can be acceptable in a novel, but implausible in a film. If Li Baoli had been a wolf, it would be more credible for her to meet another wolf in the same forest we encounter her in.
Is the novel based on a true story? You can meet the characters from the novel in Wuhan.
Lots of people work as sedan bearers, even women.
The majority of them come from the countryside.
Townsfolk don’t do this kind of work, because they’re usually in a position to choose something better.
The character from the novel is atypical in the real Wuhan. I think the story stems from the writer’s idea of developing her character through adversity.
Your previous films were characterised by stories tied to current affairs or modern-day life: The Last Level is about the obsession with video games, The End of Year is about the conditions of labourers, Invisible Killer deals with online stalking, Vegetate is about the pharmaceutical scandal. Feng Shui is the bitterest film.
In the stories of my previous films, the problems that afflict the characters come from outside. So the film focuses on the external problem, on the external situation which interferes with the life of the characters. In Feng Shui the problem which leads to the drama stems from within the characters, so the film focuses on the people: who they are, how they think, how they behave, how they interact with others.
What was the process of casting the actors? It’s not always easy to make up your cast. Your stories contain sensations, feelings towards the characters, but in this story, the feeling is not so easy to define. The son behaves badly towards his mother, but we know that he has his reasons: he holds her responsible for the suffering and eventual death of his father. His is a somewhat complex character, as is the grandmother (the actress He Minglan), who wants to protect her grandson, almost as a replacement son. She recognises the efforts made by Li Baoli and her reasons, as well as the exaggerated attitude of her grandson, but finding herself stuck in the middle, she becomes erratic, and unpredictable.
The novel presented a series of complex characters and the screenplay has maintained this complexity of personalities. The hardest thing about the casting was to maintain this same intricacy through the characters.
Did you already know, or had you worked with, any of the cast members of Feng Shui? No. Initially, I was on the hunt for a star (for the role of Li Baoli). Even the producers of my previous films have always wanted to play the star card, but as this was a low-budget production, so all the stars found an excuse to politely decline. This time though, the stars were interested. They asked for time to weigh up their options of playing such a complex character, they called us back asking if it were possible to change the backgrounds of the character so as to make them less tragic. I can sympathise with their qualms, playing this type of character is a little risky (for their career).
In China, the characters you see on the big screen are well-defined. If the character called for is a good person, even if afflicted by terrible situations, their image remains unaltered. In this story it is difficult to say if the characters are good people or what type of person they are. They are difficult characters to interpret.
What was working with Yan Binyan like? Yan Binyan is not a star, but a talented actress, and she is mainly known in China for her roles in TV series.
During the shoot, we worked in perfect harmony.
In low-budget films, you often work with students or recent graduates. The director of photography of Feng Shui, Liu Younian, had already worked on another film of mine, Vegetate, when he was still a student. The desire to get on-set experience is so great that budgets are not a problem. The equipment was provided by the Academy at a low cost. The problem is the cast. If the budget is low, it is hard to find good actors who are prepared to work under certain economic conditions. With Yan Binyan, I found myself working with a professional actress with whom I was able to discuss the character on many levels; we continued to examine the character throughout filming. We would only shoot when we had reached an agreement that satisfied both of us.
So she was not an actress that awaited instructions and directions, but one who put forward her own point of view. We worked in very harsh conditions in winter, in Wuhan, where it gets very cold and where heating was a rarity. This was for a story set in summer.
Did you have to hold a lot of auditions to cast the film? Yes, especially for the roles of the son and the grandmother. The story is set entirely in Wuhan and the people speak in dialect. The ideal situation was to find actors from Wuhan, but there aren’t many there. Yan Binyan was willing to learn the dialect, but it wouldn’t have been easy to expect the same of the whole cast. Was it necessary to have the cast speak in the Wuhan dialect? If the story is set in Wuhan, using dialect, especially the Wuhan one, adds more colour to the dialogue, the story and the characters. In China, some cities are strange, for example Wuhan (in the province of Hubei), Chengdu and Chongqing (in the province of Sichuan), Shanghai. The type of culture that you experience in these cities is very distinct from others. In the past, Wuhan was one of the biggest ports, a chaotic place with its trafficking and its gangs. The townsfolk are known for being quarrelsome, they lose their rag easily. They speak with a very loud tone of voice and very quickly. The food is spicy, they have a very arrogant attitude and an aggressive temperament. It might just be an impression I get, but it seems as if they are all ready for a fight… [he laughs] Are the Wuhan cultural characteristics well known in all of China? Yes, that’s why it was important to shoot the film in dialect.
If Feng Shui had been shot in Beijing, would the end result have been different? Absolutely. The women from Wuhan are tough cookies.
In comparison, the men seem weak and feeble. The result would have been very different.
How did you find shooting the whole film in the Wuhan dialect? Do you speak it? Not really, but I gradually got an ear for it. In Wuhan, we hired two local consultants who helped us with translations. The screenplay itself was written in dialect. Reading it, the lettering was comprehensible but the expressions were unfamiliar.
Although when I heard the lines read out, I couldn’t understand them… For the first half of the shoot, I often had to ask Wu Nan. During the second half, I managed to understand 70 to 80 per cent.
What was the film’s budget? A little over three million yuan (around 370,000 euros) What problems do you encounter making a low-budget film? All sorts, and quite often due to locations. Near to the Yangtze river, for example, we were banned from filming.
Suddenly we’d get the news that we’d received authorisation to shoot, which would force us to change plans from day to day. To then discover the next day that shooting had been approved by someone who was not authorised to do so. We’d shoot the scenes all the same, watching our backs in case someone came along to interrupt.
And sometimes, a policeman would arrive to see why the shooting wasn’t finished when permits allowed only two hours of filming rather than three. So there was a lot of pressure and anxiety over location, extreme cold, the actors would constantly fall ill. Despite this, the atmosphere on the set was enjoyable for everyone. If you were to ask me which scene was the hardest to shoot, I’d say all of them.
The original title of the film, Wan Jian Chuan Xin, “Ten Thousand Arrows Pierce the Heart”, is the same as the novel by the writer Fang Fang, on which the film is based. Why did you choose the title Feng Shui to market the film abroad? In the main character’s story, feng shui (the art of wind and water) seems able to explain why there is so much pain and suffering in her life. In truth, using feng shui to explain the dynamics of Li Baoli’s story is an excuse. To emphasise feng shui as a possilble answer to Li Baoli’s problems is a way to make people reflect. Li Baoli and the relationship she has with her son, the sacrifices and efforts made to bring the boy up, the lack of gratitude and resentment of children in feeling that they are not understood; these are dynamics that are common in China and are often attributed to outside causes when, in my opinion, these generational conflicts must be sought out in the parents and children themselves; they need to look inside themselves to find the root cause.
Blaming it on feng shui, an external cause, is to find the wrong answer.
Has the film already been distributed in China? Yes, it was released last year, on 16 November.
How did it do at the box office? Not exceptionally well, it took between three and four million yuan (around 494,000 euros). The film was distributed in the major cities, but not screened at a very good time of day, either early morning or early afternoon, the periods which have the lowest influx of spectators. In the same period, the Iranian film A Separation by Asghar Farhadi was showing, which won the Golden Bear. The two films have a similar style, their box office take was similar too. But the great contender in that same period was Ang Lee’s film, Life of Pi.
What are the advantages of having a dual career as a director and teacher? There are interesting aspects of simultaneously being both a teacher and a director. First of all, working inside the Academy. Everyone talks about and discusses cinema in a different way from those who work in the film industry outside of the Academy. Cinema is seen as something sacred. There is a different kind of respect for film. You are surrounded by people who don’t just see film as a source of business. This is a trait which is common to all the professors at the Academy who are also directors: Xie Fei (Black Snow, A Girl from Hunan), Xu Haofeng (The Sword Identity; Judge Archer), Cao Baoping (Troublemakers; The Equation of Love and Death). Being a director gives you an advantage in your role as a professor, because it gives you self-confidence and makes you more convincing in the eyes of the students, who have before them someone who has experience on the field. On set, being a professor makes it easier to communicate to the cast and crew what and how I want to shoot.
Are the characters in your films heroes? No, the characters in my films are ordinary people.
There are no heroes. Perhaps their lives are more dramatic than other people’s. In my next film, Da Ming Jie, The Great Disaster of the Ming Dynasty, there will be “heroes”. The Ming dynasty governed China from 1368 to 1644, before the Qing dynasty’s ascent to power (1644-1911). In 1642, there was a somewhat chaotic climate, almost apocalyptic, with epidemics and wars. The story is about two people, a general and a doctor of Chinese medicine; one is part of the military and the other is an intellectual.
General 孙传庭 Sun Chuanting and Doctor 吴又可 Wu Youke really did exist. The history of that period is told from their points of view and their actions.
At what point is the film at? When will we see it on the big screen? The film is currently in post-production, editing has just been completed. Work is being done on the original score with the German composer Friedemann Matzeit, on the special effects for the war scenes and on the English subtitles. It should be in theatres at the start of May of this year. The producer wants to promote the film to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the Sars epidemic. The medicinal methods adopted during the epidemic in 2003 hark back to studies carried out by doctor Wu Youke. What can you tell us about the film? The producer and screenwriter Xie Xiaodong (The End of Year, Vegetate) asked me to work on this film four years ago. The budget was about 20 million yuan (around 2,470,000 euros) with a shoot due to last 55 days, which allowed me to film in decidedly better conditions. The cast consisted of six thousand people. On the set, for every war scene, there were around 500 extras playing soldiers or farmers. Even if the story is set in the past, I still wanted to grasp the sense of real life then. In Chinese history, General Sun Chuanting is a model military man. I studied his story.
And there was even greater in-depth research carried out for the writing of the screenplay, which took three years. General Sun Chuanting made every effort to protect the Ming Dynasty, in power at the time but a declining force. For this reason, he has many people massacred, including those hit by the epidemic, those who refused to finance him and support his campaign to protect the nation, convinced, right to the very end, that he was in the right. Doctor Wu Youke risked his life on many occasions in his attempts to save the ailing population. The two characters represent two different ways of being heroic. General Sun Chuanting died in battle in an attempt to save his country and the Ming Dynasty. Was he really a hero? Was his behaviour justified? Afterwards the country changed anyhow and history continued. The doctor wrote a book that is still valid today, people study it and put his methods into practice, they are still discussed in medical forums. Between the two men and their actions, who has a more valid place in history? In China, the changes that brought about commercial film production and distribution have relegated auteur cinema to the sidelines.
Labelled as non-commercial, it is often criticised as cinema made for a foreign public, the only one that will appreciate it and give it awards. In this period of transition and growth for film in China, do you think auteur cinema is destined to keep being labelled “films for foreigners”? That’s the situation exactly, but I don’t think it will continue for much longer. It matters little if a film is an auteur piece or commercial, I think that in either case it should be made for a local public, first off. It is obviously an honour for a film to be included in an international festival, but it makes no sense to make a film solely with this aim in mind. The film market in China is still young and will undergo further changes.
I am sure that it will improve; my films have always been low budget, but each of them has conquered a wider public, slowly but surely.
Distributors believe that an auteur/noncommercial movie does not attract an audience in China. What do you think? I think it is a convenient excuse. All my films have been shown on TV on the channel CCTV6 Movie Channel which, in the case of Feng Shui co-produced too, buying the rights for two million yuan (around 247,000 euro). For auteur/non-commercial cinema, distribution on TV, box-office takings in the theatres, internet channels, DVD distribution, prizes at film festivals, any eventual distribution abroad would bring in between three and six million yuan (370 thousand to 740 thousand euros). This means that, if you want, you can make an auteur/non-commercial movie because no producer will be out of pocket; in the worst case scenario, they would break even.
Deciding on a low budget, you can be sure of a return on your investment. In this market, you can keep making non-commercial films because there is a public out there for them. It may not be vast, but enough to allow you to continue along that path. Even if I’m not keen on labelling my films as auteur movies, I recognise the fact that Feng Shui does not have the same characteristics as mainstream films. But it is the market itself that makes the difference. When the time comes to find a distributor for my films, my producer keeps on telling me not to underline what type of film it is, what its budget was, because it is that kind of talk that can influence how they view and evaluate the film.
If the actors of Feng Shui had been stars, the film would have taken on a more commercial profile.
Would it have had different opportunities in the distribution phase? Maybe a little, but it wouldn’t have made a great deal of difference. Let’s take for example the film 1942 by Feng Xiaogang, the subject matter of which was very serious and dramatic. The public always rushes to see Feng Xiaogang’s films, but the takings for 1942 were not as high as the production expected, just slightly higher than the overall budget. All Feng Xiaogang’s films do extraordinarily well at the box office, but this one didn’t.
Maria Ruggieri