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NEW YORK, NY, USA - Veteran Chinese director Yimou Zhang has established a remarkable track record with Western audiences ever since he made such films as "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Red Sorghum." Though set in the past, they were gritty, realistric dramas that revealed something about the modern Chinese psyche. Most recently, Zhang has had international success build on the fundation established by "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," a historical Chinese martial arts genre flick created for contemporary audiences with real budgets and modern production values. 2002's "Hero" garnered an Oscar nomination; his latest, "House of Flying Daggers," premiered locally at the New York Film Festival. With great staying power, it is one of the treats of this winter's cinema season.
G21: What was lacking in traditional martial arts films that inspired you to make your films?
ZHANG: It's funny you mention this because I was never a huge fan of martial arts films. I read a lot of martial arts novels over the years, and that's really where most of my inspiration comes from. I wasn't trying to compare myself to other martial arts filmmakers. If you want to speak h onestly, I've seen maybe 15 martial arts movies over the course of my whole life, and that's about it. But I've read extensively in the genre of martial arts fiction, which is really rooted in the imagination. When I made these films, the main influence was these novels and my imagination of that world.
G21: What's the difference between Chinese martial arts films and others from similar genres such as the Japanese Samurai picture or the classic American western?
ZHANG: Both are based on actual historical figures that existed, but in China, this is really a genre of the imagination. There weren't people like this, at least not flying through the trees in the way that they are imagined in a lot of these movies. It's something that's rooted in dreams and fantasy, and that was the world I was trying to project and not base it on the existing body of martial arts films.
G21: Was it a conscious decision that "House of Flying Daggers" is more violent than "Hero"?
ZHANG: The screenplays for both "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers" were generated about the same time, almost simultaneously. In "Hero", there's a stronger attachment or interest in form, and a lot of that form is very abstract and influenced by Chinese painting. There's a kind of aesthetic beauty that's incorporated into that which is much more visible. In "House of Flying Daggers," we tried to root it more in reality and make it more humanistic in dealing with love and people -- it's a very different approach.
You'll notice in a lot of areas, besides the blood, there are other details. For example, in "Hero", somebody can fight off 100 arrows and, in the end, they stand there not even breathing hard. In "House of Flying Daggers," after each fight, even if it's just one-on-one, they're gasping for breath afterwards. It's a lot more realistic and human portrayal of the fight sequences.
G21: Is "House of Flying Daggers" a love story, or about betrayal as an act of love?
ZHANG: The film itself is a betrayal of traditional martial arts films, or the concepts that are involved there, because a lot of the martial arts traditions are based on this code of conduct that the 'underworld,' as they call it, the Jung Woo in Chinese, operates by. They have their rules of the game and you have to follow them. All the fighting and the revenge is in accordance with this and that's what they're working for and working towards.
However, here, we have a girl who betrays that for love, betrays her code of ethics and betrays everything for love. This points to a larger rebelliousness and an individualistic freedom. When you're watching this in the West, you might not think of it as anything unique or special. But, in China, it's actually something very different from other martial arts films, because these are values that aren't usually espoused in the genre.
G21: Was the Peony Pavilion [site of the opening battle] the site of a rebel movement, or was that made up for the movie?
ZHANG: Even if you look at American gangster movies, a lot of the bad guys hang out at nightclubs. It's a historical drama but everything in it is fabricated. During the Tong dynasty in which the film is set, these types of courtesan houses were very popular and very much a part of the culture. We did do a lot of historical research into what the culture was like during [that period], and these places indeed played a very large role in the whole culture landscape of Tong China. A lot of the renowned poets of the time wrote a lot of their famous poems in places like that. They had a very refined culture there, where people would go to get together to talk and be entertained by women. It's not too different from bars in contemporary New York, and it plays the same role in the social structure. The set design in the Peony Pavilion was designed with the special Echo Dance in mind.
G21: You use colors as a symbolic element in both films.
ZHANG: As a director, I've always paid attention to the formalistic elements of my films and color is one of those. If we're talking about action cinema, one of the biggest differences between action sequences in Western films versus Chinese films, is that in the Chinese ones have an aesthetic beauty incorporated into the fight sequences. They're not just fighting; there's a beauty inherent there, and there's a state of mind to the characters as they battle. Color is one of the ways that I try to emphasize that and bring that out. You can see that in both of my films.
G21: What are your expectations for "House of Flying Daggers" after "Hero" had topped the box office in America?
ZHANG: When I first heard the news, I was very surprised. I really never imagined it would do so well at the box office, but I really think a lot of that has to do with Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and the opportunities that film opened up for new genres to get into the American film market. It's also made audiences more tolerant to other genres other than what they traditionally expect from films. It also gave me more confidence as well for "House of Flying Daggers" and I hope it will do as well as "Hero" did, but you never know. I suspect, though, that this story is a little easier for American audiences to empathize with. There's a stronger humanistic element in "House Of Flying Daggers" than with "Hero", so maybe American audiences will find more resonance with that.
G21: Why did it take two years for "Hero" to come out here after it was nominated for an Oscar?
ZHANG: I'm not quite sure why there was a two-year delay. That's a decision of Miramax, the American distributor. I assume it had to do with some business decision that they made concerning the market. I really don't understand that side of the business and I let them handle it. In the end, the outcome was actually very good and it did quite well.
G21: How important are Oscars to you?
ZHANG: Everyone in China knows about the Oscars and there's a lot of talk there about who should or shouldn't get it.
If I were to get it, it would be a nice affirmation of all the work I've done over the years, but at the same time, I'm not that fixated on it. I've been nominated three or four times -- more than any other Chinese director -- and I haven't gotten it yet. I think a lot of it has to do with luck. We have a saying in Chinese: "If you think about it too much, you're not going to get it." So I just don't think about it and we'll see what happens. I think it all depends on luck at the end of the day.
G21: You're a fan of opera and you had opera singer Kathleen Battle sing the closing song. What about your ties to opera?
ZHANG: My first experience with opera was doing Turandot in Beijing. It was a very interesting experience for me, because Western opera has a history of 400 years, even longer than [the] Beijing Opera in China, but when I was approaching it, I didn't understand any of the words. I still don't understand any of the words. When I was shooting and directing it, I basically treated it like it was Beijing Opera, in terms of the way we approached it. I grew to have a great affinity for it, and more recently, I'm actually working with the Metropolitan Opera. Tan Dun is composing and we're doing this work on the First Emperor of China. [Placido] Domingo will be singing it. It may be his last performance ever before retiring from the stage. This is supposed to be staged at the Met in 2006, and I still don't understand what they're going to be singing, but I'm going to treat it like Beijing Opera anyway. It will be called Emperor Qin.
G21: What about the use of singer Kathleen Battle for the movie?
ZHANG: Initially, the composer is a personal friend of Kathleen Battle. When we needed a song for the closing credits he suggested her, and of course, I had heard of her. He gave me a CD and I listened and she had a beautiful voice. I didn't understand what she was singing, but she sounded great. So we decided to go with this, and I think it had a really special effect. She has a very soft voice that really strikes you when you hear it, and I thought it was a wonderful ending to the film.
Of course, in China there were different reactions to this. On the one hand, people were saying it was great, and it was this internationalism showing that art knows no boundaries, and then there were those people asking why he was ending a Chinese film with an English song. It's like he was selling out or something. There are always people who are going to be going back and forth about these things, but I think art really doesn't have national boundaries.
One example is if you look at the current production in Hollywood of "Memoirs of a Geisha." It's a story about Japan, set in Japan about Japanese people, played by Chinese actresses and shot in Hollywood. So there you have it.
G21: How was the Chinese government in making this film?
ZHANG: In China, there is a censorship in place and usually it begins during the screenplay process, and you have to submit the screenplay for approval to the government censors. And then you have to submit the finished film once again to the government for approval. Now with a film like "House Of Flying Daggers" or with my previous film, both classical costume dramas set in the past, there's not much of a problem because there's nothing really dealing with contemporary society that they would deem inappropriate or too sensitive. Usually, these things go fairly smoothly especially since they're martial arts films, which is a very big genre in China with a long tradition and not too many subversive elements there.
G21: Having done two martial arts films, do you want to continue in this genre?
ZHANG: My next film is in production. It's going to be a smaller budget art film, more similar to my previous work. That's going to start shooting very soon. It's about the relationship between a father and a son. I don't rule out the potentiality that in the future, I'll go back to making another martial arts film.
G21: Will it be more of a comedy or drama?
ZHANG: It won't be a comedy. It will be a serious drama, which I hope will also be very realistic, and very much rooted in contemporary China.
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