IHT: Jiang Wen

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/16/arts/seno.php

Jiang Wen: An actor and director with a taste for the epic
By Alexandra A. Seno
Thursday, August 16, 2007

HONG KONG: In 1970s China, Jiang Wen fell in love with epic cinema, the kind with larger-than-life heroes swept up in a changing world. "In those days, we could only watch Russian, Chinese, Albanian and Romanian films. They were mostly movies about war and anti-fascism," he said. "Those films affected me. They had a smell. The big studio films of today are very glamorous but they seem so artificial; they have no smell."

Clearly, that craving to recreate the profound cinematic experiences of his boyhood drives Jiang's career, one focused on making important statements and lasting impressions. For more than two decades, he has been the face of his country's art-house films, as a director and as China's most famous dramatic actor.

He played Gong Li's winemaking paramour in "Red Sorghum," (1987), Zhang Yimou's breathtaking first movie. In "Devils on the Doorstep," (1994) which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2000, and which Jiang directed, he played a villager caught between the Chinese Army and Japanese occupation forces.

In his latest opus, "The Sun Also Rises," which will premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month, he is a man dealing with his wife's infidelity. It took him three years to finish the movie, his third as director. "I never control a film. The film controls me," said Jiang, 44. "I was obsessed and involved. I was controlled by the characters."

Four related stories set in idyllic, rural China comprise "The Sun Also Rises." Three take place in the 1970s, one in the 1950s. Aside from himself, the movie features established actors like Joan Chen and Anthony Wong Chau-sang.

But the early buzz has been about the performance of Jaycee Chan, the son of the action star Jackie Chan, who is making a name for himself as a dramatic talent.

Jiang takes special pride in Jaycee's work, noting that he picked him for the lead in three of the stories and served as mentor.

The director shot what he believes will be the most memorable scenes of this $10 million movie over many weeks in the remote Yunan Province. "Making this film, I wanted a dreamlike environment," he said. He wanted to enhance this further by doing post-production in Paris, choosing the same lab that worked on "Amélie," the fantastical French hit.

Jiang epitomizes the kind of filmmaking tradition that is revered on the mainland. While in Hong Kong's predominantly commercial industry the craft is learned by working on movie sets, in China cinema is considered high culture that is nurtured in elite film institutes.

Jiang graduated in 1984 from Beijing's Central Academy of Drama, China's most important acting school. He acted in a handful of government studio films like the sweeping drama "Hisbiscus Town" before making a name for himself internationally with his powerful performance in "Red Sorghum." He directed his first film, "In the Heat of the Sun," a coming-of-age tale, in 1984.

He has remained true to his pursuit of epic stories, choosing to star in only about one a year and directing only three in more than a decade.

"Do you think it is too few?" he asked. "If you look at them, they are like 20 films. Each one is like five or six. Other people's films are like a cocktail, a little alcohol with water and juice. My films are like pure vodka."

Jiang's movies are indeed potent. "Sun" tackles life during the Cultural Revolution, a period that is still sensitive in China. He remains sanguine about the risks inherent to his kind of storytelling.

"Devils" earned Jiang the ire of censors who felt he was a little too sympathetic to the Japanese, and for months after that, he was blacklisted. Despite the movie's lack of theatrical distribution, it was very popular in China, becoming a best seller in pirated-DVD shops across the country.

"A film that doesn't get distributed is like a child that never gets married," he said. "Maybe she's having a secret affair with the audiences, but officially she still lives at home."

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