There are actually days when I feel like I have the best job in the world, and the day I interviewed one of my heroes, the great Chinese director Chen Kaige, was one of those days. His one-two punch in the early 1990s with FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE and THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN introduced me to a level and style of Asian filmmaking I was completely unfamiliar with. Before I ever saw a Hong Kong action movie, I was intimately familiar with Chen’s works, along with those by his contemporary, Zhang Yimou. Probably the biggest crush I had on an actress throughout my 20s was for Gong Li.

Chen’s TEMPTRESS MOON had a dream-like quality to it, and his last film, TOGETHER, his first attempt at a contemporary piece is astonishingly refined and moving. Chen changes direction again with his martial art/fantasy work THE PROMISE, a flawed (mostly in the special effect department) but still highly watchable effort that is probably the most elegant and colorful of all his films. We sat down in Chicago recently, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous about meeting a director or actor in my life.

Capone: Some things about THE PROMISE that people in this country may already know would include it’s having the biggest budget of any Chinese production and being the second-highest grossing film in Chinese history [exceeded only by TITANIC]. What I find interesting is that most of the time last year while your film was number one at the box office, the most recent HARRY POTTER was at number two. So your fantasy film was beating the one from the Western world. That must have been fairly satisfying for you.

Chen Kaige: I think I was very happy. I wasn’t sure how the film would be received in China, because we haven’t any pure fantasy piece in the history of Chinese cinema. I was a little nervous about that. But we were able to do great publicity for the film in China. This is one thing probably the American film cannot do in China, so there is no comparison. I guess that HARRY POTTER or other fantasy movies can do even much better if they do good publicity. So, I’m not so proud of that, although I am happy our film did so well.

C: The other thing that we have heard about THE PROMISE is that the version opening in the U.S. is shorter than the one that played in Asia. What sort of things were taken out?

CK: Actually, the Chinese version is probably 18 minutes longer than the version that is showing here. So, the most important thing missing is the conversation between the goddess character [played by Chen Hong] and the general [played by Japanese superstar Hiroyuki Sanada] regarding his fate, because when we see that the general is on his way to save the king, the goddess shows up again--much earlier that what we see in this version. She tells him that “your career is finished” and “You’re not going to win any battles any more” and “The love doesn’t belong to you”...something like that. And, of course, he doesn’t believe it. I think it’s important to have the buildup of the characters.

C: It’s pretty typical that once we find out something has been trimmed from a film by the distributor, we want to see it right away. We feel like we’re being shut out of something good, but I’m sure when it comes out on DVD, we’ll get to see some of those scenes, so I look forward to that.

CK: And, at that time, you can make a judgment whether we should lose it or not.

C: What drew you to this particular story and to the whole fantasy/action genre. You said you’ve never attempted one of those before. So, what made you want to do that, and what made you pick this story to try first?

CK: I really don’t know. Actually, I have a lot of thoughts in terms of what I should do when the decision needs to be made. There are two important things: one is that I need to be very close to the society. I know what’s going on there. So, although I decide to do a fantasy piece, I hope those characters can be related to emotionally by an audience. I think that, for example, the general and the princess [played by Cecilia Cheung] represent a certain kind of value--the current values that people now believe. To me, I cannot say that I 100 percent agree with them. You know, the general is a typical person who is very greedy and is looking for more success and fame and glory, that kind of thing. This is a very typical thing that many Chinese people believe. Maybe it’s good, but I don’t know. So, the other one is the princess who losing love because she believes that fortune is more important than love...I guess that so many people could have the same answer that she does in the film. So, I’m talking about what I really want to say--the meaning of this film. Although, I don’t mind if people say it is an entertaining film, but some people will discover something important the deeper they look.

C: Perhaps not coincidentally, though, that you had certain values that you wanted to get across in this film, and it just so happened that this story fit that view.

CK: Right. Because of that, so many Chinese believe in destiny and fate for interesting reasons so people feel like their under the control of destiny. They don’t know what to do. What I show in this movie is, yes, we’re under the control of destiny. Some things are pre-decided, but we still have a power and the possibility to change our destiny for good. I think this is it. For example, I think the general’s destiny has been changed when he realizes that he is really in love with this girl. And, her destiny is also changed when two men want to help her.

C: The Princess is interesting to me because we’re a little torn as to whether we’re supposed to like her or not and root for her. Of course, we want her to find love as we do every character who has that option, but we also know that if a man falls in love with her, he’s probably doomed. Was that something you had to work around in the story...that some people might not be on her side?

CK: No, I think that she is just a very simple and normal girl, who has a beautiful face. She is not necessarily very smart or sort of elegant lady. She’s just the girl next door, something like that. So, that’s why I think it’s good. If I choose to have a sort of a girl from a normal family, that’s a different story. Only because she is just like us, so there is a need to help her change her destiny.

C: Regarding the martial arts in the movie, were you a fan of those films as a younger man? Was it something you’d always been wanting to try out?

CK: I love martial arts films for several good reasons. I believe martial arts are a part of Chinese culture. The martial arts masters are the people who want to help. When they see that something happened unfairly, they stand up to say no. So, that’s why I admire those martial arts masters, but I hope that martial arts in this movie can show people the characters’ personalities and not just fighting. I think the martial arts is the way to show their elegance, like the way they stand, the way they look at other people. That’s what I want to do.

C: It seems like each of the characters that were fighting had very different styles. As much as the colors of their clothes were different--and they seemed very deliberately different--their styles of fighting were also very different. There were some more or less elegant, as you put it. I assume that that a deliberate effort, too.

CK: That’s right.

C: Did the mythological/fantasy aspect of the film change your visual approach from the art direction that you’re accustomed to in your historical dramas?

CK: I can give you an example: when I work on a film like FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE, I talk to my cameraman and art directors. They ask me, “What do you want?” I said that I want a scene to look like an old dream of the ‘30s or ‘40s. A beautiful dream. But, the dream that we made in THE PROMISE is different than that. I was thinking for FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE it could be more realistic than this. But, for this one, what I want to do is create is a new world, the beginning of the world. It’s the world as if it were made last night. When you open your eyes, you see a new world, fresh very. It’s like from a child’s perspective. When I was a little boy, I saw everything with a big curiosity, and the colors seemed much stronger than what adults can see. So, that’s why the color and the lighting of things are very important in this film. Also, the camera movements, the colors of the armor, the costumes, that kind of thing could be very symbolic, but at the same time it’s beautiful.

C: You mentioned the beginning of the world. I’ve heard that the Chinese title of this film [WU JI] has more to do with that than any “promise.”

CK: ‘WU JI’ is the word from Taoism. It says, like, the beginning, as I said just now, the beginning of the universe. But, the promise is more, sort of, real, like you know, people making promises to each other and making promises to themselves as well.

C: ‘Promise’ is certainly a word that comes up in the story more than once.

CK: Right.

C: How would you describe your learning curve with the visual effects? How would you rate your experience using them and how they turned out?

CK: Well, it was pretty tough, because we scheduled probably a year and a half to do the visual effects in post-production, the CGI shots and so on. But the visual effects supervisor was on the set when we started to shoot. He was there all the time. We would discuss what we should do, and I’m not so crazy about visual effects. I did this only because I couldn’t find a real location to shoot to create that kind of dreamlike environment. But, it’s a long and painful process, I must say. I’ve been to Hong Kong something like 10 times, because the company is located in Hong Kong, and I went over there to do a lot of talking and say, “Okay, this color is not exactly what I want, you should change this, and the clouds should be flying this way,”...but it’s too much. Very tough!

C: What was the name of the visual effects company?

CK: It’s called Central.

C: Some people might see this film as a departure for you, but I noticed in reviewing your body of work that in almost every one the themes of love and tragedy are central. Why are you drawn to these kinds of stories? I’ll put fate in there, too.

[As strange as the timing might seen in terms of the subject matter, with this question, Chen’s face just lit up. I felt like I’d hit a positive nerve, if there is such a thing.]

CK: I was taught by my father, who was also a filmmaker, that there are only two important things that you can find in either classical or modern works. Two major things: love and death. Right? So, if you want to do a story, of course you want people to be moved on the emotional level. I think it’s important. That has always been my approach, I think.

C: You can’t help it.

CK: No, I can’t help it.

C: I was a really big fan of your last film that came out in the states, TOGETHER. The whole time I was watching it I was reminded of the social-critical films of Ken Loach. It was shocking to a degree, because you have done almost exclusively historical dramas to that point. I know that regaining Chinese culture is something you are very outspoken about. How in that film did you achieve that goal in a way that you can’t with an historical film?

CK: I actually had a different ending for that film, which was a little more sad than happy. But, I don’t mind that, because I told so many Chinese people, why do we have so much sadness in the past, why can we Chinese people not be happy? We’re always crazy about something sad, something emotional, sentimental, that kind of stuff.

I approved the happier ending, I’m happy. The thing is that I see TOGETHER as sort of a mainstream film. This kind of film was made probably a long time ago. What some people, including the critics, want to see is a little bit of controversy from me. Maybe, I don’t know! But, maybe, the way that TOGETHER was made is a little bit more soft...

C: It’s definitely more intimate.

CK: But, I like that film a lot. I hope that in the near future I could be more contemporary with a very interesting subject matter.

C: Are there any types of films that you haven’t attempted that you’re burning to do? Musicals? [I was joking at this prospect.]

CK: Musicals, no. But I was thinking to do a musical about Old Shanghai, but you need lighting and a lot of tall buildings around, since it’s a dreamlike film again. The nature of the lead character will be a child, age of nine or ten years old. Sort of a street boy. But, I don’t know if I can make it happen.

C: TEMPTRESS MOON has a fair amount of music in it, from what I remember, and it also had a very dreamlike, hyper-realistic style.

CK: I believe in Buddhism. I believe that life is a dream, just like the very famous Chinese philosophy. You never know whether we’re in a dream, or the dream is like a self, you never know.

C: I wanted to discuss Leslie Cheung. But rather than ask you to recount what I’m sure you’ve said many times about how you felt about his death [by suicide in 2003], I want to ask if you have a memory that you hold onto about him, something happy, something that you remember him for specifically?

CK: He was a very active person, and also at the same, very gentle. And, you feel like you cannot be too close to him. The way he looked at you, he knew that he was very handsome. [Laughs] Then, you just feel like, okay, I want to talk to you, but I don’t know how, in that way. He treated people very well. Sometimes, you know, he was very intense and nervous. The second time that I met him in Hong Kong, telling him the story about this character [from FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE], he was smoking a cigarette and his hand was shaking a little. So, from that, I knew he was a very, very nervous person. And, he spoke very slowly, and then when he finished smoking his cigarette, put it out, and he said, “The story is wonderful and what you say about the character, I am him.” Beautiful.

C: Do you think he was nervous to meet with you, about working with you, or was he always like that?

CK: This was from his inside thoughts, that was a part of him, so I wasn’t very surprised to find out that he was dead.

C: Besides the personal relationship, did you follow his work? Did you see other films that he had been in? He made some tremendous films. I wondered if you had a particular favorite, other than your own, that he did?

CK: Yes, but I don’t know the English title. He did it before FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. It’s a very good film. The story is like this: A young man and a young woman fall in love. Then, they decide to die together. Then, the woman dies, and the young man who lost the woman gives up the idea to die. So, then this woman comes back in another life and meets with the young man again. But, I can’t remember the title, even in Chinese. Beautiful. Then, both of them are dead now...I mean, the actress who played that part. [I believe the film he’s talking about is the heartbreaking ROUGE from director Stanley Kwan, which co-starred the late Anita Mui.]

C: Has the choice to go with a multinational cast in THE PROMISE been controversial. Is it something commonly done in Asian film?

CK: I think some people should learn, particularly in my native country, how to put up with it. It’s very natural that they speak Chinese with some accent. I don’t even want to argue with them. I mean, this is a character from Snow Land, so who knows how people at the beginning of time speak.

C: You mention that because it’s not even a real place...

CK: He is a slave. He doesn’t really work things out by language most of the time.

C: Maybe he was never taught to speak the right way...

CK: Exactly. So, what some people say about the accents doesn’t make sense to me. As you say, particularly in the West, people are not really noticing any difference.

Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com