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The LIST, that's Shanghai
After the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Chinese government is pumping money into its burgeoning film industry. But does that make the new martial arts movie, Fearless, little more than a state propaganda tool? Its star Jet Li talks patriotism and kung fu with Fraser Newham.
Hollywood may be 8000 miles away from China's Song Mountain, but with every sweep of the razor the ten year old boy in the barber's chair takes one step closer. In a scene that might have come from Full Metal Jacket, great clumps of black hair tumble to the floor as the barber gets to work, shaving the hair down to the light fuzz of an apprentice monk.
Not that Xiao Tong has come to the Shaolin Monastery to seek enlightenment - rather, like thousands of other young Chinese each year, he is there to learn kung fu from the masters, a well known route to movie stardom if only he can catch the eye of one of the discrete band of casting directors said to be floating around town. "Jackie Chan is good and I enjoy his films," he says. "But I want to fight like Jet Li. He loves his country - he's the real thing."
The real thing he is; for while Jackie Chan grew up in Australia and British Hong Kong, Jet Li was born in Beijing in 1963, attending the capital's Martial Arts Academy from the age of 9 and winning his first National Championship two years later. In the mid 70s he even served his country as a 'kung fu diplomat', performing high kicks for the benefit of Richard Nixon on the White House lawn.
"I was the first martial artist in China to make movies," Li explains. "Even after 26 years the Chinese audience still loves Jet Li." Indeed the 42 year old actor remains the only star of a Lethal Weapon movie to be classified as a "national treasure" by China's Communist rulers, an accolade more commonly associated with the terracotta warriors or the Great Wall.
Li's emergence as a star in the West came later in life, coinciding with the rise of Chinese cinema as a mainstream genre in America and beyond. Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon showed the industry what was possible, grossing $130 million in the US alone in 2001; three year's later Li's own Hero became the first foreign language movie ever to top the US box office.
Fearless hopes to continue this pattern of success. Produced by the man behind both these hits and directed by homecoming Hollywood veteran Ronny Yu (Freddy v Jason, 51st State), like its predecessors it combines ambitious action sequences, hair pin choreography and Hollywood production values.
But where critics at home complained that films like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sacrificed authenticity to dazzle the West, when Fearless debuted in China last Chinese New Year it was warmly received, taking 100 million yuan and enjoying audience approval ratings of ninety percent.
Certainly part of the appeal was the film's patriotic storyline - based on a historical event it tells the story of a Chinese prize fighter named Huo Yuanjia, who through his kung fu achievements emerged as a galvanising national symbol in the years following the disastrous Boxer Rebellion.
Jet Li hopes that by retelling Yuanjia's story he can galvanise a whole new generation of Chinese. "Material life in China has improved greatly in recent years. But I was shocked to learn that a quarter of a million people commit suicide here each year," explains the star, who previously has campaigned on mental health issues on behalf of the Chinese Red Cross. "Fearless tells young people to believe in themselves."
In this sense Fearless (made in part with state money) reflects established notions of film making in Communist China, that cinema should perform a moral and patriotic function - a point reiterated by Chinese President Hu Jintao when speaking on the 100th anniversary of Chinese cinema in December last year. The state-sponsored "Huabiao Awards", billed in the local media as China's Oscars, even includes patriotism as a criteria for recognition. Last year's winners included Zhang Ziyi - though not for Memoirs of a Geisha, which was banned because it showed Chinese actresses tending to the Japanese.
Li realizes he is speaking to two very different audiences, at home and abroad. "The Western audience recognizes that a movie shows a personal opinion; but part of the Chinese audience believes that if a Chinese character is the hero that is making a comment about China. That national pride is at stake," he says.
And while Li is keen to stress his character's ultimate rejection of violence, this still means that Fearless might just be the first UK summer hit where (almost) all the villains are westerners, and all the good guys Chinese. Yuanjia's story takes place in China's coastal ports, under the shadow of foreign occupation - one by one, he fights and defeats the physically imposing foreign champions, culminating in a contest with a fighter from the old enemy Japan.
Probably we can expect more of the same in summers to come. The Chinese movie industry is looking healthier than any time in the last sixty years, generating sales of some 2 billion Yuan last year (133 million) - already comparable to Bollywood says the Chinese government, and growing. Meanwhile the recent decision to premier the Da Vinci Code in Beijing four hours before it opened the Cannes Film festival has been interpreted locally as a sign of the seriousness with which the international studios view the Chinese market.
Back at kung fu's fame academy a future playing the villain doesn't particularly trouble a group of older foreign trainees, however - after all, they say, Hollywood has always offered a vehicle for American patriotism. Tattooed and full of muscle, resting after morning drill the western students look slow beside their Chinese trainers, like all their bulk is on the wrong place.
"Sometimes the local movie companies come here looking for foreigners to work as extras," says Oliver, an ex-serviceman from St Louis. "Sometimes they want you to fight; last time I was a bystander. The hero pushed me out of the way."
The inevitable fate, it seems, of the western kung fu extra - coming soon to a multiplex near you.
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Copyright (C) 2005 FRASER NEWHAM All Rights Reserved.
