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Thu, July 29, 2010
The Promise - Know What It Is and What It Is Not
by Craig Reid
 When watching Chen Kaige's THE PROMISE, it is worthwhile to step back and reflect on the sheer audacity of the project -- a Pan-Asian surrealist fantasy that?s surely a slam dunk, at least based on the script (should you ever get a chance to read it). Taking a year to write, about six months to film, five months to edit, filled with over 1400 visual effects shots and with a budget of $34 million, this is the most expensive and ambitious film project Chen and China has ever done.
As Chen recently told kungfumagazine.com in Hollywood, "Let me first share that Hollywood films play an important role in China, and audiences have been able to see them for over ten years. And now they expect more out of Chinese directors and certainly bigger films. Further, audiences will not enter the cinemas if you fail to entertain them without such commercial elements, which is a rule that every director must abide by. They need entertainment rather than profound meaning and philosophical ideas after a full day's work.
"Before I started PROMISE I told myself that we must have great images, and in keeping with the Chinese people's demand, it had to be a big film. I was partially inspired by the old myths of China, thus the film's tagline, '3000 years ago...in the future.' There's a famous myth about a man who could run really fast, and he wanted to go to the sun, and so he ran after it until he broke down and died. It's a naive myth about the beginning of the Chinese race, yet it is filled with great spiritual power, a power coming from the creation of a young nation."
One thing Chen is adamant about is that THE PROMISE is not a martial arts or wu xia style film. To him, it's a fable and love story that has great martial arts in it.
Wu xia films, and stories for that matter, are steeped in historical elements that have arisen out of centuries of oral and written tradition, where ? to the hero ? codes of righteousness, Confucius ethics and altruism transcend personal gain and love. Trust me on this one, folks; PROMISE is not a wu xia film. Chen is the first to admit that he has no idea about any of the history of martial arts or even what wu xia is all about.
"To me, and to most of us in China growing up, even when we heard the name Bruce Lee, we just knew his name and had no idea what he represented," Chen confesses. "Growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it was a crime to read wu xia novels or watch any kind of wu xia or kung fu films. It wasn't until I got involved in film in the late '70s that I saw a Bruce Lee film and saw how magnificent he was and what he was showing the world about Chinese martial arts."
 As an aside, because Harvey Weinstein (who bought THE PROMISE on the strength of a 12-minute trailer he saw at Cannes) wanted to promote the film as a martial arts flick under the title of MASTER OF THE CRIMSON ARMOR (a blatant title rip-off of the Shaws? cult classic MASTER OF THE FLYING GUILLOTENE), the Weinstein Co. was dropped as the film's distributor in America. Warner International Pictures (WIP) subsequently picked it up for distribution. WIP will be releasing a truncated 103-minute version instead of the 121-minute version originally shown in Asia.
Because Chen's father was a revered filmmaker in China, Chen had a small degree of privilege early on, accompanying his father to the film archives to see movies, the first of which was a Charlie Chaplin short. Although Chen's first major influence came from Akira Kurosawa, he eventually found inspiration in the works of King Hu, citing that his favorite wu xia films are Hu's TOUCH OF ZEN, DRAGON INN and LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN. Yet in regard to his father, a sad, dark cloud hangs over Chen's psyche. As a teenage boy and pressured by the authorities of a country crazed by Madame Mao's relentless condemnation of anything traditional or Western, Chen had to publicly denounce his father.
 Chen recalls that it was a terrible thing to do, but it was also a terrible time. "I was too ashamed to speak to anyone," Chen sadly utters, "and he never got to make another film again. But our relationship repaired later on and we became good friends and did love each other. He was then able to give me good advice in film as to what I should do as a film director. It was very painful for me when I lost him, and I regret he was not able to share in all the joy I get now from filmmaking."
One of the most important of the "Fifth Generation" Mainland Chinese directors, Chen made his directorial debut with YELLOW EARTH (1984) and took home the prestigious Palme d'Or at Cannes for the tragic love story FAREWELL, MY CONCUBINE (1993). Some of his important subsequent films include the banned-in-China TEMTPRESS MOON, the intriguing THE EMPEROR AND THE ASSASSIN (1999), and his first English language film KILLING ME SOFTLY (2002), which starred Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes.
Chen recalls, "Although Kurosawa is my idol, I am also heavily influenced by the films of David Lean. I was especially touched by the sheer panorama and sweeping visuals of David in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. When I was in New York City, I watched that film for seven straight showings. It's one of the greatest films ever made. It was with this film that I was able to sense the power of a film and how it could change people's lives."
With THE PROMISE and compliments of the cinematography by Oscar winner Peter Pau (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON), Chen was finally able to bring glimpses of this vision and influence to the big screen.
Set in nowhere Asia during a fictitious time, PROMISE is a romantic tale of love, ambition, loyalty and destiny. It follows the intertwined fates of a beautiful princess (Cecilia Cheung of SHAOLIN SOCCER) and the three men who fall in love with her: an evil duke (Nicholas Tse of Jackie Chan's NEW POLICE STORY), a lowly slave (Korean heartthrob Jang Dong-kun) and a brave general (Hiroyuki Sanada ? Click Here for an exclusive interview with Sanada where he discusses his early years with Sonny Chiba, his work in early samurai and Hong Kong films, and his latest films LAST SAMURAI and THE PROMISE).
Unbeknownst to these three men, in her youth the princess had made a pact with the goddess Manshun (Cheng Hong, who is also one of the film's producers), where she must forsake the prospect of true love for the promise of riches and power. Any man she loves, she will soon lose, which bears no consequence for the princess except that she becomes as haughty as she is lovely.
"This film is really filled with eastern ambience, and so I have also tried to instill several important themes, such as fate, destiny, love and freedom.
"In China, so many people believe in destiny and that they can be happy in their lives. The fact that some individual power controls fate makes perfect sense. So I instilled in the film the message to the audience that there can always be a change, a change in the destiny, if you want it to happen. I believe the story will touch people's hearts."
The film posed many difficulties, such as working with a thousand extras, most of them being soldiers. When they built a huge set in Shangri La, the line producer told them that it might fall down, so Chen decided to give up the set and move to Inner Mongolia. "The next thing you know," Chen says, "we were surrounded by peasant's asking for money. So then we'd have to call the police to talk to them and have dinner with the lead peasant. But these things are okay, because ultimately it's all part of the filmmaking process."
Also, as with any Chinese film that attempts to rival Hollywood's visual effects and power of technical gumption, Chen is the first to admit to technical flaws in the film's visual effects. He points out the limits on time and money, and expresses the hope that by trying to do something visually different for the Chinese audience, it will excuse his eagerness to go for broke. As it turned out, PROMISE broke all the box office records in China previously held by his rival, Zhang Yimou (HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS), and the film was well received in China.
But the biggest challenge of the film in Chen's eyes is something that we in the West would think is the easiest and most natural part of any Chinese film.
"Definitely it was the martial arts aspects that were the most difficult part of the film," Chen relates. "I mean, you are talking for about 10 seconds worth of film, we would have to work 15 hours."
For the action sequences, Chen first used two well-known action coordinators. First off, there was Dion Lam. Lam's expertise working with special effects was very useful in the beginning, due to his experience as a fight choreographer on all three MATRIX films and SPIDERMAN 2, and as the action director on Hong Kong's first visual effects driven martial arts film STORMRIDERS. Tung Wei, whose first gig was being the teen who Bruce Lee taught to kick in ENTER THE DRAGON, replaced Lam. Tung went on to become one of Hong Kong's top fight choreographers, and he worked in Hollywood as the action coordinator on SCOOBY-DO and BULLETPROOF MONK.
"As mentioned earlier, the film took a long time to shoot," Chen says, "and basically Dion's contract ran out. He had to work on another film, and Tung Wei came in to finish the film.
"It was tricky designing all the martial art shots, especially because I know nothing about martial arts. Although each action director had a different approach, they both understood what I wanted, which was to develop ways of martial arts that could be used to define and establish the characters. Kung fu films have done many things, but I wanted something different and something very visually beautiful and unique.
"I am very proud of the visuals in PROMISE," he says with a smile. "In fact, one of my favorite action shots in the film is when the character, slave Kunlun, is trying to open the gate to help the princess and general escape, and the horse jumps over him."
But beyond the martial arts that can be used to show the spirit of China, Chen is also trying to convey the beauty of the country. "This is a new world," he quips, "and hopefully you can allow yourself to step in and see how beautiful this world is. I hope the Western audience can see this beauty through the way the characters decide on how they want to live and die."
According to Chen, Kunlun is the only character in the film who behaves like a real human being because, in Chen's view, he's not polluted by the others and their wrongdoings. "He keeps his pureness as a human being," Chen says, (and so because of me creating this character, it's a reflection that I still believe in this idea. Which is why I called the film THE PROMISE, because life itself is a promise, and that we should respect life as a gift and realize how lucky we are to be able to enjoy life here."
The Chinese title of the film is WU JI, which means "infinity." When I ask Chen how the Chinese title relates to the story, he first looks at me with a blank face, grins and says, "It's funny; a lot of people ask me that."
After a second long moment of silence, I politely say that he can answer in Chinese if he wishes. He immediately blurts, "I guess then it would have to be something along the lines of people lives. Every life can be faced with many possibilities or directions. So, in a sense, I'm indicating that life can have an infinite number of paths."
With a switch back to English, Chen concludes, "Which returns to one of the central themes. I believe we can control our personal destiny and that there is a chance for us to have a better destiny if we improve ourselves. And one way to improve ourselves is if we show more love to people."
Written by Craig Reid for KUNGFUMAGAZINE.COM
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