When Hong Kong movie director, Zhu Yanping, finished watching Zhang Yimou's new 2004 movie House of Flying Daggers, he commented without reservation, "Zhang Yimou's artistic life is dead."
Though the movie is well made and beautifully shot, it no longer represents Zhang's art, Zhu concluded. "Any other director could also make a movie as good as this one, if they were given a budget as big as Zhang's."
China's movie industry has been in a state of depression for many years. Good movies were mainly in the art genre, and were usually rewarded with a slew of reviews, but poor box office takings. Because of this, some directors, like Zhang Yimou, are now looking at ways of developing the commercial movie industry to make money, but their new approach has not been well received.
Since Zhang Yimou's name became well known in the 1990s, he was considered a pioneer cinematographer who set trends for movie-makers in China. In 2002, Zhang started to shift his research focus from pure art movies to commercial films. Today, he has succeeded as a commercial movie director, but failed in his more creative art movie pursuits.
"We all see that domestic movies are not profitable," said Zhang Weiping, producer of House of Flying Daggers, who pointed out he was also trying to rescue the Chinese movie industry while seeking to make money from his productions. Chinese movies used to attract an annual audience of almost 30 billion in early 1980s, yet now the nation's annual box office income has dropped to less than 800 million yuan ($97 million) from 2 billion yuan ($241.55 million) a few years ago.
Zhang Yimou's new movie is changing all that. Since the first day that House of Flying Daggers was screened, the movie faced the sharpest comments in China's movie history. But it's making money. Box office tills rang up 150.3 million yuan ($18.2 million) after 18 days screening, exceeding the total of two big Hollywood movies being screened at the same time, The Day After Tomorrow and Troy.
"Our goal is to win back our movie market during the summer vacation, which had been occupied by foreign movies," said Zhang Weiping. It is the producer who remolded Zhang Yimou and pointed the director in a direction of big commercial undertakings. They have known each other for 16 years, and Zhang Weiping has invested in all Zhang Yimou's movies since 1996.
Zhang Weiping used to be a pharmacist, before investing in real estate, and now still owns a company selling food to airliners and medicine. But it is the title of Board Chairman of New Picture Film Co. Ltd. that he enjoys the most.
In 1995, he lost over 10 million yuan ($1.2 million) after financing one of Zhang Yimou's movies. The reason is he didn't realize a movie needed to be marketed before it could make money.
Normally, businesspeople would stop investing after they lose money. However, Zhang Weiping used his funds from a real estate project and invested another 20 million yuan ($2.42 million) in Zhang Yimou's following two movies, No One Missing and The Road Home. "I would support Zhang Yimou, no matter how high the risk was. The reason was I believed that he was to become a successful movie maker," explained Zhang Weiping.
Before the two Zhangs came on the scene, no one in China realized that the movie industry could also be operated as a business. Together they rewrote box office history and began to make money. At the end of 2002, the two Zhangs joined forces to make Hero, a kungfu movie about the first emperor of China. The movie broke box office records for a domestic production. After only one week, its box office takings surpassed the 100-million-yuan ($12.8 million) mark and within three months, it had grossed 243 million yuan ($30 million), nearly a quarter of the total box office income in China that year. Since then, Zhang Weiping's movie company has been profitable and a new trend of movie producing, marketing and promotion, in accordance with China's national situation, has taken off.
One month before House of Flying Daggers was screened, many of the movie lines in China received a schedule agreement on sponsoring the movie's global premiere. The agreement said that if movie lines wanted to set up a branch premiere, the precondition would be that they must pay an authorization fee of 500,000 yuan ($60,400). "The money was used for renting big screens. The ceremony would be broadcast live by 165 radios in the country, and another 150 TV stations would rebroadcast the edited ceremony programs later," explained Zhang Weiping. After the money was received, his company would supply and install giant screens to branch premiere locations, transfer signals of the ceremony by satellite and authorize the sponsor movie lines to assist with advertising.
According to Yu Yuxi, General Manager of New Picture, the company spent a lot of money on promoting House of Flying Daggers, much more than the expense on the premiere ceremony of Hero. "In this business, we only need to guarantee that no VCD or DVD production goes to market within 15 days of a movie being first screened. The DVD production of House of Flying Daggers did not appear on the market until two months' later, which supported our movie lines the most."
People were curious at what price the copyright of the movie could be sold. "Because of our successful promotion, the movie became famous. So, anyone who got the audio and video copyright would get a wonderful business opportunity," pointed out Yu. He said many people were waiting for DVD productions, because movie audience space was limited.
According to Professor Huang Shichang of Beijing Film Academy, after Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won an Oscar and became a successful box office hit, Zhang Yimou realized that only kungfu movies can be commercially successful abroad. "To both the common western audience and the movie market, only kungfu movies can be the type that easily accepted," Huang concluded. Before Zhang made kungfu movies, only professionals engaged in movie circles paid attention to Chinese movies, even though Zhang frequently was awarded for his former films.
Zhang Weiping said that even though the media and audiences responded to his movies negatively, nobody could deny that they were a commercial success.
Hot on the heels of Hero's commercial global success, the prospects of House of Flying Daggers are looking good abroad. Sony has bought the copyright of this movie in North America, and is scheduled to screen it on December 10 this year. This is the first Chinese movie screened in North America during the Christmas season, a time when traditionally movies vie for the lucrative festive market. There is also talk of the movie having Oscar potential. All this will no doubt have a big influence on the Chinese movie industry.
The movie has brought Zhang both the best and worst comments of his life. Many people said the movie doesn't deserve its success and the kungfu scenes are not spectacular enough. Others complained the historical background is very vague, hence nobody can figure out which dynasty is depicted and the wooden actors play in scenes that do not follow a coherant story line. Though the movie defines itself as a tragic love story, few audiences were moved by the story at all, some even thinking the antics comical.
In Chinese movie circles, people believe that the commercial value and artistic value of a movie are always in conflict. Maybe Zhang Yimou wanted to invent a cooperative method of commercial operation and cinematics. Unfortunately, people say "yes" to the success of his commercial operation, but say "no" to his movie artistry, which is the most precious talent a movie director has. In short, profit should not be at the expense of artistry.
In Zhang Yimou's two kungfu movies, Hero and House of Flying Daggers, he used the Chinese mainland's, Hong Kong's and Japan's most famous movie stars, such as Zhang Ziyi, Chen Daoming, Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro. This galaxy of stars was expected to attract a wider audience. Believing commercial movies told simple stories, Zhang focused more on moving the audience by both sight and sound. His painting experience and photographic background influenced the movies, especially visually, yet it is felt he wasted the acting techniques of the good actors and actresses at his disposal.
Today, the domestic movie market is maturing, and dictates that all the commercial factors in the industry must respect the rules of the free market. If a movie itself is not good enough, no matter what commercial methods are used, the movie will not be welcomed, even if a "famous director" is at the helm.
(Beijing Review September 2, 2004)
