China celebrates 60 years with star-studded movie
Posted: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 9:15 AM
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Beijing, China
By NBC News' Bo Gu
BEIJING – With more than 170 A-list movie stars from China and Hong Kong, "The Founding of a Republic," is breaking box office records – raking in $33.8 million during its first 10 days in theaters.
But this is nothing like the products pumped out by Hollywood. Instead, it’s a propaganda film made by the state-owned China Film Group.
Launched to mark the 60th anniversary of the communist era, the 135-minute movie depicts Mao Zedong’s rise, tracking the 1945-49 war in which the Communist Party of China (the CPC) led by Mao and the National Democratic Party (the KMT) led by Chiang Kai-shek fought fiercely for power..
The lengthy cast list includes many of the top names in modern Chinese film, including martial arts stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li, Zhang Ziyi of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," action movie director John Woo, among others. And most of the famous actors took little or no pay for their work – rather, considering it an honor to have just a few brief lines in the film.
Movies in China usually don’t sell a lot of tickets during the so-called "red season," the summer and early fall months that are dominated by national holidays ( July 1 is the Communist Party of China’s Founding Day, Aug. 1 is the People’s Liberation Army Day and Oct.1 is National Day). The films that are released are typically dull, mind-numbing propaganda films only viewed by students or government staff with free tickets.
But "The Founding of a Republic" seems to be an exception. The box office numbers are still skyrocketing the China Film Group says it expects the tally to pass $350 million within the next couple of weeks.
Director: It's a 'good story'
Huang Jianxin, one of the two directors of the big hit, proudly told NBC News that he believes a lot of younger movie goers were happy to buy tickets of their own accord (a ticket costs $5-10 in Beijing), not because they were told to, as was often the case with government-made propaganda films in the past. Huang acknowledged that the celebrity-packed cast was clearly a magnet for younger viewers, but added that the movie, "would not attract them without a good story, no matter how many stars are in it."
There’s no question that the "The Founding of a Republic" is made in a refreshingly different way. Unlike other propaganda movies, which usually portray Mao’s Nationalist Party rivals as ruthless, cold-blooded, "counter revolutionaries," Chiang Kai-shek and his son are shown for the first time having down- to-earth father-son moments. And his officers also display a human side, even when they talk about assassinations.
The movie also contains a rare sight – a drunken Mao and a singing Zhou Enlai (the first premier of the People’s Republic of China). Still, Mao and his party, living in earthen huts and forced to save candle light for meetings, are always portrayed as righteous and invincible against the U.S.-backed, totally corrupt, Nationalist forces (who eventually lose and flee to Taiwan).
Zhang Lianjuan, an account associate at an multinational company, chose to go to the theater as a small celebration right after her marriage registration, but she was disappointed by the film. "I don't have a special feeling for this movie, it merely went through a lot of history in two and half hours," she said. "The celebrities didn't give an outstanding performance in the movie at all."
But Zheng Yunfeng, a 30-year-old radio host in Beijing, thought it was a "well-balanced" movie. "It doesn't vilify the KMT [the Nationalist Party] as mainstream movies used to in the past. It objectively illustrates the real history – KMT had both corrupt and righteous moments at the time."
A patriotic time
Still why would such a stellar cast take part in such a propagandistic project, and for such meager paychecks? Huang, the director, attributes it to a sense of patriotism ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of China.
"China’s 30 years of opening and reform has made China come back to the world stage," he said. "Fast economic growth and increasing state power has again brought back self-esteem [to the] Chinese people," said Huang.
However, he doesn’t stress the real powers behind the movie: the Central Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China and the State Administration of Radio Film and Television. The two government departments decide what’s allowed to be shown on TV, in movie theaters and in newspapers, and what books and movies are allowed to be imported into China.
Their efforts to create a blockbuster film to celebrate the Party’s 60 years in power have clearly been a big success.
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