Zhang Yimou
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

If you look at the amount of films that Zhang Yimou has released this year in the US he might seem like just another Simon Wincer. But his historical marital arts epic Hero had a delayed release by Miramax in order to capitalize on Quentin Tarantino’s name and now his latest film House of the Flying Daggers is just being released on time.

House of the Flying Daggers is the polar opposite of Hero because while Hero was about a man sacrificing his life for his people, Dagger’s Andy Lau sacrifices his cause for the love of his life.

House of Flying Dagger is set in the year 859AD as China's once flourishing Tang Dynasty is in decline. Unrest is raging throughout the land, and the corrupt government is locked in battle with rebel armies that are forming in protest. The largest and most prestigious of these is the "House of Flying Daggers", which is growing ever more powerful under a mysterious new leader. Two local captains, Leo [Andy Lau] and Jin [Takeshi Kaneshiro] are ordered to capture the new leader and the two hatch an elaborate plan. Captain Jin will pretend to be a lone warrior called Wind and rescue the beautiful, blind revolutionary Mei [Zhang Ziyi], from prison, earning her trust and escorting her to the secret headquarters of the House of Flying Daggers.

Check out the website for House of the Flying Daggers

Daniel Robert Epstein: How did you have to deal with the government in making this film?

Zhang Yimou: In China, there is a censorship in place and usually it begins during the screenplay process. You have to submit the screenplay for approval to the government censors and then you have to submit the finished film once again to the government for approval. Now with a film like House of the Flying Daggers or with my previous film Hero which are both classical costume dramas set in the past, there’s not that much of a problem because there’s nothing really dealing with contemporary society that they would deem inappropriate or too sensitive. Usually these things go fairly smoothly especially since they’re martial arts films which is a very big genre in China with a long tradition and not too many subversive elements there.

DRE: Having done two martial arts films, is that a genre you want to continue working in?

ZY: My next film is in production which is going to be a smaller budget art film, more similar to my previous work, about the relationship between a father and a son and that’s going to start shooting very soon. But I don’t rule out the potentiality that in the future I will go back to making another martial arts film.

DRE: Will it be more in the vein of a comedy or a drama?

ZY: It won’t be a comedy. It will be a serious drama, which I hope will also be very realistic and very much rooted in contemporary China.

DRE: Was having a house of ill repute, such as the Peony Pavilion, be the site of a rebel base based on something real?

ZY: The whole story is fabricated. It’s a historical drama but everything in it is fabricated. But during the Tong dynasty in which the film is set, these types of courtesan houses were very popular and very much a part of the culture there. We did do a lot of historical research into what the culture was like during the Tong Dynasty and these types of places indeed played a very large role in the whole culture landscape of Tong China. In fact, a lot of the renowned poets of the time wrote a lot of their famous poems in places like that and they had a very refined culture there where people would go to get together and talk and be entertained by women. It’s not too different from bars in contemporary New York and it plays the same place in the social structure. It is kind of interesting. Even if you look at American gangster movies, a lot of the bad guys hang out at nightclubs. The set design in the Peony Pavilion was designed with the dance in mind to suit the special Echo Dance.

DRE: Most martial arts are very different from the kind that you do. What did you see lacking in them that you felt the need to step in and make them?

ZY: It’s funny that you mention this because actually I was never a huge fan of martial arts films. I read a lot of martial arts novels over the years. That’s really where most of my inspiration came. I wasn’t trying to compare myself to other martial arts filmmakers. If you want to speak honestly, probably over the course of my whole life I’ve seen maybe fifteen martial arts movie and that’s about it, but I’ve read extensively in the genre of martial arts fiction, which is really rooted in the imagination. When I made these films, the main influence was #1 these novels and #2 my imagination of that world. What’s different about Chinese martial arts film and other similar genres in other cultures, for instance the samurai in Japan or the cowboys in the West, both of those are based on actual historical figures that existed. But in China, this is really a genre of the imagination. There really weren’t people like this, at least not flying through the trees in the way that they are imagined in a lot of these movies. It’s something that’s rooted in the imagination and dreams and fantasy and that was really the world that I was trying to project into and not based on the existing body of martial arts films.

DRE: House of Flying Daggers is a lot more violent than Hero. Was that a conscious decision?

ZY: The screenplays for both Hero and House of Flying Daggers were generated about the same time, almost simultaneously. In Hero, there’s a stronger attachment or interest in form, and a lot of that form is very abstract and influenced by Chinese painting. There’s a kind of aesthetic beauty that’s incorporated, that’s much more visible. In House of Flying Daggers, we tried to root it more in reality and make it more humanistic in dealing with love and people. It’s a very different approach. You’ll notice in a lot of areas besides the blood, there are other details such as in Hero, somebody can fight off 100 arrows and in the end, and they stand there not even breathing hard. In House of Flying Daggers, after each fight, even if it’s just one-on-one, they’re gasping for breath afterwards. It’s a lot more realistic and human portrayal of the fight sequences.

DRE: What is the theme of House of the Flying Daggers?

ZY: The film itself is a betrayal of traditional martial arts films or the concepts that are involved there, because a lot of the martial arts tradition are all based on this code of conduct that the underworld, they call it the Jung Woo in Chinese, operates according to. They have their rules of the game and you have to follow these rules. All the fighting and the revenge is in accordance with this and that’s what they’re working for and working towards. However here, we have a girl that for love she betrays that, and betrays her code of ethics, and she betrays everything for love. Part of this points at a larger rebelliousness and an individualistic freedom which in the West when you’re watching this, you might not think of it as anything unique or special. But in China, it’s actually something very different from other martial arts films because these are values that aren’t usually espoused in the genre.

DRE: Could you talk about your use of color in Hero and House of the Flying Daggers?

ZY: As a director, I’ve always paid a lot of attention to the more formalistic elements of my films and color is one of those. If we’re talking about action cinema, one of the biggest differences between action sequences in Western films versus Chinese films is that in Chinese action films, there’s sort of an aesthetic beauty that is often incorporated into the fight sequences. They’re not just fighting. There’s a beauty that’s inherent there, and there’s also a state of mind of the characters as they’re in this battle. Color is one of the ways that I try to emphasize that concept which you can see that in both of my films.

DRE: How did you take the news that Hero had topped the box office in America and have expectations been raised for House of Flying Daggers?

ZY: When I first heard the news, I was very surprised. I really never imagined it would do so well at the box office, but I really think a lot of that has to do with Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the opportunities that film opened up for new genres to get into the American film market. It’s also made audience more tolerant for other genres other than what they’ve traditionally expected from films. I think it also gave me a little more confidence as well for House of Flying Daggers and I hope it will do as well as Hero did, but you never know. The one thing however is that the story, I suspect, is a little easier for American audiences to really empathize with. There’s a stronger humanistic element in HFD than with Hero, so maybe American audiences will find more resonance with that.

DRE: How important are Oscars to you?

ZY: Everyone in China knows about the Oscar. It’s very well known there and there’s a lot of talk there about it and who should or shouldn’t get it. For me, if I were to get it, it would be a nice affirmation of all the work that I’ve done over the years, but at the same time, I’m not that fixated on it. I’ve been nominated three or four times, which is more than any other Chinese director, and I haven’t got it yet. I think a lot of it has to do with luck. Mostly, it’s the kind of thing like we have a saying in Chinese: If you think about it too much, you’re not going to get it. So I just don’t think about it and we’ll see what happens. I think it all depends on luck at the end of the day.

DRE: Why did it take two years for Hero to come out here after it was nominated and will there be anything interesting on the American DVD?

ZY: I’m not quite sure why there was a two-year delay. That’s the decision of Miramax, the American distributor. I assume it had to do with some business decision that they made concerning the market. I really don’t understand that side of the business and I let them handle it. In the end, the outcome was actually very good and it did quite well. As for the DVD special features, there will be some, but I’m not quite sure what and whether or not they’ll be different from those on the Chinese DVD.

DRE: You’re a fan of opera and you had opera singer Kathleen Battle sing the closing song. Can you talk a bit about your ties to opera?

ZY: My first experience with opera was doing Turandot in Beijing. It was a very interesting experience for me, because Western opera has a history of 400 years, even longer than Beijing opera in China, but when I was approaching it, I don’t understand any of the words. I still don’t understand any of the words. When I was shooting and directing it, I basically treated it like it was Beijing opera, in terms of the way we approached it. I grew to have a great affinity for it, and more recently, I’m actually working with the Metropolitan Opera. Tan Dun is composing and we’re doing this work on the First Emperor of China. Domingo will be singing it. It may be his last performance ever before retiring from the stage. This is supposed to be staged at the Met in 2006, and I still don’t understand what they’re going to be singing, but I’m going to treat it like Beijing Opera anyway. It will be called Emperor Qin.

DRE: What made you pick Kathleen Battle specifically?

ZY: Initially, with the selection of Kathleen Battle, the composer is a personal friend of hers. When we needed a song for the closing credits and he suggested her, and of course, I had heard of her. He gave me a CD and I listened and she had a beautiful voice. I didn’t understand what she was singing, but she sounded great. So we decided to go with this and use it, and I think it had a really special effect. She has a very soft voice that really strikes you when you hear it, and I thought it was a wonderful ending to the film. Of course, in China, there were different reactions to this. On the one hand, people were saying it was great, and it was this internationalism showing that art knows no boundaries, and then there were those people asking why he was ending a Chinese film with an English song. It’s like he was selling out or something. There’s always people who are going to be going back and forth about these things, but I think art really doesn’t have national boundaries. One example is if you look at the current production in Hollywood of Memoirs of a Geisha. It’s a story about Japan, set in Japan about Japanese people, played by Chinese actresses and shot in Hollywood. So there you have it.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Zhang+Yimou/