Posts Tagged ‘Gong Li’

Mulan

Director: Niki Caro

Cast: Yifeu Liu, Gong Li, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Jason Scott Lee, Tzi Ma, Ron Yuan

Film Rating 7 out of 10 – Catch Mulan in Cinemas now or on DisneyPlus

Disney’s bid to attract the massive Chinese cinema going audience with Mulan which was scheduled for a worldwide release on the 27th March 2020 was an ill-timed affair as the leap year that is 2020 brought along a vicious virus from the Far East and ravaged the world, closing down cinemas and forcing cities into lock down.

The effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic on world cinema in 2020 has been devastating and only films like Christopher Nolan’s exceptionally brilliant Tenet will attract reluctant audiences back into the cinemas. Many big budget film productions have postponed their release dates until 2021.

Nevertheless, the New Zealand director of Whale Rider Niki Caro did a fairly good job of taking on Mulan, an adventure tale set in ancient China with a completely Chinese cast. Built on the premise that a young and feisty girl from a Chinese village Mulan disobeys her father Zhou played by Tzi Ma (Skyscraper, Arrival, Million Dollar Arm), disguises herself as a man and joins the Imperial army to fight Northern invaders led by Bori Khan played by Hawaiian actor Jason Scott Lee (Alaska is a Drag) and aided Xianniang, a witch played by Gong Li (Coming Home, Curse of the Golden Flower, Memoirs of a Geisha).

Mulan is played by rising Chinese actress Yifei Liu (The Forbidden Kingdom) who rises above her male counterparts in the Imperial army and comes to the rescue of the Emperor played by Martian arts legend Jet Li (The Forbidden Kingdom, Hero, Kiss of the Dragon).

Although the script of Mulan leaves much to be desired and the dialogue seems stilted and uninspiring, the action sequences are great and at least the cast is authentic although it would seem better if this film’s dialogue was in Chinese with English subtitles, but director Niki Caro was obviously appealing to Western audiences while paying homage to her Disney employees.

Unlike Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther which successfully captured the zeitgeist of 2018. Black Panther was released by the Disney owned Marvel Films and was part of the Marvel franchise of superhero films with sufficient legacy to back up the main character.

Mulan on the other hand was a Disney produced film which while brilliantly shot and cinematically constructed, the storyline was predictable and didn’t offer enough depth for this multi-talented cast of Chinese actors who have all appeared in far superior Chinese films including Coming Home, Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower.

Despite some flaws, Mulan is an enjoyable action film set in ancient China, a land filled with loyalty, honour and unbridled patriarchy. Some interesting aspects of ancient Chinese culture are examined but not in the elegant fashion done by far superior directors such as Zhang Yimou in Raise the Red Lantern in his breakthrough film in 1992 which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

Mulan is enjoyable but unfortunately might be overlooked amidst the current existential health crisis engulfing the world. Mulan gets a rating of 7 out of 10 and is spectacular watch but the storyline is not original.

Coming Home

Director: Zhang Yimou

Cast: Gong Li, Chen Daoming, Zhang Huiwen

Another film set during and after the Cultural Revolution is Coming Home, the latest film by acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou who brought such classics as Raise the Red Lantern and the more commercially accessible The Flowers of War.

Coming Home as seen at the 36^th Durban International Film Festival DIFF is a quiet and intimate film focusing on a Chinese couple, Lu Yanshi played by Chen Daoming and Feng Wanyu superbly played by Gong Li who are forced to separate after their only daughter, an aspiring ballerina Dan Dan played by Zhang Huiwen reports her father to the Communist authorities and he in turns is sent away as a political prisoner.

After a disruptive farewell at the local train station, Lu Yanshi and Feng Wanyu do not see each other for years and when Yanshi returns to his home, he finds that his wife does not recognize him due to psychological amnesia caused by a traumatic event.

After the flourish of earlier films like Raise the Red Lantern, The House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower Zhang Yimou rather chooses to focus on the broken relationship of a husband and wife whose love for each other is brutally torn apart by the restrictive society they live and as fate occurs, this love cannot be resurrected despite Lu Yanshi’s attempts at reconciliation and his own careful methods of reawakening his wife’s lost memory, mainly through the use of old photos and an abundance of letters.

At 109 minutes, Coming Home is a slightly drawn out film in Mandarin with English subtitles, which could have done with some editing, however the central narrative is held together by Gong Li’s brilliant portrayal of a woman whose own memory has betrayed her, leaving her bewildered and confused, yet always clinging to a hope that one day her family will be reconciled.

Unlike Zhang Yimou’s previous films such as The Flowers of War and Curse of the Golden Flower, Coming Home lacks flourish and spectacle but is beautifully filmed and held together by some magnificent acting especially by Gong Li, who does for Chinese cinema what Oscar winner Julianne Moore did for American cinema in Still Alice.