Film: Confucius
Release date: 4th October 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 119 mins
Director: Mei Hu
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Zhou Xun, Chen Jianbin, Yao Lu, Zhang Xingzhe
Genre: Action/Biography/Drama/History/War
Studio: Cine Asia
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: China
The first film about the life of the Chinese philosopher in seventy years is a lavish biopic starring one of the region’s most charismatic actors. We can expect a worthy effort from director Hu Mei, but does Confucius have anything more to offer?
As Kong Qiu - the man who would come to be known the world over as Confucius - nears the end of his time, he remembers the two major eras of his life. Firstly, his time as a minister in the court of the Kingdom of Lu, where he helps an uncertain leader navigate potentially deadly political waters (only for fates and people to conspire against him).
Secondly, moving away from court life, Kong Qiu and those who follow him will put their beliefs and philosophies to the test, travelling across the land to spread their teachings to the people. It is the ultimate trial of their conviction and faith…
For better or worse, the name Confucius conjures up certain words in one’s mind - philosophy, wisdom, humanity… While lacking nothing in the grace and reverence department, this film treatment of the great man’s legend lacks the vital qualities of his enduring lessons - it is light on philosophy, with only muddled wisdom to offer. And while Chow Yun-fat has the superstar quality to convince as a giant of Chinese history, the characters orbiting him are slight and merely functional. Confucius the film is a cold experience when it should be a life-affirming one.
Right from the off, the film tries too hard to ground itself in a recognisably cinematic scenario, presumably aimed at making Confucius the man ‘accessible’ to viewers. Its opening sequence is one of scattered focus, juxtaposing the stately conversation between Confucius (or Kong Qiu, as he is referred to in the film) and the Lu Kingdom’s ruler, with harrowing scenes of mass burial and slaughter. The latter scenes are starkly shot and played, with minimal melodrama, and the effect is genuinely unsettling. But the intended effect of the juxtaposed opening is unclear. Is this a hard-hitting life-as-it-was historical drama, or a more worthy affair about an early, crucial era in China’s development? The viewer never really knows.
On the historical front, the film has a lot of history to cover. The filmmakers throw up helpful subtitles, explaining characters’ names and ranks, as well as relationships with each other - but this is a distractingly modern device that undermines the film’s ‘epicness’. Even characters appearing in fantasy/hallucinatory sequences have subtitled name-tags, and the overall effect is to create the sense of an unconventional history lesson more than anything else.
But, while the film has a vast canvas on which to paint a vivid picture, too often that picture resembles the random sloshing of paint flicked in any direction. An introduction of a new ‘kingdom’ and new characters, with new political agendas, approximately forty minutes into the film is typical of the type of awkward gear-shifts director Hu Mei regularly makes throughout the near two-hour running time. The political and territorial wrangling might over-stretch the foreign audience who cannot fill in the historical gaps in the film’s first half.
And Confucius the film is one of two halves. The second half begins with a fantasy sequence - which opens with a stunning tracking/effects shot that changes the scenery around the protagonist - that sees Kong Qiu discuss his dilemma with Laozi, the sage of Daoism, the film shifts gears again, with Hu Mei taking us out of the stately courts and putting us on tour with Confucius and his disciples (for reasons that are never entirely clear). It may be that the film’s treatment of the great man - as every bit the giant - is designed to prompt the viewer to take his motivations as almost unknowable. And while the respect and reverence is understandable, one is often left wishing the film was the equal to the sum of its parts.
Without being so, the film leaves too many questions, all focussed on what could have prompted this production, beyond merely being the first movie to offer up a mythologized account of Confucius’s life and times? Are we to read contemporary messages in the protagonist’s railing against the tradition of burying slaves with their dead masters? It’s possible, but a viewer can just as easily ignore the messages.
Chow - his Mandaring dialogue dubbed - has the necessary charisma and presence to inhabit the giant of Chinese history that is Confucius, and holds the film together when it seems to over-stretch itself. Confucius’s moral oppositions to brutal court customs is powerful, while the political wrangling between the kingdoms of Lu and Qi borders on the tedious - but Chow sells everything with conviction. It is a testament to his innate cinematic intensity and charisma that, when his character does spout ‘Confucian’ sayings, they somewhat jar, seeming out of step with the man Chow has created elsewhere in the film.
Where the film is an unqualified success is in its visuals - Peter Pau’s cinematography rivals his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; the costuming by Yee Chung-man is peerless. The film also plays host to exemplary effects with - with very convincing 360-degree tracking shots around arrows in flight, and eye-catching pans and zooms across a mountain at approaching armies. Indeed, such is the high level of CGI in the film that one is left rather angry that they could not use the same techniques to render images of cock-fighting and tumbling horses. As the Chinese film industry continues its exciting expansion, it is hoped that such casual animal cruelty will fall away.
An earnest and solidly crafted biopic of an historical figure who has long deserved the big budget treatment. While somewhat forgettable, the film is a pleasing diversion - though one hopes Confucius will get the better film he deserves in the future. JN
