Feng Xiaogang has the West in his sights with Assembly

Feng Xiaogang may have the lowest profile in the West of any successful Asian film-maker. Even though most of his movies have been blockbusters in his home country, China, and have revealed him to be an accomplished satirist, it’s Chinese directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Jia Zhangke who have become synonymous with Chinese cinema around the world. If this lack of recognition overseas is a source of regret or anger, he does a good job of disguising it. “Fortunately, I was born in a big country with a huge population,” he says. “China is a big market. If I came from a smaller country, I’d be frustrated.” There is no doubting his status at home. The release of a new Feng Xiaogang film is the cue for people to rush to cinemas across China.

His latest, Assembly, is a case in point. It has raked in ￡17.8m in China since its release in late December, a huge sum in a country where cinema tickets are far cheaper than in Europe or the USA. Equally important, however, it is only the second of Feng’s films to be released in the UK; it will be followed later in the year by his 2006 movie The Banquet. Feng is hoping they will demonstrate to British audiences that there’s more to Chinese cinema than bleak art-house films or crowd-pleasing period martial-arts epics.

Assembly follows the sole survivor and commander of a communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) unit massacred in the Chinese civil war of the late 1940s, who carries on fighting through the Korean war, all the time trying to get his dead comrades’ sacrifice recognised by the authorities. Based on a true story, the film is graphic, relentless and moving, and has been tagged as a Chinese Saving Private Ryan. “It’s a completely different story, but they’re similar in trying to depict war in a realistic way,” says the casual 50-year-old director as he chain-smokes through our interview in the Beijing flat that serves as his office. “I think Spielberg made a great contribution to the genre by showing how horrific and brutal war is.” Despite the scenes of carnage, Assembly has proved popular with women in China. “I think they are touched by the lead character, even if they don’t fully understand his behaviour. They can see how responsible and persistent he is.”

But Assembly is very much a reaction against the propaganda war movies churned out by the Chinese film industry in the 1950s and 1960s, rather than an attempt to copy Saving Private Ryan. “Those old movies were all fake. The lead characters always want to fight and be a hero, whereas the truth is that most people are reluctant to fight. And the men show no fear, which is completely unreal. The men in my film have to fight their fear as well as the enemy,” Feng says.

Both Assembly and The Banquet - a loose adaptation of Hamlet, with Zhang Ziyi in the Gertrude role - are a departure for Feng, who is best known in China for his comedies. He admits he had one eye on the overseas market when he made them. “The western audience likes these sorts of films. Comedy doesn’t travel as well as other genres.” That perception, though, is the West’s misfortune, because, more than any other Chinese director, Feng has proved a master at satirising the enormous changes Chinese society has undergone in the past decade.

Since 1997, he has been behind a string of comedies that have made him the most popular film-maker in China. The 1998 film Bu Jian Bu San, a catch phrase that translates as “Be there or be square”, poked fun at the Chinese obsession with emigrating to the USA through its story of two illegal immigrants adrift in LA. The bittersweet A Sigh was the first Chinese film to deal with divorce in a realistic fashion, while Big Shot’s Funeral and Cell Phone mercilessly targeted China’s new urban middle class and their obsession with status and the latest trends.

“I like to satirise the people who are pretentious and self-important, who think they’re on a higher level than everyone else. I’m a big fan of Woody Allen’s films, because I think he does the same thing to New Yorkers that I do to Beijingers,” Feng says. “There’s a new group of people emerging in China who are rich and want to live a western sort of lifestyle. I find that ridiculous and funny, because I don’t think it’s compatible with being in China.”

The middle classes, he says, are just about the only people he can attack. “It’s no fun satirising the poor and, because of censorship, I can’t do politicians, so I have to do the rich. Satire is hard to do in China, because there are so many people you can’t have a go at. Some of them would actually come after me if I did. But the rich are so self-satisfied, they can’t be bothered to react.” His approach has ensured he has avoided the attentions of the government censors. “A lot of ordinary people are angry about the way Chinese society is so money-obsessed, but I think it’s useless to get angry about that stuff. It’s better to be funny about it. If you’re too angry, the censors won’t pass it, but if you mock it and satirise it, people laugh and the censors pass the films.”

Despite being just about the only film-maker in China who can make the sort of smart, commercial films Hollywood was once known for, Feng is no favourite of China’s critics. In part, that’s because he is about the only Chinese director of note who didn’t attend the Beijing Film Academy. Instead, he spent eight years as a set designer for a PLA theatre troupe, graduating to directing hit television shows before making his film debut with The Dream Factory. Being outside the mainstream has left Feng with trenchant views on the value of film school. “Any person with a normal IQ can learn how to make a movie in a month. It’s finding a good script that’s hard.” Nor is he convinced by the academy’s guiding ethos. “The guys who go there are taught that films are either art-house or commercial rubbish. That idea is so deep-rooted, it’s hard for them to make movies for a wide audience.”

Many critics share the same attitude, leading some to dismiss Feng as a television director who got lucky. It’s a bizarre judgment on somebody who has made nine hit films in different genres. But Feng is happy enough being the man Chinese audiences can rely on to entertain them. “The masses don’t like fake people any more than I do,” he says. “That’s why my films are popular.” Now he needs the West to catch on.

冯小刚谈《集结号》

     冯小刚可能是在西方获得成功的亚洲电影导演中最低调的一位了。在中国，他的电影有巨大的影响力，就象中国的其他导演张艺谋、陈凯歌和贾樟柯，已经成为了中国电影的代名词。尽管在国外，他的知名度远不如在国内高，但他表示无所谓，“幸运的是，我出生在一个很大的国家，这个国家有着众多的人口，”他说，“中国是一个巨大的市场，如果我来自一个小点的国家，我恐怕早就失败了。”

     他的最新一部电影叫《集结号》，自从去年十二月在中国上映以来已经取得了一千七百八十万英镑的票房，这个成绩在这个国家来说已经是一个巨大的数字了，因为中国电影院的票价比欧洲和美国要低得多。然而，这仅仅只是他在英国上映的第二部电影，第一部是2006年的《夜宴》。冯小刚希望向英国观众表明，中国电影除了武术之外还有很多精彩的地方。

    《集结号》描述了一名连长指挥一支中国解放军（PLA）的部队在1940年底的内战中担任阻击任务，在这场战斗中他成了唯一的幸存者，后来他把所有的时间都花在寻找战友尸体上，希望战友的死能够得到政府的承认。这个电影是根据一个真实的故事改编，情节很感人，被看作中国版的《拯救大兵瑞恩》。“它们是完全不同的故事，但共同点是描绘了真实的战争，”冯小刚说，“我想斯皮尔伯格很好的向大家展示了战争的可怕和残酷。”

     尽管有人批评《集结号》抄袭《拯救大兵瑞恩》，但这还不是最主要的，因为《集结号》打破了中国电影从五、六十年代以来的战争电影模式，因此它的上映引起了人们强烈的反响。对此冯小刚表示：“那些老电影很多地方是不真实的，战士们永远不惧战争，永远没有恐惧，这都是不现实的。因此在我的电影里希望表达出人们面对死亡时的真实感受。”

     在冯小刚拍摄《集结号》和《夜宴》－－一部情节类似于《哈姆雷特》的电影，由章子怡主演－－之前，他是中国最著名的喜剧导演。他承认，在创作上述两部电影时，他也考虑到了海外市场。“西方观众喜欢这样的情节，而喜剧却很难被其他文化的人们所接受。”

     自1997年以来，冯小刚所拍摄的一连串的喜剧已经使他成为中国最受欢迎的电影导演之一。《一声叹息》是中国第一部用现实主义手法来描写离婚的电影。《大腕》和《手机》则无情的讽刺了中国新的城市中产阶级。

     “我喜欢以那些自命不凡、妄自尊大的人群作为题材，还有那些自认为比其他人高一等的人。我很喜欢伍迪·艾伦的电影，因为他的电影以纽约人为题材，我则是以北京人。”冯小刚说，“现在在中国，有一群人正变得富有，并希望过上西方的生活方式。我觉得这是很可笑的，因为我认为这样的生活方式在中国极不协调。”

     尽管冯小刚没有进过电影学院学习过哪怕是一天，相反，他有八年时间在解放军文艺队工作，但是他对此丝毫不在意。“人们不喜欢虚伪的人，”他说，“这才是我的电影受欢迎的原因。”