Chen Kaige’s Defiant Vision of His Home and Its Past

Chinese director Chen Kaige’s international reputation was established with “Farewell, My Concubine” (1993), a harrowing tale of a friendship between two stars of the Peking Opera. Chen followed this epic drama, which spanned China’s history from the time of the warlords to the post-Cultural Revolution era, with the compelling though less popular “Temptress Moon” (1996), with Leslie Cheung and Gong Li in a story of love and revenge set in glamorous, corrupt pre-World War II Shanghai.

Now Chen has returned with another dynamic period picture, “The Emperor and the Assassin,” opening today at selected theaters. Set in the 3rd century BC, it tells how Ying Zheng (Li Xuejian), ruler of the Kingdom of Qin, one of China’s seven ancient kingdoms, became obsessed with unifying China, which he brutally accomplished. Caught between Ying and the man who would kill him, Jing Ke (Zhang Fengyi) of the Kingdom of Han, is the exquisite and courageous Lady Zhao (Gong Li).

During a brief visit to Hollywood, Chen, 47, talked about the film and his life as a director. He’s a tall, imposing man--he cast himself as Qin’s uncompromising prime minister--who speaks vigorous American English with a strong accent. He is an outspoken man of considerable humor and directness, fond of wry, candid remarks about his colleagues, many of which can’t be printed.

For a film set in so chaotic and bloody an era, “Emperor” has none of the big, traditional-style battle scenes you might expect from a feudal saga. Unhesitatingly, Chen admitted that expense was a factor in this but added that “although war is so brutal, in my own imagination, it is also very poetic, something romantic. You don’t see a lot of details about how people get killed in my film. But you always feel that the war is there, going on.”

“Shakespeare always picks up something from history, like ‘King Lear’ and ‘Hamlet.’ I thought that when I was very young that maybe one day I could do the same thing. This is the most difficult film that I have ever made.

“I wish I had had more time, although I took 6 1/2 months to shoot the film, seven days a week. I was nervous because I did not know what would happen tomorrow. I mean, I feel that I was sort of being watched by authorities, you know? I was afraid that I might not be allowed to finish the shooting, not because of the expense but for political reasons.” (Like his contemporary, Zhang Yimou [“Raise the Red Lantern”], Chen more often than not sees his films banned or restricted in China, and Chen is a veteran in defying the bureaucratic mentality.)

“Four and a half years ago, I formed a small team to start doing research. You know, a small team, including the production designers, art directors and also costume designers, a whole bunch of people working together. We traveled a long time in the country, and we especially went to the city of Xian, which used to be the capital of the Qin Dynasty. We went to museums, we talked to the museum directors, we went to the tomb of the first emperor--the one with the terra-cotta warriors.

“There was no location that was right, so everything had to be done on sets. Three months before I started principal photography, Mel Gibson visited me in Beijing. I brought him to our biggest set, and he was so surprised to see that. He said, ‘I just can’t believe that this set is even bigger than Warner Bros. Studio.’ It’s true. It’s huge! But honestly, we had a lot of problems building those sets money-wise--it was really expensive. They were not included into the production costs, which were about $10 [million] to 11 million U.S.; we got strong support from some private companies. For example, for the palace set, the total cost could be something like $20 million U.S.

“There is considerable material on the period. There are a bunch of things you can look at to see exactly how they behaved at that time, and what kind of conditions. We know a lot about this king; he’s the one that made China possible, he’s the most brutal person in history, and the reason I mention this is that on some level you can see this film as political because Chairman Mao was the great fan of King Zheng. He really liked him a lot. He mentioned, many, many times, that he just found a lot of things he had in common with the first emperor.”

“Emperor” represents Chen’s third collaboration with Gong Li, and she plays the film’s pivotal character.

“She’s not like other actors,” Chen says of Gong Li. “I’m used to working with actors that pay a lot of attention to the script, taking a lot of notes. But Gong Li, she just reads the script probably twice and throws it away until she’s on the set. She always asks my assistant to give her the lines, because she wants to know what she is going to speak today.

“I would ask her why she is working that way--that it seems like you pay less attention to your character. But she said, ‘No, I just want to keep everything very fresh. I want to be very relaxed because I’m already the one that I play in the film; I don’t have to pretend to be that person because I am already her.’ So that’s very interesting. You know, many directors would feel very insecure about this, but I thought it was fine; it’s really all right with me.”

As for the Chinese film industry, Chen flatly declares that “the studio system in China is finished. If you want to do whatever you want to do, you’ve got to raise money for yourself, unless you’re going to make a propaganda film for the government--then the film will be financed 100% by the government. Even if you do an independent film, the censorship is still there. I think that the China Film Bureau has now become sort of smarter than before; they found a better way to handle things. They didn’t really ban this film, but they sort of asked the Chinese press to attack it,” he said. (All of Chen’s period films can be taken as political allegories.)

“If I want to, I can raise money from Europe, and I think some American companies are willing to do some things in China,” explained Chen, who has financing from Hong Kong and Japan. “But I never thought I could raise enough money inside China because nothing is reliable. Because some of the businesspeople who have enough money to finance films always say ‘yes’ but end up saying ‘no.’ They don’t take filmmaking too seriously. I just can’t get along with those guys. The reason they want to make a film is because they think that can make them famous.

“There are a lot of problems making films in China, but I found a way to handle that. When I came here for a short stay, I felt that I was free. I really feel that I can be very relaxed here. . . .

“I’m going to do a picture here next year, for Miramax. It’s a beautiful, beautiful love story, based on a novel called ‘The Rose,’ with a script by Ted Tally, who adapted ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’ [The novel was written by Martin Cruz Smith, author of “Gorky Park.”] It will be great to do this picture. The story takes place at the end of the 19th century in England. And maybe after an American film I will go back to China to do another Chinese one, and then I come back again; that’s my plan for the future. I would have a home here and one in Beijing.

“Also, when I do the Chinese-speaking film, I would like to work with my wife. My wife, Chen Hong, is a big star in China. I’ve not yet directed her--that’s bad, I know.”

Although Chen’s father, Chen Huaikai, was a film director and Chen went to film school in Beijing, he didn’t really want to be a filmmaker at first. Instead he studied classic Chinese literature.

“But later on, I couldn’t pass the entrance examination for the regular school because I didn’t have a chance to study,” he explains. “We didn’t study anything for 10 years during the Cultural Revolution. So I decided to go to film school. I wrote a letter to my father who was in another province [about becoming a director], and he just returned it to me with a ‘No.’ Because of the political situation, he thought it would be very dangerous to be a director in China.

“But I wrote another letter to him and told him this is what I now want to do in the future and so he said, ‘Yes.’ He died at 74, five years ago, but lived to see me get the Golden Palm at Cannes for ‘Farewell, My Concubine.’ I called him from a yacht, and he was so happy for me he couldn’t sleep that night. It was fantastic!”