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Arts & Culture
Arts & Culture
UPDATED: March 2, 2015 NO. 10 MARCH 5, 2015
A Grave Misfire?
A "deaf review" of Jiang Wen's much maligned latest film Gone With the Bullets
By Eric Daly
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This scene segued into one of the film's high points: a sensational Busby Berkeley-style Jazz Age-themed cabaret show during an international beauty pageant. It was a scene of such visual vibrancy and crackling choreography that it almost put films such as Moulin Rouge and Chicago in the shade. All of the visual and auditory elements, from costume to set design to music, were superb. The movie also shared its spiritual predecessor's flair for anachronism, as some of the music used in the set piece was composed after the film's time. Unlike Let the Bullets Fly, there was an abundance of non-Chinese extras, fitting given that the film's opening is set in Shanghai's French Concession. As good as this sequence was, it ran a little long and I wondered when the filmmakers were going to get into the real meat of the story.

The film then documents the love affair between Jiang's protagonist and the Chinese winner of the pageant. Without giving too much away, after a night of dream-like opium-fuelled hedonism, it comes to an untimely end, and the rest of the film deals with the consequences. This serves as the plot's inciting incident, and it comes after a lot of set-up. At this point, it started to dawn upon me that this was not a conventional gangster movie but an epic drama that satirizes the nouveau riche. Despite its title, one has to wait until around the film's half-hour mark before a single shot is fired, then wait again until a madcap chase scene preceding the finale. This, I surmised, may have been what drew critics' and audiences' ire in China, as they may have thought the film's marketing disingenuous.

Bullet points

At this point, the film completely lost me, which prompted me to go back and engage in a light research on the 1920 Yan Ruisheng case on which the film is based before viewing it a second time. Armed with a detailed synopsis from the website of Film Business Asia, the movie made a lot more sense on second viewing. Still, it didn't quite cohere, and I suspect subtitles would not have helped. Jiang employs a number of increasingly sophisticated and experimental storytelling techniques: newsreel footage, theatrical and animated enactments of the inciting incident, and a film within a film. The film is also highly artistically literate, with a final scene involving a giant windmill plucked straight from the pages of Don Quixote and delightful use of music by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini.

Though impressive, it cannot make up for the lack of clear narrative. There is no clear-cut antagonist or sense of conflict, and the zany supporting cast, though superbly played, has little agency in driving the plot forward. Events merely seem to happen, and it is arguable that Jiang may have focused on art to the expense of storytelling craft.

There is a lot of the director in this movie, both literally and figuratively, and I wonder if this may have been part of the problem. The story seems overstuffed and though it is only minutes longer than Let the Bullets Fly, it seems far longer than that movie. I suspect Jiang may have thought of this project as his Great Gatsby and became so embroiled in the creative process that he forgot to come up for air. This might have been further exacerbated by the eight screenwriters reportedly working on the script, as the film's busyness smacks of too many cooks spoiling the broth. On the whole, watching Gone With the Bullets is akin to viewing an incredibly beautiful cathedral slowly collapse owing to integral flaws in its design.

The fact, however, that the film does not quite work on the narrative level does not take away from the sweep of its ambition, the grandeur of its spectacle or the technical virtuosity involved. I rather admire Jiang's bloody-mindedness and refusal to compromise for his artistic vision. It's rare in these days of increasingly homogenous, demographically targeted mass-market blockbusters. It is also splendid to see cutting-edge camera technology so expertly used on something other than an action film. Gone With the Bullets is many things: bewildering, frustrating and occasionally even infuriating. It is, however, never boring. Although I will have to wait for the subtitled version to pronounce the final verdict, if the film is indeed a failure, then it is one touched by genius.

Email us at: yanwei@bjreview.com

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