One may ask: "What are the Chinese movie directors making movies for?" The answer naturally would be: "To entertain Chinese audience." But it turns out to be just the opposite.

 

 　　

Sitting in front of the big posters, Chinese movie director Feng Xiaogang and other producers are introducing their new movie, The Banquet.

 

Famous Chinese directors have along done everything they can to grab the Academy Award (or the awards of other movie festivals in Cannes, Tokyo, Venice, etc), while the young directors have kept producing unintelligible movies in light of "art for art's sake" concept. Only those grass-root directors who are as poor as church mice remember that it's their duty to entertain Chinese audience. 　　

 

The above statement may be a little bit too radical, since the works of many famous Chinese directors have all been shown in Chinese cinemas. However, the Chinese audiences have found none of them interesting. Those movies are all filled with Western interpretations of Chinese culture in order to gratify the curiosity of the people in the West, and some of the details are far from "faithful" to how things actually stand or even incorrect. Neither the Western audience nor the Chinese audience will like them forever. Just Ang Lee is enough to make these Westernized kung fu movies, and Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon is enough to sign up for competition for the Academy Award. The followers like the Hero, House of Flying Daggers, The Promise surely can't go any further. The directors have spent large sums of money to make these movies with stunning visual effects, only to entertain themselves (though they thought they could entertain the Academy). 　　

 

Feng Xiaogang doesn't make kung fu movies, but he has become extravagant, too. He even spent 3 million yuan in a banquet in Cannes just to celebrate the completion of his new movie, The Banquet. That money should have been enough for him to make a good movie to entertain Chinese audiences in the past. 　　

 

Directors pursuing art are respectable, as they make movies neither for fortune nor for fame but for their ideals. However, those directors who remember the duty to entertain the audience are even more respectable. Their love of movie and the audience has enabled them to produce real hits, like the very popular Crazy Stone. Though the audience can't help wondering how many of these grass-root directors today will become extravagant in the future, like Feng, who has made a fame in making grass-root movies, but has now turned to produce so-called great works.

 

(Chinanews.cn July 31, 2006)