Film
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 11:10
Written by JFK Miller

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China's 60th anniversary star-laden movie is out now on DVD

Even before its release The Founding of a Republic (Jiàngúo dàyè) was widely derided and dismissed by some Western news sources as a propaganda piece – a sanitized version of the Chinese civil war that led to the founding of the republic in 1949 and 60 years of continuous rule by China's Communist Party. The best description I read l was that it was the CCP's "[birthday] present to itself." That may be. But films based on historical events are, always, points of view. It just so happens that this film represents the point of view of a political party – in this case, the world's largest – so they call it propaganda.

D.W. Griffiths' The Birth of a Nation (1914) represented a point of view. So did Oliver Stone's JFK, Nixon and W. So did Attenborough's Gandhi and Hirschbiegel's Downfall. All of these films contain historical inaccuracies. None of them was presented with any less bias for its viewpoint than The Founding of a Republic. I read that many Chinese people had expected the film to be propaganda. More to the point is they do not seem to mind. The film's box office takings have catapulted it into the number one place as the most popular film ever seen on the mainland (immediately ahead of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I hasten to add). The fact that the movie opened in more than 1,450 cinemas nationwide – a record high – certainly helped, as well as the unofficial but sanctioned efforts to have it seen in schools and the like. Like the CCP, Griffiths understood the power of film: "The time will come," he said in an interview in March 1915, "when the children in public schools will be taught everything by moving pictures. Certainly they will never be obliged to read history again."

As an epic, The Founding of a Republic is clunky. In one scene, when Communist forces are being bombarded by Guomindang planes, Mao's personal cook rushes back to get the leader's meal off the stove. You think this is being played for laughs until the following scene reveals that the cook died in the attempt. A solemn funeral service follows with cigarettes standing in for joss sticks.

Some of the cameos are fun. You would need to go back to The Greatest Story Ever Told to find a film with so many famous people. Director Feng Xiaogang is particularly good as Shanghai underworld figure Due Yueshang. His entrance scene is an effective bit of cinema.

It's baffling given the state imprimatur allowed the movie why they went cheap with some aspects of the film making. Large battle scenes involving thousands of extras are intercut with clunky CGI of bombs dropping from planes. The soundtrack seems permanently stuck in Schindler's List mode. All in all though, it's watchable. Propaganda or not.

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