Zhang Yimou - Patriot or Sellout?

When I heard the true story of two women in their late 70s who could face a year of “reeducation through labor” because they applied for a permit to stage a demonstration during the Olympics against officials who evicted them from their homes in 2001, it made me think, “This would make a great Zhang Yimou film.”

What I meant was an old Zhang Yimou film — one that could stand proudly on your video shelf next to, say, “The Story of Qiu Ju,” that 1993 movie in which Gong Li plays a peasant woman who stubbornly battles government bureaucracy to try and win an apology and an explanation after a local village chiefs beats up her husband.

Zhang, of course, was the mastermind behind the spectacular Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the just-completed Beijing Olympics, and many have accused him of being a traitor to his own beliefs and his artistic soul, selling out to a dangerous totalitarian state as Leni Riefenstahl did in Hitler’s Germany.

Or is he simply doing his national duty for a country that is on track to emerging as the world’s top economic power in this century, contributing to a burst of nationalist pride that has gripped all Chinese?

Not to sit on the fence, but the truth is somewhere in between. In my work as a film critic and a writer, I’ve interviewed Zhang twice — once in Los Angeles when he was promoting “Not One Less,” a small 1999 film, shot on Super-16mm without stars, about a 13-year-old substitute teacher who leaves her remote village to chase down a student who has run away. It was the kind of old-school, rural-centered film that Zhang had made with Gong, and refocused on after their break-up.

Then I interviewed him in 2003 at the Berlin Film Festival, where the martial arts film “Hero,” not yet an international success, showed in competition. Clearly, this was different from any movie he had made before, and I remember something he said that stands out today. Asked if he was afraid that critics and audiences might see “Hero” as a blatant rip-off of Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Zhang embraced the comparison. While noting the film was different from CTHD, both visually and philosophically, Zhang offered, “of course, this movie would not have been possible without ‘Crouching Tiger.’ Ang Lee has really opened the door for us. Before (CTHD), when would I get to make a movie for US$35 million? With that kind of budget, I can put big ideas on the screen.”

In other words, “Hero” was a career opportunity that he couldn’t resist.

So, too, the Olympics. Who could resist working with a budget nearly 10 times the budget of any one of his films — some US$300 million, an amount that is perhaps bigger than any director has ever been handed, anywhere.

Does this necessarily mean he has sold his soul?

Let’s forget about politics and questions of artistic integrity for a moment and reflect on his achievement at the Olympics, particularly the Opening Ceremonies. Thousands and thousands of performers, in perfect unison, dancing, drumming (there were some 2,000 drummers, I read), all in colorful costumes. This was a symphony of unity, a symphony of movement that emphasized the collective and not the individual (yes, yes, I know there are reports of the grueling training period for the performers.)

To add fuel to the fire of the link to Riefenstahl (whose record of the 1936 Games, “Olympiad,” is undeniably great), the film critic Roger Ebert noted on his blog, “The closest sight I have seen to Friday night's spectacle, and I mean this objectively, not with disrespect, is the sight of all those Germans marching wave upon wave before Hitler in ‘Triumph of the Will.’ ”

But this is not Fascist Germany, nor is it Chairman Mao’s China. Modern China is as capitalist as any country that rose during the Industrial Revolution. Their government is authoritarian, certainly, but no longer totalitarian. There are human rights problems, the Tibet situation, for sure, but it is opening up, and there’s no going back.

It is helpful to think of that when considering the career of Zhang Yimou. He remains a great visualist, and his films still fascinate me. I treasure even his newer films, “Hero,” “House of Flying Daggers” and all. It’s true that he doesn’t make films like he used to. There will never again be, I fear, a “Raise the Red Lantern” or “To Live” left in him.

But then again, the country he criticized in his films no longer exists. Think about it: Chen Kaige’s “Yellow Earth,” on which Zhang was cinematographer, and Zhang’s directorial debut, “Red Sorghum,” were made within a decade of Chairman Mao’s death. Who in their right mind would want China to go back to the days of the late 80s and early 90s?

Call Zhang a sellout if you must. I think years from now these Olympics might well be seen as a turning point in China’s relationship to the world and its openness, and his grandly staged extravaganzas will have played a part.