Tears flow over China’s new war epic The Eight Hundred
China’s cinemas sell out for new blockbuster The Eight Hundred (Ba Bai) which details the quixotic battle against the Japanese Imperial Army.
This week, as the People’s Liberation Army fired four medium-range missiles off its south coast, China’s cinemas were packed for screenings of a new blockbuster about the horrors of war.
China has its first movie hit since COVID: director Guan Hu’s tragic war epic, The Eight Hundred, which in its first week has already grossed more than $240m.
The blood-drenched, two-hour, 27-minute film about the Nationalists’ quixotic battle against the Japanese Imperial Army has left audience members such as Li Yan, 24, crying into their face masks.
“I couldn’t help my tears,” Li, a consultant at an auditing company, told The Weekend Australian after a screening in Beijing’s Huaxing cinema. “Let’s hope war never comes upon all people in the world, including Japanese people. Let’s not forget history, nor seek revenge. Let’s live in peace.”
The commercial success of The Eight Hundred has buoyed China’s cinema industry, one of the last parts of the world’s second-biggest economy to reopen since the coronavirus outbreak in late January.
The movie — which like all cinematic releases in China was closely inspected by the mighty Propaganda Department — also demonstrates a significant departure in tone from 2017’s jingoistic Wolf Warrior 2, the country’s highest-grossing film of all time, which had the memorable tagline: “Whoever offends China will be hunted down wherever they are.”
A third instalment of the Wolf Warrior franchise was reportedly cancelled because the government did not want “films which make China appear aggressive”.
Guan’s new film — set in Shanghai in 1937 — humanises its dying soldiers as fathers, sons and brothers including, in one scene, a Japanese soldier.
“They are real people of real blood, real fear and bravery,” said Li’s boyfriend, Zhao Liwei, 28, an IT engineer.
The film is also notably on message with President Xi Jinping’s national rejuvenation project, incorporating the official history of national victimhood and the need for strength.
Towards its end, Chinese Nationalist Colonel Xie Jinyuan (played by Du Chun) gives a rousing speech to his troops before most are gunned down by Japanese soldiers.
“It is true that we lost this battle. But why? Because our nation is sick!” Colonel Xie laments as the Western powers refuse to come to China’s defence. “Letting others bully us like this!” the colonel continues, before bravely meeting a grisly cinematic death over a tragic swelling score. (The real Xie survived the warehouse siege, but was later assassinated in Shanghai’s British concession by pro-Japanese Chinese traitors — the kind of messy detail unlikely to pass China’s censors.)
The film ends with a transition shot from war-ravaged Shanghai to its contemporary skyline of gleaming towers. Earlier, Colonel Xie tells a boy soldier: “When you grow up, you will be able to see this country become better.”
In an unusual move, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection — a powerful agency better known in the Xi era for its anti-corruption campaigns — has given the released version of the film its approval. “History tells us that if you are not strong enough, you will win no support … Fortunately, China is no longer as it was then,” observed the commission in a rare movie review.
The version playing across the country — and which was released in cinemas in Australia on Thursday — is 13 minutes shorter than the original. What was cut remains a mystery. But there is no doubt it is a hit.
“The cinema hasn’t been this full since the epidemic began,” a ticket seller at Huaxing cinema told The Weekend Australian.
At times last week the movie — which some have described as China’s Saving Private Ryan, a Hollywood favourite of Xi — was on more than 60 per cent of the country’s almost 70,000 screens.
Every second seat must be kept free. All patrons have to wear face masks.
New Zealand actress Augusta Xu-Holland, one of the movie’s stars, told The Weekend Australian people in China’s entertainment industry were “scrambling to get their projects done” while the coronavirus is under control. Before COVID-19 she was scheduled to now be filming in Melbourne. “But, you know, 2020!” she said.
One of those at work is The Eight Hundred’s director, Guan, in China’s northeast making a new film about the Korean War, or the “anti-America, aiding-Korea war”, depending on who is writing the history.
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