Fade to Black: Zhang Yimou, Director

Zhang Yimou is the greatest name in Chinese cinema. He is best known for his moving parables of Chinese life starring the radiant Gong Li — Red Sorghum, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of Qiu Ju, To Live — and his more recent action epics Hero and House of Flying Daggers. A promising student, Zhang was sent to work as a field laborer for 10 years during the Cultural Revolution. It wasn't until he was 27 that he attended the Beijing Film Academy. His earlier films, informed by his years as a laborer, often got him in trouble, and he was rarely allowed to travel abroad to pick up his numerous international awards. His more recent work has been deemed “politically correct” enough so that he is directing an opera with Plácido Domingo at the New York Metropolitan Opera and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

His latest film is Curse of the Golden Flower, a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions set during the later Tang Dynasty. It is his third action epic, and was to be his first digital film.

During preproduction, Zhang flew to Miami to meet with Gong Li, who was on location for Director Michael Mann's digitally shot Miami Vice. Zhang met several times with Mann and DP Dion Beebe and came away ready to make his first digital feature. Unfortunately, he could not secure enough digital cameras and had to go back to Arriflex cameras and traditional film stock.

Light was of the utmost importance in Curse of the Golden Flower. As the pre-modern Tang Dynasty was known for its dazzling opulence, even at night, they looked for ways to brighten the palace without it seeming lit by electricity. The first obstacle was to create the hand-blown glass the dynasty was known for without it costing millions of dollars. It took four or five months to develop this glass and form columns throughout the palace lit by tiny bulbs to look like flame. It was shot with Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 stock for interior and 50D 5201 stock for location shootings.

The battle sequence at the end is surely one of the grandest in motion picture history. “The storming of the palace scene was incredibly difficult, especially because it is a night scene,” Zhang says. “We needed a massive amount of lights and lighting structures to get everything out and visible. We had between 800 and 1,000 extras there to play the army soldiers, and they are actually military: the People's Liberation Army. … Timing was a big problem, because each day we'd arrive on the set before sunset and then we'd shoot all night long. But dawn came quite early: 4:30 or 5:00. The sun would come out, and we'd run out of time. Both crews shot for 20 full days to finally get the scene.

“Young people in China today really want to see those huge productions,” Zhang says. “They want to see that opulence, and they want to see all the special effects. … After the Cultural Revolution, Hollywood films began to take a huge percentage of the Chinese box office, and that changed the production standards that people were expecting. In order to compete, we really needed something with that kind of power and those kinds of production standards.”

If it seems ironic that Zhang should turn in this direction, he has practical reasons. “What I felt was, in today's China, there are not that many people that have the pull to put together such a huge production, this type of multi-million dollar event,” he says, noting that by contrast many younger directors have taken up the indie film mantle and done it well. Zhang says he now feels compelled to give Hollywood some competition for the mainstream. “I felt it would be most meaningful if I could make the kind of film that would bring audiences back into the theaters and win back the Chinese audiences for Chinese films.”