Beginning of the Great Revival 建黨偉業

Story

China, 1911. Following the Wuchang Uprising of 10 Oct against the ruling Qing dynasty, sixteen provinces declare independence and found the Republic of China on 1 Jan 1912. KMT leader Sun Yat-sen (Ma Shaohua), who returns from a trip to the US, is elected provisional president but later yields the post to Qing commander-in-chief Yuan Shikai (Chow Yun-fat), who agrees to pressure child emperor Puyi to abdicate. In elections for a National Assembly the KMT is victorious but Yuan exercises more and more influence in his role as president, forcing Sun Yat-sen to flee to Japan in late 1913. Yuan uses his military power to crush the KMT, dissolve the National Assembly and become Head of State, later taking the title of Emperor of the Chinese Empire. Yunnan provincial governor Cai E (Andy Lau) leads a rebellion against Yuan and forces his resignation, leaving the country with no effective leader and controlled by warlords. At the same time as growing protests by students and intellectuals, Sun returns to China in 1917 and heads a military government in Guangzhou. Meanwhile, in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, high-school student Mao Zedong graduates and decides to go to Beijing, where he studies part-time at the university and marries Yang Kaihui (Li Qin). In 1919 Mao returns to Hunan before a planned trip to Paris with other radicals. That year the May 4 Movement, triggered by anti-Japanese/anti-imperialist student protests in Beijing, erupts and later spreads to Shanghai. Mao decides at the last moment to stay in China. Eventually, in summer 1921, the Chinese Communist Party is founded in Shanghai by Li Dazhao (Zhang Jiayi), Chen Duxiu (Feng Yuanzheng), Hu Shi (Daniel Wu), Li Da (Huang Jue) and others.

Review

The savvy idea by China Film Group Corporation 中國電影集團公司 head HAN Sanping 韓三平 of "selling" official anniversary movies to the general public by cramming them with star cameos worked a treat in the The Founding of a Republic 建國大業 (2009), made to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the PRC. The clever marketing wheeze gets a second outing in the more clumsily titled Beginning of the Great Revival 建黨偉業, celebrating the 90th birthday of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai — and the result still works, though to a lesser extent. It still works because Han and his returning co-director, experienced veteran HUANG Jianxin 黃建新 (The Black Cannon Incident 黑炮事件 (1985), Signal Left, Turn Right 紅燈停，綠燈行 (1995), Gimme Kudos 求求你表揚我 (2005)), manage through sheer technique to turn an episodic, cameo-studded structure into a genuine big-screen experience by changing moods at a moment's notice; but to a lesser extent because (a) the drama, set during just a 10-year period, is smaller in scope and inherently less panoramic, and (b) because the star-cameo concept is a tad less fresh.

As in the first film, many cameos didn't make the final cut because of running-time considerations — reportedly, some 60 cameos (including TANG Wei 湯唯) were ditched, representing 18 minutes of screen time, and may later be put online. However, with Hong Kong stars like CHOW Yun-fat 周潤發, Andy LAU 劉德華, Simon YAM 任達華, Daniel WU 吳彥祖 and Nick CHEUNG 張家輝, and Mainlanders like LIU Ye 劉燁, CHEN Kun 陳坤, ZHOU Xun 周迅, WANG Xuebing 王學兵 and WANG Xueqi 王學圻, the movie still has a high ooh-look! factor, with the audience continually involved in a game of spotting faces. (As in the first film, roles are identified with captions, but not the actual actor.)

This works well — especially for audiences familiar with Mainland names — when it's comedians like FENG Gong 馮鞏, FAN Wei 范偉 and ZHAO Benshan 趙本山, here in straight roles, or for blink-and-you'll-miss-them appearances by actresses like FAN Bingbing 范冰冰, DONG Jie 董洁 or Angelababy 楊穎. But in dramatic terms only a very few get a chance to build real performances, notably Chow in a sizable role as generalissimo-turned-despot Yuan Shikai and Liu Ye as a young Mao Zedong. With his physical presence, Chow gives the first section considerable dramatic heft and Liu, looking amazingly like a young Mao, is also believable in a more low-key way (especially as Mao's role in the founding of the CCP was actually very small).

For foreign viewers unacquainted with the complex ins-and-outs of the period, the movie will take some following, though the history has been cleverly compressed and sticks pretty closely to events, allowing for some cinematic licence. To its credit, there is some time spent on how the CCP groped its way towards a unified political stance, flirting with and then rejecting other revolutionary and communist models to finally come up with one that suited the Chinese (rather than European or Russian) experience. And though brief, many of the cameos etch characters in a succinct and immediate way.

Kudos in that respect seems to go to co-director Huang Jianxin, whose '90s movies were especially good in social observation and character building. Han's contribution appears to be more on the visual/design side (acknowledged in his own micro-cameo as a photographer), and here, even more than in Republic, the film comes up with several jaw-dropping setpieces between the political stuff. The 10-minute sequence of the 4 May Movement protests is true big-screen cinema, a New Year sequence featuring Mao and his second wife in Beijing has a fairytale atmosphere, and the staging of the actual CCP founding (by a dozen characters on a boat in a lake) is genuinely inspired in movie terms, with actress Zhou used in an almost mystical way.

Though the film as a whole is not so grand in scope as Republic, production values are a notch better, with superbly-lit widescreen photography by returning d.p. ZHAO Xiaoshi 趙曉時 and an involving musical score again by SHU Nan 舒楠. Some actual B&W documentary footage is included, but relatively little this time round.