‘Forever young’t
Nostalgia and willingness to tackle sensitive subjects helps Chinese director Li Fangfang find an audience
Chinese film Forever Young, a nostalgic drama that released nearly five years after shooting was completed, has become a hot topic of discussion among Chinese filmgoers.
The second feature film from author-turned-director Li Fangfang, the
film touches upon important moments in 20th century China such as the beginning of modern education, World War II and the Cultural Revolution (196676). Similar to veteran Chinese director Feng Xiaogang’s recently released film Youth, Forever Young capitalizes on nostalgia to bring in audiences.
Delving into the great social changes that have taken place over the past 100 years, Forever Young consists of four stories that revolve around graduates from Tsinghua University – one of the earliest Western-style universities in the Chinese mainland – during the 1920s, 1940s, 1960s and today.
While the film stars A-list actors and actresses such as Huang Xiaoming, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen and Wang Leehom, there was not much anticipation among Chinese audiences before it hit mainland theaters on January 12 since it was mainly viewed as an art film.
According to data from Chinese ticketing site Maoyan, the film was only given an opening screen share of 19.5 percent and just earned 36.63 million yuan ($5.69 million) on opening day, less than half of what Hollywood adventure action film Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle earned when it premiered that same day. However, Forever Young started to strike back over the weekend and by Monday, its fifth day in theaters, it surpassed Jumanji to top the single day box office. As of Thursday afternoon, the film had grossed a total of 266 million yuan.
Striking a chord
The lack of enthusiasm for the film before its premiere, to some degree, was due to its vague Chinese title Wu Wen Xi Dong (Lit: don’t ask west east), which doesn’t do much to explain what the film is about to anyone who didn’t go to school at Tsinghua university.
As audiences watch the film, however, they discover that the title was actually taken from the lyrics of the Tsinghua school song, and that it represents the idea that one should always follow their heart regardless of the changes that take place around them.
It seems to be precisely this theme that has struck a chord with young audiences today, even though more than two-thirds of the film’s content takes place well before they were born.
“For me, I was familiar with all these historical issues since I learned about them in history class. Yet, I never resonated with the people living in those times until I watched Forever Young,” Yang Xue, a filmgoer in Beijing, told the Global Times.
“I see that the same life problems that I am dealing with today were also troubling young people in the past. The choices they made inspired me.”
“This time we are living in is full of unhappy people like Zhang Guoguo [one of the characters in Forever Young]. We have already lost the sincerity, sense of justice, courage, belief, patriotism and spirit of sacrifice they had... We never had these, all we have are cynicism, selfishness, coldness and apathy…” netizen Zengyuli posted in his review of the film on Chinese media review site Douban.
Calling Forever Young “a new high for Chinese youth films,” the China Film Directors’ Guild wrote in its review that the essence of the film is how it conveys the message of “staying true and kind” to modern audiences.
Repetitive story
The film has attracted some critics, who find that the emotional tone of the film is its greatest weakness.
“The overall feeling is that the film is too sentimental. It relies too much on using music to try to get an emotional reaction out of people,” film critic Taotao Tao Dianying, posted on Douban, adding that the four stories didn’t interweave with each other very well.
“In the end it is nothing more than a film full of people shouting slogans.” An article on ent.ifeng. com called Forever Young “a common work.”
It wrote that while the film was very ambitious, it really wasn’t much more than the same story of loss and awakening told four times in different time periods.
Sensitive subjects
One of the noticeable standouts in the film is that it deals with certain subjects that are usually glossed over in Chinese mainland productions.
For example, in the 1940s story, about a young man from a wealthy family who gives up his career to be a fighter pilot, the film points out to the audiences the sacrifices that Kuomintang pilots made while fighting for the nation during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).
While mainland films today are increasingly open about the contributions the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China (1912-49) made during the war, such direct praise of the Kuomintang is rare.
Additionally, Forever Young straightforwardly depicts innocent people falsely accused of spying being beaten to death by an angry mob during the Cultural Revolution. It also had scenes showing how Chinese scientists researching nuclear weapons suffered from the after effects of radiation, while previous films always portrayed nuclear weapons as a great achievement and source of pride.
While the director explained that the long period of time between the film’s shooting and release came down to complications during post-production, many in the movie industry have wondered if the sensitive nature of some of the subject matter in the film may have been behind the long wait.