‘Together’ in harmony: Chen Kaige on music, family bonds and his latest film, Together
May 30, 2003
Fathers, sons, a war of wills and a cultural revolution yesterday and today — these are the things that propelled Farewell My Concubine director Chen Kaige toward his latest award-winning film, Together.
It’s strong stuff, but then Together resonates with meaning for Chen. A director who won the first Cannes Film Festival Palm d’Or awarded to a Chinese language film (for Concubine), Chen is a Fifth Generation survivor who has never been known to shy away from larger-than-life issues. He even wrote himself into Together; he plays the strict, polished and ultramodern professor who separates a countrified father from his violin prodigy son.
But the symbolism can only be taken so far. That acting turn — as pivotal as it is in Together — doesn’t mean the 50-year-old filmmaker identifies with authority figures over upstart offspring, he explained recently in a posh suite at the Ritz Carlton, complete with sweeping views of the Bay and Coit Tower.
“I’m always with the child,” he murmured in far better English than my sparse Cantonese or nonexistent Mandarin. “I personally describe this movie as the war between children and grownups. Grownups take things into consideration; they make adjustments. But children, they just do what they want to do. They’re passionate. They never really think about anything. That’s why when you’re 13, it’s possible for you to sell a violin to buy a coat for a girl you worship. But when you’re 23, no way. Forget it.”
The Academy Award-nominated director sat back contentedly. He seemed just as refined and thoughtful as he was the last time we met, when his 1999 film The Emperor and the Assassin was about to open in the United States. But a few weeks ago, briefly setting up camp in the Bay Area for a spate of interviews, the handsome filmmaker exuded relaxation and confidence, dressed in casual khakis, a green sports shirt and moccasins, and lounging in an easy chair in front of a baby grand.
He had every right to be kicking back — Together has won three Golden Roosters, China’s Oscars, including a Best Director award for Chen. It is a touching, enthralling film, possibly his most commercially promising and critically acclaimed since Concubine, focusing on a father and son attempting to find their footing — and opportunity — in the flux of modern China.
Adolescent violin prodigy, Xiaochun (Tang Yun), and his awkward but enthusiastic laborer father, Liu Cheng (Liu Peich), move from their village to Beijing, with only a hatful of cash and Liu Cheng’s dreams of Xiaochun’s success as a classical music star. The father and son are close and seem to be on the same page when the boy doesn’t make the cut in a music school — mainly because the palms of the judges weren’t greased. Determined to right this wrong and work the system, Liu Cheng hires one of the teachers, Professor Jiang (Wang Zhiwen), to tutor Xiaochun, and after a rough start, the boy and his quirky, soulful instructor bond over cats and classical records.
Xiaochun also begins to make money playing for the neighborhood madcap call girl Lili (the director’s real-life wife and Together’s co-producer, Chen Hong). She’s pretty, she worships Marilyn Monroe and she introduces Xiaochun to a world of soap opera drama, caddish boyfriends and designer shopping. But trouble breaks out when Liu Cheng nabs an accomplished and chilly new teacher, Professor Yu (Chen Kaige), for Xiaochun and tears his son away from the beloved Jiang. In response, Xiaochun makes a sale straight out of O. Henry, and a fissure develops between the father and child.
It’s a sentimental tour de force that draws you in and then wrenches you with one tear-jerking moment after another, to the music of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, as well as Strauss, Puccini and Bruch. Chen may say Together is a war movie but, from where this viewer is sitting, it looks like a love story — between a father and son.
Still, the director doesn’t see Together as sentimental at all. Instead he prefers to view it as a positive film, one sorely needed in a China going through growing pains.
Chen got the idea for the movie after seeing a TV documentary on a father and his musical prodigy child from the provinces. The filmmaker was struck by the parent’s hopes for his son and aspirations of upward mobility that would never have existed in a pre-capitalism, communist China. The desire for a piece of this new kind of cultural revolution touched Chen and dredged up memories of his own guilt — during the first Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the teenage Chen was forced to denounce his intellectual, moviemaker father, Chen Huai Kai, who was declared counterrevolutionary. The act would sever their relationship and haunt him for years, though he sought refuge in secret records of forbidden Western music: Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Mozart.
These memories feed Together, which might be considered a romantic paean to steadfast filial piety amid social turmoil. “I think that I just wanted to make a very happy film,” Chen mused, “because I think it’s very important that being Chinese isn’t all misery and very dark moments. Now we want to be normal. We want to be happy. And happiness comes at a very high price. I’m not saying that we want a cheap happiness, a cheap happy ending — no. But I think this is maybe the first Chinese movie of mine you might see in the United States that is less political.”
Inspired by the TV documentary, Chen began to work with co-screenwriter Xue Xiaolu on the script. The process went just the way he wanted it to, he explained with childlike glee. “As a director, the best way to be is to live like a child,” he said benevolently. “Then one day you’re going to be inspired. Why are so many people bringing their children to big cities? I thought about what that really meant.”
He found Tang Yun, the young violinist who plays Xiaochun, at a music competition in the city of Shen Yong. The starring role in Together is his first part. “He’s very, very nice — and a sad boy,” said Chen. “He’s not happy.”
That’s because the story really reflects Tang’s life, the director added. The actor moved from Shanghai to Beijing to study with a top teacher, and after acting in the film and gathering attention for the role, he has been treated like an outsider, an alien or a star. “I’m not so sure it’s good for him,” the director said with a fatherly air.
So why did Chen cast himself as the cold, star-making Professor Yu, who separates the father and son with the promise of fame and fortune? “Aaaah, because I hate myself,” he moaned with a little laugh. “He represents the popular values in China today because he doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with what he does. I don’t think people like him have any sort of moral center.”
The role itself was taxing simply because, as Chen says, “I think the director’s job is to be mirror for the actors,” and he couldn’t really be his own mirror. But the greater challenge was working with an inexperienced child actor, he admitted. “I had a huge problem when I asked him to cry. He said, ‘OK, I’ll cry,’ but we were there for three and a half hours to get the shot, and I asked him, ‘Why you don’t want to cry?’ It’s a very easy thing for kids. And he said, ‘You know what? I don’t want my father to see my tears.’ That’s a teenager thing! So I made him cry by praising him, ‘You’re great and you’re so wonderful,’ and he cried,” Chen chuckled.
That tight relationship is reminiscent of Chen’s work with Concubine star Leslie Cheung, who recently committed suicide. Chen was surprisingly sober and frank with his reaction to the actor’s death. “We got along, not as personal friends, but as a director and actor,” Chen mulled. “I respected him as a great actor, and he was very sensitive. That was his personality. He just wanted everything to be perfect, and sometimes it’s not.
“My first reaction when I heard about his death was that he turned himself into the character that he played in Farewell My Concubine,” he continued. “In a way, this is how he should end his life. I can’t imagine him as very old — I wasn’t ready for that. So I must say when I heard that he committed suicide, I was surprised but I also wasn’t.”
Things could have easily been tragic for Chen, as well. But art came to his rescue — a theme that recurs in both Concubine and Together. He briefly played violin as a child, yet when he really needed music during the Cultural Revolution, it offered something other than scales, practice sessions and interminable lessons. It provided him with solace and a way to sort out his feelings. “I can say music saved my life,” he said.
In conjunction with AsianWeek, Together opens May 30 at Bridge Theatre, 3010 Geary, S.F. Information: 415-352-0810 or www.landmarktheatres.com/Market/SanFrancisco/SanFrancisco_Frameset.htm.
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