ComingSoon.net had a rare opportunity to sit down with the legendary Chinese

ComingSoon.net had a rare opportunity to sit down with the legendary Chinese filmmaker, Zhang Yimou when he came to New York City for a brief visit a few months back.

His new film The Flowers of War moves forward in time from his previous war epics, which were set hundreds of years in China’s past, to the more recent atrocities committed by the Japanese during the invasion of Nanjing in 1937 at the beginning of World War II.

It also teams the prestigious Chinese director with a recent Oscar winner in Christian Bale, playing John Miller, an American mortician who gets caught in Nanjing during the Japanese invasion, forcing him to find shelter in a well-protected church where a group of teen schoolgirls are being kept in hiding from the invading soldiers hoping to claim them for their victory celebration.

It’s already been reported that Zhang’s latest movie is the most expensive film in Chinese history, and while it includes much of the cinematic artistry that’s made the filmmaker famous throughout the world, it also has some of the sensibilities of Western war movies and wartime romance dramas. It’s also the most English we’ve seen in any films from Zhang, roughly 50%, which didn’t prevent it from becoming his 7th film put forward by China for Oscar consideration.

(Note: the following interview was done via interpreter, so some of his responses may not be the most grammatically perfect.)

ComingSoon.net: There have been other recent movies about the invasion of Nanking so what was it about the novel or the story that made you interested in telling your own?
Zhang Yimou: I actually read the novel in 2007, the year before the Olympics, and I really liked it because it’s very different from the other movies. This is told from a 13-year-old girl’s perspective and a prostitute’s perspective. Because that perspective shows humanity, that’s what intrigued me to make the film. When I finished the novel, I had this imagery stuck in my head which was the last shot of the movie itself, which has the bombing and smoke as it’s background, but then you see a line of women emerging from this war zone and coming from inside the church, so that imagery was also the key that I made this movie.

CS: How did you get Christian Bale involved with starring in it? He obviously had just been nominated for an Oscar at the time and this should get a larger Western audience due to his involvement. Did he have an English script for his part?
Zhang: At the beginning, I gave the English script to Steven Spielberg, a friend of mine, and asked him who he thought would be good for the part and he made a few suggestions–Christian was one of them–and then later, I asked the producers David Lindley and Bill Kong, who all recommended him as well as other candidates. When I spoke with Christian, he showed the most enthusiasm towards this project and we clicked right away even though there was the language barrier, but we felt like we could work on the same page and have the same skills working together. That’s how I got Christian Bale. One element that brought us together is that he likes to fine-tune the characters throughout the whole script. He knows that a lot of directors probably don’t want to change the wording of the script, so he was asking me if I was willing to change that and I said, “This is how I like to work. I like to change things and make it better and better over time, maybe even literally a day before shooting for that scene.” Throughout the whole process, Christian literally helped to shape the John Miller character the way he is right now and make the character a better character.

CS: I’ve heard that about Christian from other directors, that he’s very involved in developing the script and characters, but how was it working with an American in another language? I believe this is the first time you’ve directed an American actor.
Zhang: Before shooting, I actually spent tons of time with Christian, talking about the script and what has to be changed. Of course, the plot and the structure of the characters but fine-tuning the details, and literally two hours before shooting every day, we got together again just adding more details or editing out details, and that was pretty much the process. Just a lot of communication back and forth months before the production takes place and every single day before we start the scene. Christian is very humble and always asked what I wanted and then he gave me a few options as well to let me choose from.

CS: What about dealing with the issue of having known actors like Christian Bale who everyone will know and mixing them with unknown actors while trying to find the best cast?
Zhang: Actually, the older actresses that played prostitutes, they know Christian really well because they saw Batman and his previous works, so they were really nervous on the film set working with him because they knew how big a star he was. But eventually over time, he gets along with people and they don’t get as nervous as they do in the beginning. As for the younger girls, who are 12 and 13, they had no idea who he was, because they really hadn’t seen that many movies, maybe none, and they were too young to watch many of his movies anyway, so they just thought he was an American hanging out on the set. They would tease him, they’d play and make faces with him, they laugh with him, and were very relaxed around him. In terms of the crews, we definitely had to make an English call sheet, which we’d never done before and nobody knew how that was done, and Christian doesn’t even look at call sheets, but we had to make it. Also, calling out the orders had to be done in English like “Action,” “back to 1,” “roll camera, roll sound,” all those sorts of things which also were challenging for me because I had never done that before, but I learned every phase and I said it on set so everyone understood. Actually, we were so used to the English phrases after Christian left that we were still using English phrases for another few months.

Head on over to ComingSoon.net for the rest of the interview.