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Conversations with Peter Chan Ho Sun
The Warlords 2/8 - Page 9
Info
Author(s) : Thomas Podvin
Date : 27/10/2008
Type(s) : Interview
 
 Intext Links  
People :
Jet Li
Movies :
The Warlords
 
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Page 8 : In Retrospect
 
Next >
Page 10 : Censoring


Making Jet Li cries
HKCinemagic : It’s good to say that in advance, because most people will be expecting a wu xia pian and they might be disappointed when they see the film.
Peter Chan : I don’t know whether it’s better to talk about this in advance or it’s better they find out by themselves. Because if you tell them in advance, we just over-paid Jet Li! We paid Jet Li to see a kung fu actor. I am just saying that Jet Li is Jet Li because of the fans that come to see his kung fu. He’s worth that much because of the fans. It’s not that he doesn’t fight in the film, but he is not fighting more than he is acting. He’s acting a lot more than he’s fighting. We have about 30 minutes of action sequences in the film. In a 2h10 movie. It is not an hour fighting, but it is fighting without superhuman power. It’s real, no wire, no flying, no jumping. It’s very real and authentic. I think it’s more real than even Gladiator. Even Gladiator looked real from a Chinese perspective.
Violence
HKCinemagic : You mean The Warlords looks real, like visually real or the violence looks real?
Peter Chan : The violence is also very real. It’s quite violent. I am not a very manipulative director, I do manipulate on emotion, but not on violence. In China, we distinguish ‘hot weapons’ [re bing qi热兵器], firearms, from ‘cold weapons’ [leng bing qi冷兵器], knives and swords. In the middle of The Warlords, there is a nineteen-minute battle sequence that is the cold weapon answer to Saving Private Ryan’s Normandy beach scene, which is the quintessential ‘hot weapon’ scene in terms of realistic portrayal of war. This kind of very graphic style that gives real sensations of a battlefield is what the action in my film is all about. [Yet] it’s not like I just want to show the violence because it’s great to see blood. I would not shoot a pool of guts coming out of someone like Spielberg did. I thought that even that was too much. The Warlords is not gory and it’s not like unnecessary [violence].
HKCinemagic : I guess there are also some concerns with the censorship in China for very violent movies.
Peter Chan : That has always been a concern but I really don’t make things that way. I think you chose the subject matter and you know it’s violent so you just go and make it. The thing is there are heads being chopped off, there are knifes shoved and stuck between the ribs. And there is the shot I’ve always talked about even before I shoot the movie; the camera needs to be one of the fighters. So the camera needs to constantly be moving, and we should feel that the cameraman would get shot at anytime. It’s like war journalism.
HKCinemagic : It’s like a subjective camera.
Peter Chan : A very subjective camera. And it feels like the cameraman could die anytime and the camera should be running behind comrades, and then a spear should not come in your face but come from out of your friend back to your face. Then the spear was pulled and got stuck in, that kind of stuff. And you should hear the bones cracking. That’s what it should be. If we are not selling kung fu or martial art, on a selling level, you could say that this kind of very graphic real sensation that you feel in a battle field is what this film’s action is about.
 
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