Guizi lai le (2000)

User Rating:

8.4/10   

Director:

Wen Jiang

Writers:

Wen Jiang (screenplay)
Wen Jiang (story)

Release Date:

14 March 2001 (France)

Genre:

Drama | War

Plot:

During the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant's home in a small town...

Plot Keywords:

Prisoner | Japanese | China | Satire | Decapitation

Awards:

6 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Wen Jiang	...	Ma Dasan
Yihong Jiang	...	Yu'er (as Hongbo Jiang)
Teruyuki Kagawa	...	Kosaburo Hanaya
Ding Yuan	...	Dong Hanchen
Zhijun Cong	...	Grandfather
Zi Xi	...	Liu Wang
Haibin Li	...	Me
Kenya Sawada	...	Inokichi Sakatsuka
Weidong Cai	...	Er Bozi
Lianmei Chen	...	Aunt
Yoshimoto Miyaji	...	Koji Nonomura
Qiang Chen	...	'One-Stroke' Liu
David Wu	...	Major Gao

Also Known As:

Devils on the Doorstep (International: English title)

Runtime:

139 min | France:162 min (Cannes Film Festival)

Country:

China

Language:

Mandarin | Japanese | English

Colour:

Black and White | Colour

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

South Korea:15 | France:U | Netherlands:16

Company:

Asian Union Film & Entertainment

Essential and historic Asian cinema

Do I feel late to the party on this one - how could I overlook this for the last 4 years? I was floored.

Watching "Devils on the Doorstep" reminded me of the first time I watched "seven samurai". Barring obvious comparisons such as being shot in black & white, using a combination of drama and comedy, and finishing it off with a startling ending, the movie's sense of time was fluid thanks to an excellent screenplay. Although the movie is lengthy, like many gems of Asian cinema, it was anything but a chore to watch it.

The plot is deceivingly simple, come alive thanks to Jiang's poetic directorial style. His characterization is succinct, but evocative, built up from his own personal memories. His vision of war has many ties to US cinema, with delirious, often hauntingly surreal, images of people trying to reconcile their own individual nature with that of being part of a collective.

I can see why Chinese censors would take offense to the film. China is painted as the victim that it is so often stereotyped as. However, with the country's continued objections against the Japanese glossing over wartime indiscretions, it could be seen as having nationalist overtones. I don't see the film as necessarily sympathetic to the Japanese: at the end of the movie, they are still the "devils". Additionally, when the plot is extrapolated outside of the film itself, the irony is of course that Japan was defeated by a powerful external force due to their brash political maneuvering.