Hachiko

忠犬八公

China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 124 mins.

Director: Xu Ang 徐昂.

Rating: 8/10.

A high-quality heartwarmer, inspired by a true story of canine loyalty, that features strong lead playing by Feng Xiaogang and Chen Chong [Joan Chen].

STORY

Chongqing city, central China, the present day. Li Jiazhen (Chen Chong) arrives back in her native city after a decade away and is met by her son Chen Xinqiao (Bai Jugang), his wife (Zhong Ailin) and their baby. The city has changed enormously since Li Jiazhen was last there, with the cross-river cablecar that her late husband used to take every day to work now just a tourist attraction. For old times’ sake they take the cablecar to the station on the north side of the river – where Li Jiazhen recognises the family’s old dog, Batong. (Fifteen years earlier, her husband Chen Jingxiu [Feng Xiaogang], an unambitious associate professor of engineering at a college across the river, had been on a work excursion with colleagues in the countryside when their bus had almost killed a puppy. Chen Jingxiu had taken it back to his family’s home in the city’s hillside alleyways and had tried to hide it from his wife, who had a pathological dislike of dogs since being bitten when young. However, Li Jiazhen had soon found out and demanded he sell it, putting up a notice at the small convenience shop she ran outside their home. At one point she had given it away to a dog-meat butcher. After repeatedly turning down prospective buyers as unsuitable, the mild-mannered Chen Jingxiu had finally put his foot down and said he was keeping the dog, to whom he had become very attached. He had named it Batong 八筒, after the tile with eight circles in majiang, his wife’s favourite game. A year later, Batong was fully grown and a member of the family, even included in the wedding photo of Chen Jingxiu’s daughter, Chen Xiaozhou [Huang Chutong], and her husband Ming [Yang Bo]. Every day Batong had followed Chen Jingxiu to the cablecar station and had greeted him there when he came home. Chen Xinqiao, who had been working from home for a Beijing-based web-design company, had announced he was moving to the capital to work in the company’s office. Chen Jingxiu had overslept the following morning, and missed seeing his son off; but Batong had made it to the station platform on his behalf. Six months later, in 2004, Batong had gone missing. He was found waiting at the cablecar station as usual, not knowing the station was closed for maintenance. Later, Chen Jingxiu had gone away on a research trip for a couple of days, but suddenly had a heart attack on a boat and died. Li Jiazhen and Batong had both missed him in their own ways, the wife with no one to cook for now she was alone, the dog still going to the cablecar station every evening. In Mar 2006 the old family house had came under a demolition order. Li Jiazhen had moved to live with her son in Beijing and given Batong to her daughter and son-in-law who still lived in Chongqing. But despite their attempts to keep him in their flat, Batong had repeatedly escaped and waited outside the cablecar station.) Now, 10 years later, old and weak, Batong meets Li Jiazhen again, and accompanies her on a visit to the family’s ruined old home.

REVIEW

Beautifully written, played and mounted, the man-and-his-dog light drama Hachiko 忠犬八公 is a high-quality heartwarmer. The true story, of an Akita dog who waited outside Tokyo’s Shibuya railway station for almost 10 years (1925-35) for his late master to come home, has been used for several films, and this latest version provides some rich acting opportunities for two veterans – Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚, 65, better known as a director (Be There or Be Square 不见不散, 1998; Assembly 集结号, 2007; Youth 芳华, 2017) but also an occasional actor in his own and others’ films, and 62-year-old actress Chen Chong 陈冲 [Joan Chen], in the scene-stealing role of the man’s hot-blooded wife. Only the second feature film by Beijing-born playwright Xu Ang 徐昂, 44 – following 12 Citizens 十二公民 (2014), his engrossing adaptation of the classic US teleplay Twelve Angry Men (1954) – it took RMB286 million on release this spring, a solid amount considering its low-key attractions.

The first film version of the story was Hachiko monogatari ハチ公物语 (1987), directed by Koyama Seijiro 神山征二郎 from a script by Shindo Kaneto 新藤兼人, himself a noted director in his own right (Onibaba 鬼婆, 1964). This version stuck closely to the facts and was the top-grossing local film of the year. Other versions are very free, mainly centring on the key theme of canine loyalty, and are set in the present and re-located: the US production Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009), directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Richard Gere, and Tommy (2015), a Telugu-language Indian version directed by Raja Vannem Reddy. Xu’s version credits Shindo’s original script in the end titles but bears little relation to it, moving the story to Chongqing city in central China and making the story not only about a man and his dog one but also a throughly convincing light drama about a Chinese family.

Xu’s script, with Chongqing-born writer Zhang Hansi 张寒寺, Li Liangwen 李亮文 (horror Murcielago 蝙蝠别墅, 2013) and TVD writer Li Lin 李林, deliberately takes its time in setting up the story, drawing the family of four and their home life in some detail before and just after the puppy is introduced. The father (Feng) is an unambitious professor of engineering who’s the polar opposite of his hot-bloodied, naggy wife (Chen); where she is local-born, he’s a stolid northerner who claims still not to understand some of the local dialect spoken by his wife. Thus, his attraction to the dog, which grows slowly, is partly a cry for companionship by someone away from his roots. It’s not until almost the 50-minute point where Batong – named after the eight-circles tile in majiang, his wife’s favourite hobby with neighbours – becomes a full member of the family, with no objections from anyone. And when the son (likeably played by actor-singer Bai Jugang 白举纲, 29) goes off to Beijing to work for a web-design company, it’s the dog that ends up seeing him off at the station rather than his father, who oversleeps that morning and hasn’t enough puff to make it.

Events like this would never have had the emotional force they do without the film’s careful setting up at the beginning. The only family member who seems short-changed by the script is the father’s daughter (played okay by Hong Kong-born newcomer Huang Chutong 黄楚桐, 26, a fashion photographer), who’s married off early on and moves out of the house; she hardly emerges as full a character as the son, despite returning to the story in its closing stages. Decorating the edges is a good number of supports all colourfully drawn: the family’s immediate neighbours in the back alleys on Chongqing’s hillsides, the father’s teaching colleagues at work (with Li Ou 李欧 as the perceptive college head), and regulars like the stall-owner (reliable character actor Qian Bo 钱波) outside the cablecar station where the father collects his paper every day and gives it to Batong to carry home – another small detail that returns powerfully in the film’s closing minutes.

Most notably in the Beijing street-hoodlum movie Mr. Six 老炮儿 (2015, dir. Guan Hu 管虎), but also in other films, Feng has shown himself to be a simpatico actor with a wryly comic screen presence. In Hachiko he’s very low-key – all spectacles, gentle gait and quietly spoken – a long way from his bull-headed Mr. Six. Most of the time he yields the screen to Chen, who’s entirely convincing as a hot-blooded local speaking in dialect, though when he does put his foot down everyone listens. The two veterans’ chemistry is palpable, and drives the movie as much as the father-dog story, with Chen movingly taking over when Feng is absent from the screen. It’s a real tour de force by the Shanghai-born actress, and among the best in her career. A whole thesis could be written on how Chinese dog movies bring out the best in some actors, including Hong Kong’s Ren Dahua 任达华 [Simon Yam] in Little Q 小Q (2019) and Mainlander Ge You 葛优 in Cala, My Dog! 卡拉是条狗 (2003).

Like 12 Citizens, the film is all centred on performance and dialogue, though it has a much more cinematic look due to being relocated to one of China’s most dramatically sited cities astride the Yangtze. But though Chongqing is the movie’s third main star, it’s specifically the Chongqing of a few years ago, when the cablecar, as one character says, took people to work across the river and wasn’t just a tourist attraction. From the delicately textured widescreen photography by d.p. He Shan 何山 (Wrath of Silence 暴烈无声, 2017, and Wisdom Tooth 日光之下, 2019, plus hospital hostage drama Fireflies in the Sun 误杀II, 2021) to the lovingly detailed but natural period design by Lu Wei 鲁伟 (Savage 雪暴, 2018; The Winners 大赢家, 2020) and Sun Qi 孙琪, Hachiko is also steeped in nostalgia for a simpler age, though it also acknowledges, like most Mainland productions, that nothing remains the same and modernisation is not a bad thing. The warm but unsoupy score by Taiwan-born Zhong Zonghao 钟宗豪 (Break through the Darkness 扫黑 决战, 2021; Almost Love 遇见你, 2022) and seamless editing by the experienced Zhu Lin 朱琳 (amongst her best work) both help the film’s beautiful, unforced flow. The production’s only false step is in the final minutes, with a fantasy sequence that is unnecessary – and unworthy of the film’s qualities.

The original dog’s Japanese name was Hachiko, which roughly means “Sir (-ko) Eight (hachi)”, and he was known by locals as Chuken Hachiko 忠犬ハチ公 (“loyal hound Hachiko”). The film’s Chinese title, 忠犬八公, directly replicates that.

CREDITS

Presented by iQiyi Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Beijing Lajin Film (CN). Produced by Beijing Lajin Film (CN), iQiyi Pictures (Beijing) (CN).

Script: Zhang Hansi, Xu Ang, Li Liangwen, Li Lin. Original script: Shindo Kaneto. Photography: He Shan. Editing: Zhu Lin. Music: Zhong Zonghao. Art direction: Lu Wei, Sun Qi. Styling: Kong Jinyuan. Sound: Li Danfeng, Si Zhonglin. Visual effects: Guo Jiayou, Pan Yushan (Genesis Film, Tairundishan Cultural Communication). Animal wrangling: Rolling On Studio. Animal direction: Hao Shuai. Executive directors: Yang Xiaoqing, Kong Jun.

Cast: Feng Xiaogang (Chen Jingxiu), Chen Chong [Joan Chen] (Li Jiazhen), Bai Jugang (Chen Xinqiao), Huang Chutong (Chen Xiaozhou), Yang Bo (Ming, Chen Xiaozhou’s husband), Xue Xuchun (Xiaoli, porter from countryside), Qian Bo (Ma, station stall owner), Liu Jun (Mrs. Zhou), Zhang Lei (cablecar station manager), Zhong Ailin (Chen Xinqiao’s wife), Gu Haiyan, Du Shimei, Liao Jiajun (majiang players), Liu Shiliu (marinated-meat stall owner), Li Ou (college head), Xu Qing (Ai, college teacher).

Release: China, 31 Mar 2023.