Monk Comes Down the Mountain
道士下山
China/US, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D (China only), 119 mins.
Director: Chen Kaige 陈凯歌.
Rating: 6/10.
Sumptuous, all-star martial arts drama is holed by an episodic and untidy script.
STORY
Somewhere in central/southern China, Republican era. Orphan novice monk He Anxia (Wang Baoqiang) is sent by his Daoist master (Li Xuejian) to fend for himself in the outside world and learn about life and human nature. In a lakeside town he meets veteran doctor Cui Daoning (Fan Wei), himself a onetime Daoist monk, who takes him on as an assistant in his western surgery and herbal medicine shop. He Anxia discovers that Cui Daoning’s young wife Yuzhen (Lin Zhiling) is having an affair with his louche younger brother Cui Daorong (Wu Jianhao) but he keeps the news from Cui Daoning. Thinking Cui Daoning already knows, Yuzhen confesses to him one night and Cui Daoning dies from a heart attack. In revenge, He Anxia drowns Yuzhen and Cui Daorong in a pleasure boat on the lake. He Anxia seeks repentance from Rusong (Wang Xueqi), abbot of the Buddhist Guangming Temple. Back at the herbal medicine shop, he’s visited by taiji specialist Zhao Xinchuan (Chen Guokun), who’s learned the Nine Dragons technique from his veteran master Peng Qianwu (Yuan Hua). Jealous that Zhao Xinchuan wants to take over his taiji school, Peng Qianwu kills Zhao Xinchuan so his son Peng Qizi (Fang Zuming) can inherit it. The murder is secretly witnessed by He Anxia. When Peng Qizi goes to buy some medicine for his father, He Anxia tells him about the killing; the two bond but end up physically transformed when they share some powerful medicine. While trying to steal some money from a Daoist temple, they’re caught by a visiting disciple, Zhou Xiyu (Guo Fucheng), who was once a trainee at the Peng School but was almost killed by Peng Qianwu when Peng Qianwu’s dying father (Tian Zhuangzhuang) wanted Zhou Xiyu to inherit the family school as well as the secret Ape Strike technique. Since then, Zhou Xiyu has been hiding out. He Anxia later visits Zhou Xiyu, asking to be taken on as his disciple. While at the temple, he meets Wang Xiangning (Dong Qi), a supplicant who wants to bear her husband a son, and He Anxia falls for her. Meanwhile, Peng Qianwu visits Zhou Xiyu, demanding the Ape Strike manual; Zhou Xiyu and He Anxia manage to fight him off and Peng Qianwu reaches home, heavily wounded. Later that night, Zhou Xiyu is shot by an unknown assassin and before dying asks He Anxia to find an old friend, Boss Zha (Zhang Zhen), who is now a celebrated Beijing Opera performer. Zha, it turns out, has issues of his own to settle with Peng Qianwu.
REVIEW
Writer-director Chen Kaige’s second sally into the martial arts genre, Monk Comes Down the Mountain 道士下山, is in every way more engaging than his first, The Promise 无极 (2005) – largely thanks to a colourful cast led by goofy comedian Wang Baoqiang 王宝强 – but is undercut by a weak, episodic script devoid of any overall architecture. Where The Promise was a timeless wuxia drama, chock-full of visual effects and flights of fantasy, Monk is a more grounded, Republican era action-drama, and Chen seems only marginally more at home with the martial arts elements. Coming three years after his last movie – the superbly crafted modern-day drama Caught in the Web 搜索 (2012) which promised a new direction in the veteran film-maker’s career – Monk is a disappointment, showing Chen over-reaching himself (not for the first time) with material he’s not really comfortable with.
The screenplay is based on a 2007 novel by Xu Haofeng 徐浩峰, a drama director, film critic, Daoist scholar and martial artist who’s made a name for himself on the film festival circuit with two movies, The Sword Identity 倭寇的踪迹 (2011) and Judge Archer 箭士柳白猿 (2012), that tried to parallel on the big screen the academic, neo-modern style of his writings. Both films desperately needed an experienced co-director to bring off their quirky approach to the genre. Though Xu is not credited with any part in the production of Monk, the irony is that his material has finally got an experienced director but not the right one.
The original novel, set in 1930s Hangzhou, was another of Xu’s fresh spins on the traditional martial arts novel, with a young Daoist monk sent out into the big wide world and encountering a colourful cross-section of society of the time, from warlords, spies and government officials to taiji masters, monks from the western regions, Japanese warriors and opera performers. Chen’s adaptation, which is deliberately vague in its setting but looks more 1920s than 1930s, and set somewhere in central/southern China, disposes with the warlords, spies, other monks and Japanese, and simplifies some of the remaining characters – mainly a doctor who’s being cuckolded by his wife, an ambitious taiji master who’s out to get those who have crossed him, and a famous Beijing Opera performer.
As the monk who’s sent “down the mountain”, Wang (Blind Shaft 盲井, 2003; A Touch of Sin 天注定, 2013) immediately sets a light, jokey tone as an innocent abroad, underpinned by the comedian’s considerable martial arts skills learned in his youth. However, as likeable and physically skilful as Wang can be, Monk shows he’s essentially a character actor or (as in Lost in Thailand 人再囧途之泰囧, 2012) an ensemble lead, and can’t carry a film on his own – epecially one like Monk which is stuffed with some heavyweight names. After an okay start, Wang too often seems a guest in his own movie, despite an off-screen narrator who keeps reminding the audience about him.
The other problem is the script’s construction which, though based on episodic material in which an innocent learns about the world via an oddball collection of people, lacks the right architecture for a two-hour film. Neither episodic enough nor sufficiently tightly wound, it starts to unravel from the midpoint on, following a chaotically edited section in which the young monk falls for a pretty female supplicant (a part that could be entirely cut out) and then an increasingly complex plot involving various characters’ revenge. Though veteran Hong Kong stuntman Yuan Hua 元华 makes a suitably hissable villain (complete with twirly moustache), and Chen regular Wang Xueqi 王学圻 a classy Buddhist abbot, the other star-turns by the Greater China cast are very variable. In addition, all of the non-Mainland actors are re-voiced by professional dubbers.
Taiwan actress-model Lin Zhiling 林志玲 is okay as a cuckolding young wife; Hong Kong’s Guo Fucheng 郭富城 [Aaron Kwok] barely scrapes through as a master-fighter; Taiwanese American singer Wu Jianhao 吴建豪 [Van Ness Wu] is ludicrous as the wife’s louche lover with a beehive hair-do; and Fang Zuming 房祖名 [Jaycee Chan] only marginally less feeble as the villain’s weak son. It’s left to veteran Mainland comedian Fan Wei 范伟, as the wife’s husband, and Taiwan’s Zhang Zhen 张震, as a Beijing Opera performer, to bring some real stature to their roles, commensurate with Wang Xueqi’s performance.
As the script spins out of control in the second half, and finishes with an action climax that’s hardly memorable for such an ambitious film, one of the main points of Monk – its stress on Daoist as opposed to Buddhist values – gets trampled underfoot. The message has to be laid on with a trowel in a mountain-top coda full of inspirational music, visuals and words (“Only if you experience the good and evil of the world, its love, hate, kindness and enmity, is it possible to comprehend the true essence of the [Daoist] Way”). It all seems too much, too late – and also mildly old-fashioned film-making.
As well as for some of the performances, however, the film also rates an extra point for its production values. The eye-catching and varied design by Han Zhong 韩忠 (A Simple Noodle Story 三枪拍案惊奇, 2009) atmospherically catches an era of increasing westernisation in southern China, plus the costumes by Chen Tongxun 陈同勋 (Sacrifice 赵氏孤儿, 2010), both suitably showcased by the widescreen photography of Australian d.p. Geoffrey Simpson (Sleeping Beauty, 2011). However, the musical score by Africa-born, Hollywood-based world musician George Acogny, who appears to have replaced the originally announced Klaus Badelt (The Promise; Shanghai , 2010), is weak and generic.
Martial arts action relies heavily on wire work, which varies from genuinely graceful to just standard. But two sequences do stand out for their imaginative action design: a three-way set-to by Wang, Guo and Yuan, and Zhang fighting off hordes of police in a night street.
For the record, the film shot for seven months (early Feb to early Sep 2014), mostly in Xianghe county, Hebei province, as well as down south in Zhejiang province. It then appeared to have its release delayed because of the casting of Fang, who had subsequently been convicted of marijuana-related charges. In the event, he wasn’t cut out of the film but is only credited in the film’s end titles.
Though billed in the end credits as members of the doctor’s family, actors Wang Zhifei 王志飞 and Yan Bingyan 颜丙燕 are not visible in the final film.
CREDITS
Presented by New Classics Media (CN), Beijing 21st Century Shengkai Film (CN), Columbia Pictures (US). Produced by Beijing Bereal Picture (CN), Beijing 21st Century Shengkai Film (CN), New Classics Media (CN), Columbia Pictures (US).
Script: Chen Kaige, Zhang Ting. Novel: Xu Haofeng. Photography: Geoffrey Simpson. Editing: Wayne Wahrman. Music: George Acogny. Production design: Han Zhong. Costume design: Chen Tongxun. Sound: Gu Changning, Lon Bender. Action: Gu Xuanzhao. Visual effects: Andy Brown, Luke Hetherington (Animal Logic VFX).
Cast: Wang Baoqiang (He Anxia), Guo Fucheng [Aaron Kwok] (Zhou Xiyu), Zhang Zhen (Boss Zha), Lin Zhiling (Yuzhen, Cui Daoning’s wife), Fan Wei (Cui Daoning), Yuan Hua (Peng Qianwu), Wang Xueqi (Rusong, abbot of Guangming Temple), Wu Jianhao [Van Ness Wu] (Cui Daorong, Daoning’s younger brother), Chen Guokun (Zhao Xinchuan), Lin Xue [Lam Suet] (Zhao Liren, the police commissioner), Fang Zuming [Jaycee Chan] (Peng Qizi, Qianwu’s son), Li Xuejian (He Anxia’s mountain-top master), Tian Zhuangzhuang (Master Peng), Chen Hu (Guo Jing, Peng fighter at end), Dong Qi (Wang Xiangning), Chen Ran (Wanzhen, Zhao Liren’s concubine), Xie Ning (fat novice monk), Hou Tongjiang (old steward), Jiang Shimeng (mother who gives He Anxia money), Wang Yikang (her son), Jiang Dichen (circumcised boy), Huang fei (his father), Liang Chen (eyelids operation girl), Li Xinyan (paper cranes girl), Zhang Zipeng (young novice monk), Han Zhong (fortune-telling Daoist monk), Zhang Yilong (Sun Fengying), Han Che (narrator).
Release: China, 3 Jul 2015; US, tba.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 3 Sep 2015.)