Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe
九层妖塔
China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 3-D, 116 mins.
Director: Lu Chuan 陆川.
Rating: 6/10.
After a terrific opening, this period adventure-fantasy gradually loses its special mojo and becomes another monster VFX-athon.
STORY
Kunlun Mountains, western China, 1979. Following a series of mysterious archaeological discoveries across the country, starting in Aug 1934 and gathering pace in the 1970s – when a well-preserved female corpse was found in a tomb in Changsha, Hunan province, and massive skeletons were unearthed in the Kunlun Mountains and later investigated by Yang Jialin, a professor – the government sets up Bureau 749, headed by Han Jiuyang (Li Guangjie), which organises an expedition. Hu Bayi (Zhao Youting) is among the PLA soldiers working at the site, where he meets and falls for nurse Yang Ping (Yao Chen), the professor’s daughter. While the team is investigating the massive skeletons in Cave No. 3, a freak explosion takes place. Han Jiuyang asks for volunteers to re-enter the cave with the professor, and Hu Bayi and Yang Ping, along with the former’s company commander, Sun Quanfu (Wu Jun), join the team. On the other side of what looks like a giant animal graveyard, the team finds an exit facing directly at another mountain that is reputed to be the entry to the Demon World. Following the tracks of a giant prehistoric animal, the group is decimated first by killer bats and then by an avalanche. After sliding through underground caves, the only ones to survive are the professor, Yang Ping, Hu Bayi and Sun Quanfu. In a giant underground cavern they discover the legendary Nine Demon Tower 九层妖塔 that the professor has long been searching for. He tells Hu Bayi and Yang Ping to enter it together, to unlock the door to the Demon World; but when Sun Quanfu manages to stop the process, they are forced to flee in the chaos. The professor, Yang Ping and Hu Bayi end up in a lake, in which a prehistoric beast makes off with Yang Ping. The professor goes missing but Hu Bayi survives and returns to base. Three years later, Hu Bayi arrives back in Beijing with the other members of Bureau 749 but is whisked off at the station by the mysterious Wang (Li Chen) who offers him a research post at his Huaxia Library outside the city. At a fancy western restaurant Hu Bayi bumps into an old friend, Wang Kaixuan (Feng Li), who’s now working as a cabaret singer. In the library he finds books by the professor about his researches into the Demon World. Meanwhile, in a tomb in Sichuan province, archaeologists discover a living demon who looks exactly like Yang Ping and goes under the name of Shirley (Yao Chen); sent to Bureau 749, she’s put under the care of young scientist Chen Dong (Feng Xiaoyue). Three years later, in 1985, the professor re-emerges after losing consciousness in the lake six years ago and waking up in Shaanxi province, 2,000 kilometres away. His body, like Hu Bayi’s at Huaxia Library, is gradually mutating. Meanwhile, in the western China desert, some prehistoric monsters ravage the remote Oil Township.
REVIEW
China’s most eclectic middle-generation director, Lu Chuan 陆川, goes mainstream with frustratingly mixed results in Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe 九层妖塔, a period adventure-fantasy that plays like three different films spliced together. The opening 35 minutes, set during a secret archaeological dig soon after the Cultural Revolution, is a pitch-perfect cross between a monster movie and period love story, underscored by an atmosphere of government paranoia; the next 25 minutes is a still intriguing, though increasingly rocky, X-Files-like mystery, centred on the top-secret Bureau 749; and the final hour is a desert-set men-vs-monsters action extravaganza in which both the plot and most of the characters start falling to pieces as the visual effects go into overdrive.
Despite his reputation as a “festival” filmmaker, Lu, 45, has never boxed himself into an artsy corner. His previous four features have all been visually striking: The Missing Gun 寻枪 (2001) with its tricksy camerawork; Kekexili: Mountain Patrol 可可西里 (2004) with its Tibetan vistas; City of Life and Death 南京！南京！ (2009) with its use of B&W; The Last Supper 王的盛宴 (2012) with its tenebrous lighting and production design. All four also referenced genre cinema in various ways: Gun, crime films; Kekexili, Westerns; City, war movies; Supper, costume dramas. Chronicles is, therefore, not such a career swerve as it first appears, and when, for instance, the film serves up a series of stunning desert landscapes at the start of its final section, it’s worth remembering that we’ve been here before in a Lu film (Kekexili), though not in Gansu province, widescreen and 3-D.
The film is officially based on the 2006 novel Jingjue City 精绝古城, the first in a series of eight tomb-raiding novels collectively known as Ghost Blows Out the Light 鬼吹灯, written by Zhang Muye 张牧野 (under the penname Tianxia Bachang 天下霸唱) and first published online. In fact, Lu’s screenplay has only a passing acquaintance, if that, with the novel. Further complicating matters is the fact that, because the first four novels in the series were optioned by China Film, but the second four by Wanda Media, a “rival” (though differently plotted) movie, Mojin: The Lost Legend 寻龙诀 (2015), went into production at the same time, with a bigger budget and starrier cast, and opened only 11 weeks after Chronicles.
Ironically, Lu had found himself in a similar situation with Supper, which was beaten by a year to the post by a “rival” version of the same story, White Vengeance 鸿门宴 (2011). This time round, Lu was first out of the gate; but Chronicles and Mojin are very different movies. Apart from bearing little relation to its supposed source novel – beyond the period setting and some character names – Chronicles is more a monster adventure-fantasy than a tomb-raider adventure, whereas Mojin is much truer to the sub-genre. Chronicles ended up grossing a handsome RMB680 million, the highest of Lu’s career; however, Mojin, directed by Wuershan 乌尔善 (Painted Skin: The Resurrection 画皮II, 2012), took almost two-and-a-half times that amount.
Starting with a catalogue of mysterious happenings, and then opening with a spot-on parody of 1960s/70s-type political musicals that cleverly morphs into a more natural style of acting, the opening half hour is a superb miniature that promises a light-hearted and intelligent riff on an established genre. As a top secret government body, Bureau 749, excavates a cave in the Kunlun Mountains (a range that’s rich in magic and myth for the Chinese), the film slides effortlessly between a period parody (set in 1979, just after the Cultural Revolution) and a monster fantasy, with the hero falling for the professor’s daughter and so on. Lu juggles copious VFX with more personal moments, and his two leads, Taiwan’s Zhao Youting 赵又廷 [Mark Chao] and Mainland comedienne Yao Chen 姚晨 – last seen together in Caught in the Web 搜索 (2012) – show an easy, low-key chemistry that fits the offbeat approach.
Things start going wobbly in the mid-section, set three years later in Beijing, where Zhao’s character has been whisked away by the mysterious head of a research library, Yao’s has disappeared, and Bureau 749 is still beavering away at what everything means. Instead of developing the film’s X-Files-like thread, the story basically hangs fire, with extra characters introduced and existing ones put on hold. By the time Yao’s character re-appears, and the plot tortuously relocates itself to China’s western desert for a VFX-athon of men vs. monsters, the film has completely lost the special flavour of its opening. Though the effects in this final section are good enough, there’s nothing left to emotionally bind the characters together, and the love story between Zhao and Yao’s characters is already DOA.
Character structure has been an intermittent problem in Lu’s career – most notably in Supper – and here it’s especially notable after such a strong start. Not the most expressive of actors at the best of times, Zhao spends the second half of the film with a weird hippy hairdo and a bemused expression as he constantly asks “why?”. Yao, a fine actress who too rarely gets big-screen roles worthy of her talent, is undercut by a script that ditches her in the middle after an interesting start and in the second half only requires her to look flashing-eyed and mysterious. As a Bureau 749 scientist in period spectacles, Anglo-Chinese actor Feng Xiaoyue 凤小岳 [Rhydian Vaughan] makes little impression and is consistently out-acted by guest star Li Guangjie 李光洁 (Sky Fighters 歼十出击, 2011) as his hard-jawed boss. Lighter supporting roles – a staple of the genre – are filled okay by Wu Jun 吴军 as a comic PLA company commander, Feng Li 冯粒 as a cabaret singer-cum-Elvis impersonator, and Tang Yan 唐嫣 as a girly Bureau 749 member, though the way in which Feng and Tang’s characters are introduced into the plot is clumsy.
Those aren’t the only weak moments in Lu’s screenplay, which, after the opening half-hour, has no clear sense of narrative direction. Zhao’s character spends a lot of time catching up with things the audience already knows, and the cross-cutting between him in a mysterious research library and his erstwhile colleagues at Bureau 749 doesn’t advance the story much, let alone help to build atmosphere or tension. Back story is delivered every now and then in huge chunks of dialogue, though the basic plot of monsters being unleashed from the Demon World is very simple. By the time all the characters are re-assembled in the western desert – by now a familiar location for Mainland action blockbusters – there’s so many unexplained plot-holes that the filmmakers seem to just give up and wheel on the visual effects.
Even when nothing much is happening, Chronicles always looks good, thanks to eye-catching widescreen photography by Cao Yu 曹郁 (Kekexili; City) that’s equally rich in period interiors or landscape spectacle, and the burnished production design by Lin Mu 林木 (Design of Death 杀生, 2012; Beijing Love Story 北京爱情故事, 2014). Scoring by Denmark’s Jesper Kyd, who’s worked extensively on video games, is just okay in a generic way. The film’s Chinese title is the name of the underground tower that is the gate of the Demon World.
CREDITS
Presented by China Film (CN), Dream Author Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Le Vision Pictures (Beijing) (CN). Produced by Dream Author Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Beijing Global Yoodoo Films (CN).
Script: Lu Chuan. Novel: Tianxia Bachang [Zhang Muye]. Photography: Cao Yu. Editing: Yu Dong, Teng Yun. Music: Jesper Kyd. Production design: Lin Mu. Styling: Lin Mu, Li Zhou, Xander Zhou. Sound: Wen Bo. Action: Chen Jiafu. Special effects: Cai Kuiguang. Visual effects: John Sheils, Michael Grobe (Dexter Studios, Prime Focus World, Bosc, VHQ). Executive direction: Bao Yinfei, Cheng Hao.
Cast: Zhao Youting [Mark Chao] (Hu Bayi), Yao Chen (Yang Ping/Shirley), Feng Xiaoyue [Rhydian Vaughan] (Chen Dong), Li Chen (Wang, library head), Tang Yan (Cao Weiwei), Feng Li (Wang Kaixuan), Wang Qingxiang (Yang Jialin, professor), Wu Jun (Sun Quanfu, Hu Bayi’s company commander), Wang Deshun (An Liman), Li Guangjie (Han Jiuyang, Bureau 749 head), Xiao Wenli, Lifeng Muhan (female soldiers), Liu Yilin (Tang Xiaoyuan), Li Shengda (Li, commander), Sun Jianfei (Han Jiuyang’s assistant), Yan Ge (nurse), Yu Jingtian (female singer), Xu Honghui (qigong master), Si Ligeng (Hao Aiguo, Bureau 749 member), Li Jiawen (Sa Dipeng, Bureau 749 member), He Jiaxuan (researcher), Xu Lingyue (researcher in library), Wang Ya’nan (teacher), Zuo Feng (magician), Zhao Meirong (female announcer), Tang Yong, Wang Yuxian (Oil Town theatre couple), Hua Duo (young Yang Ping), Li Zhen (researcher at Bureau 749), Chen Jin, Wang Xinjun, Li Jing, Chen Tingjia, Jiaoshou Yi Xiaoxing, Gao Yuxi.
Release: China, 30 Sep 2015.
(Read review of Mojin: The Lost Legend here: https://sino-cinema.com/2016/03/14/review-mojin-the-lost-legend/.)