Dying to Survive
我不是药神
China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 115 mins.
Director: Wen Muye 文牧野.
Rating: 8/10.
Emotionally involving, richly drawn black comedy-cum-drama is a hit for all involved.
STORY
Shanghai, 2002. Cheng Yong (Xu Zheng) runs a small sidestreet shop selling Indian “god oil” (an aphrodisiac lubricant) but business is slim. Divorced, and having to care for his aged father, he regularly sees his young son Cheng Xiaoshu (Zhu Gengyou), over whom he dotes, but is resisting the attempts of his wealthy ex-wife (Gong Beibi) to take their son to live abroad. A neighbour introduces Cheng Yong to Lv Shouyi (Wang Chuanjun), who has chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and like many patients cannot afford the high cost of the Swiss-manufactured drug Gleevec. Lv Shouyi offers to pay Cheng Yong RMB30,000 if he would agree to smuggle in a much cheaper Indian copycat drug that is illegal in China. Cheng Yong eventually agrees as he needs the money to pay for Gleevec for his own father. In Mumbai a supplier (Bharat Bhatia) agrees to test Cheng Yong with 100 bottles to see if he can sell them. Initially, no one will buy the Indian drug, despite the fact that it’s seven times cheaper than Gleevec; but then Cheng Yong is introduced to Liu Sihui (Tan Zhuo), a single mother who works as a pole dancer and has a daughter with CML. Liu Sihui runs various patient groups and persuades them to buy the drug. Cheng Yong also takes on board English-speaking priest Liu (Yang Xinming) to deal with the Mumbai supplier, as well as Peng Hao (Zhang Yu), a penniless young ruffian from the countryside with CML. Business booms, but then a representative (Li Naiwen) of Gleevec’s Swiss manufacturer Novartis makes an official complaint and the case is handed to young local policeman Cao Bin (Zhou Yimwei), who just happens to be Cheng Yong’s former brother-in-law. After Novartis lowers the price of Gleevec by a third, and Cheng Yong has his premises raided, he finally decides – to the disappointment of his partners – to sell the illegal franchise to a well-known fake-drug peddler, Zhang Changlin (Wang Yanhui). A year later, Cheng Yong is running a successful and legitimate textile business. But he then hears that Zhang Changlin has abandoned the franchise and that Lv Shouyi is dying.
REVIEW
After a miscast lead role in the increasingly silly psychothriller A or B 幕后玩家 (2018), popular Shanghai-born comedian Xu Zheng 徐峥 (Lost in Hong Kong 港囧, 2015) finds his feet again as an actor-producer with Dying to Survive 我不是药神, a black comedy-cum-drama centred on the problem of over-priced foreign medicine in Mainland China. A commercially canny blend of character humour and hot-button social issues, the film also marks a powerful feature debut by Beijing Film Academy graduate Wen Muye 文牧野, who brings a restless, hand-held style to the story that mitigates the story’s potentially grandstanding side. Mainland audiences have responded enthusiastically: in less than a week the movie is already heading towards a huge RMB2 billion, including extensive previews. [Final tally after two months was RMB3.10 billion.]
A member of Dirty Monkeys Studio run by director Ning Hao 宁浩 (Crazy Stone 疯狂的石头, 2006; No Man’s Land 无人区, 2013), Wen previously made several shorts – including Battle 斗争, 2013, and his graduation film Requiem 安魂曲, 2014, the latter also centred on healthcare costs – as well as contributing the first, Prague-set story in the portmanteau feature Cities in Love 恋爱中的城市 (2015). That rather throwaway anecdote about a tourist and a petty crook in the Czech capital gave no hint that Wen was capable of something like Dying, though the latter reunites him with d.p. Wang Boxue 王博学 (Blind Way 盲•道, 2017; Hanson and the Beast 二代妖精之今生有幸, 2017) and editor Zhu Lin 朱琳 (Blind Massage 推拿, 2014; Nuts 奇葩朵朵, 2018), who bring a realistic street look and tight dramatic focus to potentially sprawling material.
Much credit is also due to the writing team for the character depth that drives the story and gives it so much emotional depth. The original script, penned by first-timer Han Jia’nv 韩家女 in 2015, was inspired by a CCTV-1 documentary about Lu Yong 陆勇, a leukaemia patient who had been arrested in 2014 for using a cheaper Indian substitute for the prohibitively expensive Swiss drug Gleevec (and letting other people know how to get it) but whose sentence was dropped following a public outcry and the fact he hadn’t done it for personal gain. Han showed her first draft to Ning, who brought in Wen and Zhong Wei 钟伟 to develop the screenplay, adding a black-comedy element to give the film wider appeal as well as broadening the character base with the English-speaking priest, country ruffian and single-mother pole dancer who all team up with the main protagonist, here re-named Cheng Yong 程勇. Wen himself changed the protagonist from being a leukaemia sufferer to a smalltime businessman, to strengthen the drama. It was Ning who showed the screenplay to his old pal Xu and convinced him to come on board as star and co-creative producer, via the latter’s company Joy Leader.
The finished result – under the title 我不是药神 (literally, “I’m Not a God of Medicine”) – is much more than just a story about drug smuggling; in fact, the smuggling forms only a tiny part of the plot, even though it gives a convenient excuse for some scenes in Mumbai at a time when Bollywood films are very trendy in the Mainland. By changing the main character from a leukaemia sufferer to an embattled entrepreneur who’s just looking for a way out of a cash hole, the film is basically another comedy-drama about the Mainland’s current rush-to-money ethos and how a cynical businessman develops a conscience. The casting of Xu – and the mass of beautifully observed black humour about everyday Mainland life in the first half – prevents the film from becoming just a platform for social issues; even at the end, when it looks like towing a politically useful line for the country’s current healthcare reform programme, it delivers at a simple emotional level. (And for anyone who wants to know, the real Lu Yong’s case actually did change things, as underlined by a final intertitle.)
Xu, 46, is in his element as the protagonist, a down-on-his-luck hawker of Indian aphrodisiac oil who has a sick father’s hospital bills to pay, an aggressive ex-wife to fend off, and a young son to maintain contact with. For him, the offer to help import some anti-leukaemia copycat drugs from India is just an excuse to make a quick RMB30,000 to pay off his landlord (producer Ning in a brief cameo) and other debts. As he screams at sufferers, “I don’t want to save the world, I want to make money! Life is money!” With his gift for sly humour drawn from everyday travails, Xu is in his element; it’s difficult to think of any other actor who could have handled the role. But he’s backed up by a fine ensemble, each of whom has backstories that could have fuelled whole movies: much under-rated actress Tan Zhuo 谭卓 (Mr. Tree Hello! 树先生, 2011; The Mahjong Box 三缺一, 2016) as a pole dancer with a sick daughter, veteran character actor Yang Xinming 杨新鸣 (the petrol station boss in No Man’s Land) as a crafty priest, Zhang Yu 章宇 as a blank-faced, penniless ruffian, and Wang Yanhui 王砚辉 (the company chairman in A or B) as a bluff drug-peddler with a sinister edge.
Xu’s best teaming, however, is with actor-presenter Wang Chuanjun 王传君 as the leukaemia patient who gets him into the business and finally triggers his moral quandary: totally believable as both a chancer and a sufferer, Wang mirrors Xu’s comic/dramatic performance from the other side of the health divide. As a cop who suddenly starts to get pangs of conscience, second-billed Zhou Yiwei 周一围 (the psycho gangster in Blood of Youth 少年, 2016; the journalist in black comedy The Insanity 你好，疯子！, 2016) is lower-key in a role that just skirts being a convenient cliche.
Though set in Shanghai in the early 2000s, the film was actually shot in Nanjing, with no loss of credibility.
CREDITS
Presented by Dirty Monkeys Studio (CN), Beijing Joy Leader Culture Communication (CN), Huanxi Media Group (CN), Beijing Jingxi Culture & Tourism (CN), Beijing Qiankun Xingyu Cultural Development (CN), Beijing Tangde International Film Culture (CN).
Script: Han Jia’nv, Zhong Wei, Wen Muye. Photography: Wang Boxue. Editing: Zhu Lin. Music: Huang Chao. Art direction: Li Miao. Sound: Fu Kang. Action: Chen Chunkun. Visual effects: Ryan D. Romero.
Cast: Xu Zheng (Cheng Yong), Zhou Yiwei (Cao Bin), Wang Chuanjun (Lv Shouyi), Tan Zhuo (Liu Sihui), Zhang Yu (Peng Hao/Huang Mao/Yellow Hair), Yang Xinming (Liu, priest), Wang Yanhui (Zhang Changlin), Li Naiwen (Zhao Lizhong, Novartis representative), Gong Beibi (Cao, Cheng Yong’s ex-wife), Wang Jiajia (Lv Shouyi’s wife), Jia Chenfei (policeman), Ning Hao (landlord), Bharat Bhatia (Indian supplier), Zhu Gengyou (Cheng Xiaoshu, Cheng Yong’s son).
Release: China, 30 Jun 2018 (limited), 6 Jul 2018 (general).