After Battling Censors, "No Man's Land" Finally Premieres

2013/12/3 10:28:00 (Beijing Time)   Source:WSJ    By:Lilian Lin

A Chinese film that has been battling censors for nearly four years is finally getting its theatrical release this week.
 
“No Man’s Land,” a thriller directed by Ning Hao originally set to hit China’s theaters in early 2010, is slated for release Tuesday by state-run China Film Group after undergoing two major revisions.

Mr. Ning, who directed the 2006 surprise hit “Crazy Stone,” a low-budget dark comedy that raked in more than 20 million yuan ($3.3 million) at the box office, said this time around, he tried to make the film less violent to get past the censors and to make the theme clearer.
 
“I understand that we need to conform to the current rules,” Mr. Ning told China Real Time last week in Beijing.
 
“After all, kids may watch it as well, and we need to take all the audiences into consideration,” he said, referring to the absence of a ratings system in China’s film market.
 
The film tells of the adventures of a lawyer who drives to the deserts of China’s far west and on his way back encounters a multitude of characters, from strippers to smugglers to murderers.
 
“The film’s story is like ‘Journey to the West,’” Mr. Ning said, referring to the classic Chinese novel about a pilgrimage made by a Buddhist monk along with his disciples. The group, like the lead character in the film, encounter many evil characters along the route.
 
Mr. Ning said he and his team majorly revised the film twice, though local media reported that it was pulled from theaters’ schedules six times after wrapping up production four years ago. He said his busy schedule contributed to delays in the revisions, thus postponing the release date. He also said he softened the tone of the film’s ending to make it “return to the mainstream society.”
 
“The original ending was too cold, and I didn’t want the audience to feel like I slammed the door at their faces and screamed at them to get out,” he said.
 
The film has been hyped with an “expectation score” of 8.6 on Mtime.com, a major film portal, with many users saying they are eager to see it.
 
Mr. Ning said he got the idea for “No Man’s Land” while shooting “Mongolia Ping Pong,” a film about a Mongolian boy’s discovery of the origins of ping pong, on location for six months at the China-Mongolia border in 2004

“When one is trapped in a deserted place, the person’s animal nature will overtake its social nature,” he said. “It is interesting to see how a human will behave and choose in that situation.
 
“Though ‘Life of Pi’ came out first,” he added with a smile, referring to the Oscar-winning 2012 Ang Lee film about a boy stranded at sea alone on a boat with a tiger.
 
Mr. Ning said he was more concerned about how to make his film different from American movies than he was with getting it past the country’s censors.
 
“I am always trying to figure out how to catch and express China’s own national characteristics: something different from the American style.”
 
Despite his past success, he said he’s unconcerned with how well the film fares commercially, adding that he wouldn’t make more commercial films simply to capitalize upon the booming domestic market.
 
“If I want to make big money, I could have stayed at home and mined coals with my classmates who are now all billionaires,” said Mr. Ning, who is originally from northern China’s coal-abundant Shanxi province. “I just want to do something that I like.”

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