Our Brando's moment in the Sun

Jiang Wen, named by Time Magazine as China's Marlon Brando, says his third directorial work - The Sun Also Rises (Taiyang Zhaochang Shengqi), is not a story he could describe in words.

The film, which Jiang directs, co-writes and acts in, comprises four different stories named Madness, Amour, Rifle and Dream. But China's gruffest actor and boldest director says he could not explain what kind of stories they are. "For me, film is a medium to express what language, music or painting cannot," he said in a press release on Sunday. "If a film can be explained in language or other art forms, I don't see the need to tell it on film."

The different ways in which the cast see the story add to the ambiguity. Joan Chen says it is her Roman Holiday, Hong Kong star Anthony Wong says it is a wild erotic piece, while in the eyes of Jaycee Chan - son of Jackie Chan - it is an action picture.

Jiang says he named the film after Hemingway's novel to pay tribute to the author. The brief introduction on the film's official website is not much of a help in understanding what the story is all about.

The trailer shows a Shangri-La-like village, a Southeast Asian-style school, large tracts of the Gobi desert, and a land covered in grass and flowers. The trailer is a visually shocking mix and match, combining scenes of a crazy woman shouting in the snow, a boy jumping on an island, and a baby surrounded by a sea of colorful flowers.

The characters include a middle-aged doctor played by Joan Chen, who seems to engage the attention of a teen boy played by Jaycee Chan. The relationship between the doctor and the characters of Wong and Jiang seem rather complicated.

For a scene showing a new-born lying on rail tracks surrounded by flowers, Jiang used his own 11-month-old. His wife, Zhou Yun, a 24-year-old rising actress, gave birth halfway through the shooting of the film. Jiang denies revising the script to accommodate Zhou's pregnancy. He says Zhou's character was supposed to deliver a baby in the original script.

Joe Hisaishi, the internationally-acclaimed Japanese composer behind the beautiful melodies created with Hayao Miyazaki and Takeshi Kitano, takes charge of the music.

Jiang's Devils on the Doorstep (Guizi Laile) about the Japanese occupation of a Chinese village in the 1930s, won the Grand Prix (second place) at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. Sun will be screened at this year's Venice Festival, which runs from August 29 to September 8. The film will be released in China on September 21.

(China Daily 07/17/2007 page20)