Forever ambiguous

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-05 07:54

The best way to experience Peking Opera, or Italian opera for that matter, is in a theater. Nothing beats the sound of musical instruments and the human voice in an acoustic environment.

To reach a wider audience, however, operas need a helping hand. Strangely, the movie theater, an erstwhile rival that drove opera away from the center stage, could be reformatted as its savior.

In 2006, the Metropolitan Opera in New York began to broadcast a series of performances live via satellite into movie houses around the world, especially those in North America. For the 2006-07 season, a total of 324,000 tickets were sold. During my visit to Houston I bought two of these tickets - for The First Emperor and I Puritani. I couldn't say it was just like watching a live opera, but it was the closest I could think of.

Forever ambiguous

The very first film in China's cinematic history is a clip of a Peking Opera performance shot in 1905 in Beijing, sung - or shall I say mimed since it did not have sound - by Tan Xinpei. Tan, a towering figure at the time, is featured in the new movie Forever Enthralled under the alias of Thirteen Swallows. Of course, if I have to name one person who epitomizes the art form, it must be Mei Lanfang, the premier exponent who specialized in female roles and the raison d'etre for the movie.

Now, you can say Mei was an early adopter of new technology. In 1920, he committed two of his opera scenes, Goddess of Heaven Scatters Flowers and Chunxiang Disturbs Class, onto celluloid. In 1948, he made China's first color film - a feature-length opera called Regrets of Life and Death.

Mei also made movies in the US and the former Soviet Union, or more accurately, he let filmmakers in the technologically advanced countries document his performances. The one with Paramount, shot while he was 36, is said to present the clearest image from his prime. Film footage of his performances as late as 1960, one year before his death, still exist, constituting and attesting to the immortality of his art.

The biopic Forever Enthralled - its Chinese title is Mei Lanfang - premiers today nationwide and is an effort to capture the great master at three periods in his life: first, as he defeats a predecessor and gains fame as the darling favorite of the day; then as he conducts a romance with a female star who impersonates male roles, played by Zhang Ziyi; and last, when he defies Japanese invaders and refuses to perform.

In subject matter, this is Chen Kaige's follow-up to Farewell, My Concubine, which is artistically more brilliant. Some say the 1993 film is a veiled biography of Mei Lanfang because it featured one of his signature roles. Rumor has it Mei's family even pondered a libel suit. The film, however, went on to become a landmark in Chinese cinema, winning hearts and accolades across the world.

To put the name Mei Lanfang on screen is, in a sense, to put shackles around the filmmaker. Even though several of the supporting characters are composite and Mei's three wives, whom he had at the same time for a while, have been "toned down", with Wife No 1 completely whitewashed and Wife No 3 downgraded to the status of an amorous affair, Mei as portrayed in this elaborate period drama simply does not come out as sharp and three-dimensional. Instead, he seems to have made up his mind on everything all along.

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