I have no idea why Mao’s Last Dancer has only received middle-of-the-road reviews. I was on the brink of tears for most of the film, until the end when the dam burst into an ugly-screwed-up-face fit of uncontrolled bawling. RM admitted even he was getting teary. So, five stars for emotional effect.
The rich, lush film brings to the screen the rags-to-riches autobiography of Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin (who now lives in Melbourne). It switches back and forth in time and location, between his childhood poverty in Shandong Province, his rigorous training at the Beijing Academy of Arts and his first steps onto Western soil and exposure to American ways as a guest student of the Houston Ballet.
Basically, the premise of the film is a classic adventure story. It’s about the journey of a person who starts off in one place, emotionally and physically, and ends up somewhere else. It’s a story of great contrast, between poverty and wealth, East and West, discipline and adulation.
There are various storylines about his initial awkwardness towards Western culture, his love affair with an American ballerina and his decision to defect to the US despite possible repercussions for his family. Within those storylines director Bruce Beresford has weaved dance excerpts choreographed by Graeme Murphy. I loved the dancing. The dances emphasised and expressed the emotions of the protagonists at a particular point in time and the excerpts never felt like a contrived intermission in the story. It was more like a shorthand way to telling the story, especially as the scenes always showed the reactions of the audience. The only thing I didn’t like were the slow-mo effects, as that did feel like an obvious device to heighten emotional effect.
The particular screening I attended the film was followed by a discussion about ‘which is better, the book or the movie?’. The panel consisted of the screenwriter Jan Sardi (who also wrote the screenplay for Shine) and Brian McFarlane, Honorary Associate Professor of film history at Monash University and author of Novel to Film, An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Together they led the audience into a very revealing discussion about the work of a screenwriter. Jan had to take the 400+ page book and make certain choices about what scenes to leave in, what scenes to leave out and how to amalgamate events and characters. He said that a screenwriter’s first priority should be to the audience; it’s not about fidelity to the text. The script should create an emotional landscape so scenes should always to move the story along and make the audience care about the characters.
That’s why the film was not made with a linear timeline, as Jan realised that if he stuck to the structure of the book the first 30 minutes would have been set in China, with people speaking Chinese. I think the time-switching worked well, as it heightened the drama in the story and a provided a sense of compelling immediacy for the audience. Throughout the film you were asking Who is he? How did he get here? Why are they treating him like this? How did his life change?
So to answer the question ‘which is better, the book or the movie’ I think Brian McFarlane made the key point – it’s not a question about whether the film is better than the book or vice versa. They are different art forms telling stories in different ways. The better question should be ‘what is exciting in this book that made the filmmaker want to adapt it into a film?’
- Mao’s Last Dancer Page to Picture, Cinema Nova, 380 Lygon St, Carlton 3053 +61 3 9347 5331
MAO’S LAST DANCER (OR SOME PEOPLE WILL CRY AT ANYTHING)
With all the hype this film’s been getting, I expected to be in for a real treat. Not so. Choppy scenes, melodramatic scenarios, underdeveloped characters and sub-plots left me disappointed. Elizabeth, Li Cunxin’s wife, for example, was a grossly underdeveloped character (who was after all, the reason for Li Cunxin’s defection} and we hardly heard a word from Mary ( Cunxin’s new prima ballerina and future wife) who featured with him in the most of the supposedly heart tugging scenes.
The bloke with the mustache (I forgot his name) and the old American tart did not serve the development of the plot at all. The film could have been made without them, and would have been no less for it. As for master Chen. Where did he come from? A few lines and a few tears, and he was gone, until the end.
There are people who go for the emotional pay-off without much thought ( probably those who’ve read the book). But I kept trying to put it all together. For me the pay-off was not matched by what preceded it; it seemed disingenuous.
Was Li Cunxin a heartless opportunist.? I mean, firstly, he marries Elizabeth because he wants to stay in America, which would mean he’d NEVER be allowed back to China to visit his parents. Secondly, he leaves her because he wants to advance his career! He didn’t even put up a fight! When his parents arrived for the big performance, Li’s emotional response was over the top.
If he’d DONE SOMETHING, risking all just to see his parents before they died, then the pay-off would have been earned. But it wasn’t. Nor was the second pay-off when he visited ‘master’ Chan. This was so contrived, I felt like laughing, and did…
Hi Alex
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I’m a bit of a crybaby at times – but I do think that the film was emotionally effective, especially interspersed with the dancing. I agree that it did skim the surface a bit in terms of character development, probably as a function of having to cover a lot of ground in 2 hours.
Have you read the book? Your reaction towards the film sounds very similar to some of the criticisms made of the book by my book club. I haven’t read it but apparently some of threaders found the tone of it was very much ‘I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this’ and certain characters, such as his parents, were portrayed as one-dimensional. I’d be interested to hear whether you had the same reaction to the film as you did to the book.
Jetsetting Joyce