Jeffrey Tao's Film Reviews
Jeffrey's Home Page
 

Two Videos Portray The First and Last Emperors of China  The First Emperor of China  Many of us still remember the vivid images flashing across our television screens of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics, which drew heavily on the richness and glories of China’s past. We were regaled at one point by the awe-inspiring spectacle of serried ranks of thousands of drummers standing and performing in unison with military precision, reminiscent of the fabled terra cotta soldiers of the Qin Dynasty (221–206BCE) in Shanxi Province in northwest China, one of the most visited archeological sites in the country. The First Emperor of China tells the story of the man who created the invincible army of the Qin, memorialized in these life-size terra cotta foot soldiers, chariots, horses and archers. The video is a historical drama produced jointly by the Canadian Film Board and the China Xian Film Studio. It begins with the rise of Qin Shi Huang 22 centuries ago when he ruled the feudal kingdom of Qin, and ends with an account of the discovery of the terra cotta soldiers in 1974 by local farmers digging a well.  Having quelled an internal palace revolt instigated by his prime minister, the ambitious Qin Shi Huang proceeded to form, with his generals, a formidable professional fighting force out of recruited farm boys. After many years of relentless, sometimes ferocious, military campaigns, Qin Shi Huang crushed, one by one, all the other rival kingdoms and eventually declared himself the first emperor of a China united for the first time in history, amid extraordinary pomp and pageantry. The video portrays both his military exploits and his sweeping reforms throughout the land, widening roads, establishing a national standard of weights and measures and ordering various northern walls already built to be connected to form the Great Wall, to keep the Mongol invaders out. It also recounts with great dramatic intensity a failed assassination attempt on his life by a patriot of the neighboring kingdom of Yan.  Narration in English for this 40-minute video is provided by Christopher Plummer, but a Chinese cast performs the roles of the main characters whose dialogue is in Mandarin.   Forbidden City: The Great Within  If the first video is about China’s first emperor and founding dynasty, the second one portrays the lives and accomplishments of the emperors of the last dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911), before it became a republic in 1911.  Forbidden City: The Great Within is centered on the magnificent yellow-tiled, vermillion-walled buildings of Beijing’s imperial palace, whose reception halls, gardens and corridors no one was allowed to enter except the imperial household, court officials and servants of the palace. The video, through its beautiful photography, captures the splendid isolation of the Qing emperors and the timelessness of court life. There are evocative scenes of palanquins being carried along stone-paved passage ways lit by red lanterns casting a warm glow, and intimate scenes of imperial concubines living out their years in luxury but unrelieved boredom unless they found favor with the emperor.  But Emperor Kangxi (1661–1772) was a man of action, who brought reforms and development to China. His 60-year reign was considered the Golden Age of imperial rule.  Here, the young emperor is shown talking intently to Ferdinand Verbiest, a learned, Chinese-speaking Jesuit who also happens to be a brilliant astronomer. Under Kangxi, a new observatory was built and a new calendar disseminated.  Some of the most memorable scenes in this video are of Kangxi performing imperial rites at the Temple of Heaven, amid flares and lanterns, seeking to propitiate the gods and praying for rich harvests and harmony between heaven and earth, while thousands stand to attention in full regalia.  The Celestial Empire’s contacts with the European powers were disastrous.  Britain’s first attempts in 1793 to open trade with China by sending its envoy Lord McCartney for negotiations with Emperor Qianlong ended in total mutual incomprehension and failure. Thereafter, what unfolds in this video is the sorry story of British commercial and military penetration into China through the British East India Company and the Opium Wars during most of the nineteenth century. Eventually, the weakness of the Empress Dowager Ci Xi and the young emperors she installed and the impotence of Qing officials in the face of growing Western military might and gunboat diplomacy led to riots, rebellions and the republican revolution of 1911. The Manchu monarchy ended with the abdication of Pu Yi, the last emperor.  The 50-minute DVD is narrated by Rod Steiger and photographed by Zhao Fei.   Return to Home