Der Opiumkrieg

This film is rarely seen anywhere, which is a shame. It has a more balanced view of the subject than you would imagine, coming as it does from China, the main victim of the story it portrays. This latest showing, the first time I have seen it, was on Sunday 20th October 2002, on the nationwide Arte television channel, based in Hamburg, Germany. The theme of the evening was "Queen Victoria", and the Opium War was the unusual and bold first choice of a group of 3 programmes, the other two coming conventionally from Germany and Britain. One could never imagine the BBC or ITV daring to be so inventive, if they presented such a themed evening in Britain. I should declare an interest as a Brit, and one who lived in Hong Kong under the colonial govt for 12 years, leaving in the mid nineties, and having spent a considerable time working in China. This film doesn't just get a bad press, it gets NO press !

It deals with a subject, which has been THE major thorn in China's dealings with the West over the past 150 years, and the single most important factor in forming China's foreign policy strategy right up until the present day. The film is seemingly unobtainable in the west either on DVD or VHS. This particular viewing was all dubbed into German, so I cannot comment on the authenticity on the use of Cantonese dialect in the southern scenes and the use of Mandarin in the Beijing and Tianjin episodes. However, it is most unlikely that these would not be addressed, bearing in mind the fim maker. Similarly, as there are genuine British actors in the film, one would imagine their contribution to be reasonably authentic - certainly their body language was throughout.

Your first thoughts about this film would most likely immediately be to dismiss it as pure communist government propaganda, especially being released in 1997, the year of the handback of Hong Kong to China. But you would be very rash to make such a judgement. Many of the characters are drawn with sympathetic care, both on the Chinese and the foreign sides, and an authentic attempt to show the real causes of the war is made. Yes, there are stereotypes, but not as many as to cause you to lose your interest in the film's main theme.

This story needs to be told and for the British to acknowledge openly and without reservation what they did and the reasons why they did it. Interesting that they still really have not done so. Hong Kong to the average British person means designer clothes, Chinese takeaways and the opium war is still a large blank in the consciousness for most of the population.

The Germans have come to terms with what they did 60 years ago, it's time we learnt from their example and did the same with our own actions more than a century ago, enslaving an entire nation with government-sponsored illegal drug trafficking on a huge scale. If we tried that policy today, we would be the pariah of the UN !

See this film if you can - it is admittedly not a first-rank masterpiece, partially because of the stilted scenery, especially the foreign concession, which looks rather like part of Disney's Adventureland, and partially because of the lack of realism in certain parts of the battle scenes - the British army seems to have a suspiciously high proportion of oriental recruits! However, it is an opportunity to see an historical injustice from the side of the victims at last, and in a manner which any fair-minded person ought to acknowledge as remarkably unbiased in the circumstances.

Using thousands of extras, great vistas, panoramic view-scopes of harbors filled with ships, lavish costumes, the motion picture describes the Opium War events that led to the british occupation of what is now Honk Kong. Ironic how exactly those lavish emperors and lifestyles that were once the target from Communist China are now used by the same Communist China to instill nationalistic feelings. While the motion picture is a big budget endeavor, it is not artistic. Some of the text captions are too educative, as if the audience were in kindergarden (for example, a slow view of an opium smoking den was indeed capioned with bright while lettering "Opium Den" as if the audience couldn't figure that out). That is what I meant as not being artistic: stating too evidently what is already too obvious. Everything is spelled out. But to its credit, I really appreciated its authenticity in regards of languages spoken, where two languages were spoken. The english tongues were precise, including an american tongue. Couldn't verify wether the chinese characters in the movie spoke Mandarin or Cantonese, nor can I comment on wether at the time (1839) which one was spoken in the regions where the story takes place.

...nationlistic anti-western propaganda.

This is a subject that BBC would not have guts to face, at least not in the near future. Before labeling this film as anti-western communist propaganda, one must first bravely face the ugly past of colonialism and the racism of today: Not only UK has yet to face acknowledge its crime in the colonial era openly and without any reservation, what taught and belived in UK, and as in many in the west, are still represented by obvious racism:

For example, many in the west still believe in the racist lie of Opium being used in China as medicine for thousands of years. The reality is that marijuana was used in China for thousand of years, not opium, which was introduced by British by force. Next time when you visit Washington, DC, make sure you visit the museum of DEA, where this part of the true history is honestly told. This is one area Brits has to learn from USA.

Another example of current day racism is that when describing the ugly past of colonial era, the British still calls the Opium War as Trade War, when everywhere else it is honestly called as Opium War, as it really was. This is the equivalent of a drug dealer forcing to sell drugs to people, and assaulted people when they refused, and then simply called the assault was a trade disagreement. Imagine what would happen if the drug dealer was white and the people were black in the current world, and the public reaction.

Enough said about British side, now about the Chinese side: unlike the previous nationalistic propaganda, which glorified the victimization by demonizing west, this film factually told the cause of the war in a sympathetic way, and for the first time, correctly criticized the corrupted Imperial Chinese political system and its corrupted officials, which lead to the backwardness of China.

The example would be the lavish living style of emperor and his court officials in comparison to the impoverished life style of ordinary Chinese citizens, which is the reflection of corrupted feudalistic system being defeated by much more advanced modern industrial capitalism. One must see the typical nationalistic propaganda made decades earlier and compare to this movie in order to appreciate the giant steps made here, which may not be something big for west, but it is something considerable for workers in the movie industry in a totalitarian regime.

I stumbled upon this film by accident and decided to give it a go as I was interested in learning the history. Knowing it was a Chinese film sponsored by the government I was surprised to see that it had a lot of prominent British actors (at the time) playing the British characters. This is unusual for a Chinese film as they usually would employ Russians or Polish as cheaper fill ins. It's clear that the British actors and the British assistant director had a degree of artistic flexibility with the script, as the way the characters talk and the mannerisms are quite clearly written by an English native speaker. There are scenes in London with the queen, in parliament as the prospect of war is debated and voted on. I wanted to see more from the British side. Particularly the Opium dealer played by Bob Peck, his story arc finishes halfway. It left me wanting more to be honest. There is a big battle at the end, which is a little underwhelming by today's standards. Some modern CGI and grander battles would make this an amazing film. The Chinese parts are the main focus of the film of course, a lot of politics and dilemmas faced by the officials. I watched it in Chinese without subtitles, so it was hard to follow everything they were saying but I think there is a version online with English subtitles. Would be great to see a remake of this! Or even a TV show that explores the war in greater detail.

The Opium War is an historical event that heralded the beginning of the end for the Qing Dynasty and the Chinese Empire as a whole. However, despite its name, the roots of Opium War do not only lie in the drug or its addiction. Opium, corruption, mismanagement, and a gross underestimate of the West's projection power are only some of the many complex reasons that led to the First Opium War.

In Yapian Zhanzheng (Opium War), historical events are depicted in a fairly accurate manner, concentrating on the main facts and events. Different aspects of the situation are presented: the Emperor's dilemmas, British/Western interests, Commissioner Lin's character, the opium merchant, the corrupt officials, etc... The film however lacks depth and emotion. The viewer is kept on the outside, and cannot identify with any character, bar young He who is forced into the story so as to add a human dimension to the story.

From a historical perspective, the film also tends to simplify certain aspects of the situation. One would think that there only were half a dozen merchants in Canton, and that the whole war was caused by Captain Elliott. The power of merchants and their trade is briefly mentioned, but only incidentally, as are power politics at the Imperial Court and at Parliament, internal turmoil, national and international political strategy, and many other factors that led to the War.

Overall, viewing of this film is recommended to gain a overview of major events; certain scenes are also quite spectacular. But do not watch for an in-depth historical analysis or representation of the Opium War.