Assembleia: Sangue e Honra

Feng Xiaogang's Assembly was the opening film at last year's Pusan International Film Festival, and tickets were sold out in record time once they were made available online. Such is the faith (or curiosity) of the new film from the director who brought us movies like World Without Thieves, and martial arts Hamlet The Banquet. When you think of Chinese directors making a movie based out of Chinese history, you can't help but imagine the massive amount of propaganda that get so blatantly infused into the story and especially the dialogue. But here, Feng managed to bring about a movie which goes beyond the usual ra- ra, and shows us that a movie with universal themes can also come out from what is essentially a war movie based upon China's tumultuous era after WWII.

Assembly refers to the call of the bugle to retreat and regroup, and this is the call that Captain Gu Zidi (Zhang Hanyu) and his 47 men of the 9th Company, 3rd Batallion, 139th Regiment, are keenly listening out for, as they go about their mission in ill-equipped fashion, holding fort on a strategic plain. Sent to the frontlines for war-crimes, Captain Gu and his men, while being the best at trench warfare, find themselves severely lacking in essentials - manpower, ammunition and heavy weaponry, as they go up against the marauding forces of the Nationalist army, with their relatively superior armour. However, their mantra is old school - only the bugle will signal their fall behind, and everything else means fulfilling their mission objectives at all costs.

While all might seem lost, this provides the kind of tales of valour that comes out of these battles, something like 300's. Assembly honours the spirit of the unit, of their tales of bravery and unflinching under insurmountable odds. If you're looking for a war movie, then Assembly will not disappoint. For the first hour anyway. Told in three acts, the first act, all 60 minutes of it, is where the action takes place. The war sequences here aren't poetic in the veins of Terence Mallick's The Thin Red Line, but are more aligned with Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, with its gritty realism, strained colours, and bloody, gory violence.

We're probably, in recent years, in tune with war movies that put us in the shoes of aggressors, and that is to follow an assault team. Very rarely are we put into trenches and be seen to be on the defensive like that of Iwo Jima, soaking up wave after wave of attacks. And that's where Assembly shines, in having four intense battle sequences, three of which were on the defensive scheme of warfare, and the other, while an assault, does seem more to be on the losing end rather than achieving a clear, decisive victory. If details are what you're after, then you probably can't go wrong with the single bolt weapon, primitive artillery and the sharing of tin helmets. In fact, you'll probably be wondering instead that the PLA at the time was really backward, given the world's military technological advancement in the West/Japan during the 40s.

And given last year's double bill by Clint Eastwood in Flags of our Fathers and Iwo Jima, Assembly seems like both movies combined, in providing both an in-depth look at the battles fought, as well as taking time off to contemplate more serious issues in dramatic fashion. In the second and last acts which take up the remaining hour, we follow Captain Gu as he tries his darnedest best to get his company recognized for the contribution it made, no matter how minuscule it might seem compared to the helicopter view of achievements. These acts might bore those who came satisfied with the first half, but for those looking into a more intimate drama of one man's fight for his lost brothers, then this portion will likely appeal to you.

Ultimately, Assembly is an ambitious film. It combines drama and action, and in both aspects, doesn't hold back in bringing about the best it probably could. Kudos go to actor Zhang Hanyu who plays Captain Gu, in what can be essentially a one man show, putting focus of his place in history and his solo fight against the system. And after watching this, you'll probably won't hesitate to watch another war movie coming out of China, if they meet the benchmark set by Feng Xiaogang. Recommended!

In 1948, during the Chinese Civil War, the Captain Gu Zidi (Hanyu Zhang) from the Liberation Army falls in disgrace with his superiors after an incident with prisoners of war. He is assigned with his forty-seven soldiers from the Ninth Company to defend a coal mine until they hear the retreat assembly of the bugle. Gu Zidi never hears the call, his men die and he gathers their bodies inside the mine. Gu Zidi awakes in a hospital and neither his identity and nor his officer ranking are recognized; the forty-seven soldiers that heroically died are only considered missing and their action is completely unknown by the high-command. Gu Zidi fights in the Korea War and spends the rest of his life feeling guilty for the death of his men and trying to prove and achieve recognition for the honorable deed of his forty-seven soldiers.

"Ji Jie Hao" is an impressive movie about the Chinese Civil War of 1948. The director Xiaogang Feng succeeds in promoting the true story of the journey of a man that spends his life trying to prove the bravery of his men that are in complete anonymity through a touching story. The extremely realistic battle scenes are comparable to "Taegukgi Hwinalrimyeo" and "Saving Private Ryan", with stunning camera work, performances and choreography. The cinematography is magnificent, and Hanyu Zhang has an awesome performance in the role of the tireless Captain Gu Zidi. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Assembléia" ("Assembly")

"Saving Private Ryan" it is NOT, but certainly it is as equally worth viewing for any fans of military/warfare film. And for any "westerners" unaccustomed with China's history, it may give some insight to tiny part of her modern part some 50+ years ago events that led to fall of Chang Kai Shek and rise of communism under Mao Zhe Dong's.

The story line is compelling, similarly to "SPR" we have some well drawn all-human characters and their war story laced with brutal, bloody and yet so mesmerizing scenes, an insight to mankind at its worst.

The acting is excellent, even the supporting actors and extras performed all great or at least sufficiently enough to make us believe the scenes we are watching could have happened exactly as they are portrayed on the screen.

Why then I gave it 9 instead of 10? Well. Firstly. The film, although officially not the production of "1st of August Film Studio" (official Chinese communist party's propaganda flicks maker), it still suffers a bit from their propagandist influence. The red comrades are nicer than their nationalist foes and - according to this film's tones and "between the lines" messages - they fought for their country (implying that the Chang Kai Shek's nationalists were traitors). Like the hundreds of millions Chinese murdered later by the China's Communist Party during the years that followed have never happened, hmm. But, of course, for the characters shown in the film, it is their future. They don't know it yet - OK, I can believe that. But why PLA's foes (the Nationalists) are basically the shadows in this film? For a "humane warfare film" (as this film is pretending to be about) it is very unhuman depiction of 'the other side' - and I didn't hear anything about Mr. Xiaogang Feng plans to make a sequel about them... (like Clint Eastwood did with "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima") Second. While the fighting scenes and visual FX are great, the sets weren't prepared as equally. And I really mean it. The hand-held camera actions, the gory, the over-all realism of the brutal warfare scenes are almost as great as the ones in "SPR". But unfortunately the set decorators more often than not were skimping on the realism of the set. So-obvious spray-painting black patches on the walls (to masquerade them as burnt-out or post-explosion marks) is so evident failure of completing the film's realism to me (and I'm not even mentioning those PLA soldiers wearing US helmets - after all it *may* have happened somehow). Yes, I understand that most of the film-viewers wouldn't even notice it, but since so much energy, so much attention to other details was paid during the production of this film, why oh why they couldn't close it complete in every detail?

Assembly is a gripping film about the Chinese civil war and its aftermath, recounted through the story of a doomed company of Communist soldiers and the subsequent struggle of their commander, Gu Zidi, to win recognition for their sacrifice. Hanyu Zhang is superb in the role of Gu Zidi, carrying the memory of his lost and forgotten comrades, and is the focus for a film that is by turns brutal, moving and provocative.

The opening battle scene is Assembly is startlingly violent and throughout the film the portrayal of modern weaponry and its effect upon human bodies is truly frightening. The battles are impressively staged and meticulously detailed, from the soldiers' uniforms to the networks of defensive trenches. There are some eye-opening details about the nature of warfare in the Chinese civil war, including the deployment of 'political officers' to encourage Communist troops to act in line with Party doctrine.

Admittedly, much of the film's appeal stems from its foreign origins. The Chinese civil war and the subsequent war in Korea are not often portrayed in the cinema, and it is even more rare to get a Chinese perspective on these events. Certainly this makes it difficult to find a point of reference by which to assess the success of Assembly. Nevertheless, I did have some reservations, including the camera-work. The battle scenes cut frantically between different shots, unlike, for instance, the opening scenes in Saving Private Ryan, where the action relentlessly tracks the soldiers' landing on the D-Day beach. This repeated cutting and changing conveys some sense of the chaos of warfare, but I feel that the shaky camera-work was overplayed and found this a bit irksome after the first few battle scenes.

A more general problem is that this film focuses almost exclusively on the actions of the Communist soldiers. It would have been interesting to learn more about the Nationalist Guomindang soldiers, but they are barely afforded any speaking roles. Although Assembly is written from the perspective of the winning side, it does not begin to examine why the Communists were at one time so short of munitions and especially men in fighting the war against the Nationalists. The story of Gu Zidi's company of men is a battle against the odds, but the film does not delve into the root causes of their desperation.

But although Assembly is a portrait of one side in a long military conflict there is surprising depth to this portrait. The film does not follow a straightforward triumphalist narrative about Communist war heroes, but instead builds a complex tale of an individual (Gu Zidi) who struggles for the posthumous recognition of individual soldiers who made an individual sacrifice. These were soldiers who were scared and sometimes balked at the dangers before them – as would anyone – but they made the ultimate sacrifice and Gu Zidi strives to have their efforts recognised as a unique contribution to the war effort. That it is such a great struggle for Gu Zidi to secure a memorial for these fallen comrades is at least partly an indictment of post-war society and government in China.

Assembly achieves a remarkable amount in less than two hours. It is a vivid reconstruction of struggles during and after the war and is moreover a deeply moving experience, especially in its final frames. And if part of the appeal lies in the fact that this is a foreign film about a little-known war, then that is all the more reason to seek it out.

This is an excellent military blockbuster which might remind people of less its American counterpart Save Private Ryan than the traditions of the Chinese chivalry which lays a stress emphasis on "Name" or "Title".

Gu Zi Di(Millet Field), who is orphaned in a famine and named after the millet field where he was picked up,tried conscientiously every means to reclaim the credit of being martyrs( the holy death) for his 47 neglected dead comrades. Considering his growing background, one might find it easy to understand his obsession with the "Name", the importance of doing justice to the name and reputation of the dead rather than leaving the holy dead in obscurity. To put the figure in a historical perspective, he is actually an ideal reincarnation of the traditional Chinese knight who pursues the justice in disregard of the cumbersome secular hypocrisy and bureaucracy.

I think the film is aimed to re-appropriate the Chinese chivalry tradition in a modern military background to inject masculine heroism into the mercantile contemporary Chinese society where a vast number of people are lost in mercenariness,not ashamed of losing their name in idolization of money-ism.