In the Heat of the Sun


In the Heat of the Sun is a 1994 Chinese film directed and written by Jiang Wen. This was Jiang Wen's first foray into directing after years as a leading man. The film is based loosely on author Wang Shuo's novel Wild Beast.

Synopsis

The film is set in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution. It is told from the perspective of Ma Xiaojun, nicknamed Monkey, who is a teenage boy at the time. Monkey and his friends are free to roam the streets of Beijing day and night because the Cultural Revolution has caused their parents and most adults to be either busy or away and the school system is extremely nonfunctional.
Most of the story happens during one summer, so the main characters are even more free because there is no school. The events of that summer revolve around Monkey's dalliances with his roguish male friends, and his subsequent angst-filled crush on one of the older female characters, Mi Lan. Mi Lan falls instead for Monkey's friend, Liu Yiku.
The film reflects Monkey, reminiscing as an older man, and his struggle with remembering his youth. Framed by his adult life in 1990s Beijing, portrayed in black and white, and presented in snippets of memory in color, the viewer is asked to question the accuracy of Monkey's memory and wrestle with the truth of the time.

Production

The film was a co-production between three Chinese studios, and $2 million USD of the budget was generated from Hong Kong. Derek Elley of Variety said that the film alters "some 70% of the original" novel and adds "a mass of personal memories." Daniel Vukovich, author of China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the PRC, wrote that the film version makes its characters "a small group of male friends, plus one female "comrade"" instead of being "violent hooligans".
The original title of film may be translated as "Bright Sunny Days". In the Heat of the Sun was chosen as its international English title during a film festival in Taiwan as a less politicized name, to avoid the original title's positive association with the Cultural Revolution.
Before Jiangwen’s In the Heat of the Sun, there are only 6 Cultural Revolution-themed movies, they are Chen Kaige‟s Baiwang bieji , Tian Zhuangzhuang‟s Lan fengzheng , Zhang Yimou‟s Huozhe . Xie jin’s Tianyun shan chuanqi , Muma ren , and Furong zhen .
This film was shoot by the Gu Changwei “The No.1 photographer in Mainland”, this man was take charge of the main photographer in Red Sorghum, Ju dou, Bawang Bieji, has been awarded Gold Rooster Award in China, Academy Award in BFA, and Kodak Photographer in Award Hawaii International Film Festival”
One of the two sponsors, a real estate company withdraw before the start of filming due to the economic recession, even several staff left during filming.
The movie consumed a national record of 250,000 feet of film and it took nearly six months to shot.
Liu Xiaoqing, the Executive producer had used his own money to pay the debts of the film crew.
offered to help Jiang Wen’s crew for the funds of mixing, light distribution, copy suppression after watching the initial cut of the film.
Initially, Jiang Wen played the role of Ma Xiaojun during the character's 30s, the final film was cut out to be more than 4 hours. He wasn’t satisfied about his performance and due to time limits, he discarded his part.

Release

The film approved domestic distribution after making five changes: mainly altering some of the dialogue, censoring passages where the protagonist is sexually aroused, and weaken the music L'Internationale during the alley fights with enhancing strong action sound effects.

Rearrangements

Jiang Wen did some rearragements on role making to make this film close to his experience instead of Wild Beast, the orignal of this film.
Jiang Wen explains that in order to turn a novel into film, the principle of fidelity is suspectable, he did some changes but he had no intention to distinguish it from Wild Beast.

Cast

Jiang Wen cast three youngsters with no acting experience but with notable athletic experiences: Xia Yu was the skateboarding champion in his hometown Qingdao, Tao Hong was a synchronized swimmer on the Chinese national team, while Zuo Xiaoqing was a rhythmic gymnast also on the Chinese national team. All three enrolled in professional acting schools within a year of the film's release and became successful actors.
To make this film more realistic, the students in this film are most played by dropouts that under 14 years old.

Trivia

Ma Xiaojun's character bears a strong likeness to Jiang Wen as well as to Wang Shuo, whose novella ‘Wild beasts’, provided the origin for Jiang's script. Xiaojun's family, like Jiang Wen's is from the city of Taishan; the novella's author and the film director are the same age as the fictional Xiaojun and, like him, grew up in Beijing in the idiosyncratic environment of military family housing. 
Xia Yu was appointed by Jiang Wen's mother to play the role of Ma Xiaojun, since he looked similar to Jiang's teenager image.

Director Jiang Wen asked the photographer not to be a spectator but to be a role in the film, which posed a great challenge to the choice of viewpoints.

Music

The Chinese version of the Soviet song "Moscow Nights" features prominently in the film, as does Pietro Mascagni's music for his opera Cavalleria Rusticana.
Jiang wen utilities many revolutionary songs including 'Chairman Mao, Revolutionary Soldiers Wish you a Long Life”, 'Missing Chairman Mao — the Savior', 'Ode to Beijing' and 'Sun Shining on the Jinggang Mountain'.

Reception

Ranked number 98 non-English-speaking film in the critics' poll conducted by the BBC in 2018.
In contrast to the Cultural Revolution-set films of Chinese 5th-generation filmmakers which put the era into a larger historical setting, In The Heat Of the Sun is mellow and dream-like, portraying memories of that era with somewhat positive and personal resonances. It also acknowledges, as the narrator recalls, that he might have misremembered parts of his adolescence as stated in the prologue: "Change has wiped out my memories. I can't tell what's imagined from what's real", as the director offers alternative or imagined versions to some events as people seek to romanticize their youthful memories.The film was commercially successful in China. Critic Raymond Zhou talked about the ambiguity in Jiang Wen's movies: "Ambiguity is a major characteristic. Since two of his four features wax nostalgic about the 'Cultural Revolution', a period that evokes painful memories for many Chinese…"
As a member of the liumang generation, too young to be sent to the countryside in the Culture Revolution yet old enough to have knowledge of life under Mao, Jiang has experienced the Maoist past, but has not been visibly scarred by it.
Vukovich wrote that the film however did cause some controversy in China for its perceived "nostalgic" and "positive" portrayal of the Cultural Revolution. According to Vukovich, the film "received much less attention than any fifth-generation classics" despite the "critical appreciation in festivals abroad". Vukovich stated that in Western countries "the film has been subjected to an all too familiar coding as yet another secretly subversive, dissenting critique of Maoist and Cultural Revolution totalitarianism", with the exceptions being the analyses of Chen Xiaoming from Mainland China and Wendy Larson.

Reviews and critics

Immediately after the film’s release, major critics praised it as the most important work in Chinese cinema since Zhang Yimou's Hong gaoliang/ Red Sorghum. In the Heat of the Sun resonates with Zhang's film not only in reinventing cinematic language but also in retelling a key moment in China’s history.

Awards and recognition

Well received in China and the Chinese-speaking world but very obscure in the United States, the film won the 51st Venice Film Festival's Best Actor Award for its young lead actor Xia Yu as well as the Golden Horse Film Awards in Taiwan for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. American director Quentin Tarantino also gave high praises to the film, calling it "really great."
It was the first People's Republic of China film to win Best Picture in the Golden Horse Film Awards, in the very year where Chinese-language films from the mainland were first allowed to participate.
The film was a domestic box office hit in 1995, beating the Hollywood blockbusters like The True Lies, Lion King and Forrest Gump.