Back in Action

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ven as a student at Beijing's Central Academy of Drama, China's Juilliard, Jiang showed signs of giving, not taking, direction. "Many teachers didn't like him because he always questioned them," recalls retired dean of dramatic arts Zhang Renli, who taught Jiang after the school reopened following the Cultural Revolution. "Jiang would always ask, 'Why? Tell me why?'" says the 69-year-old, who has coached four generations of actors, including Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi. "I've never since had a student like Jiang Wen." Jiang's stubbornness can make him a chore to work with. Especially now that he's not directing but acting in other people's films. "As an actor Jiang Wen is dangerous," says award-winning author Wang. "The younger generation of directors cannot handle him."

Barreling down a narrow street in Beijing in a silver 2002 Toyota Landcruiser, Jiang has his CD player blaring The Red Detachment of Women, a cacophonous propaganda ballet from the 1960s. With his assistant at the wheel, Jiang turns around to explain gleefully his fondness for the revolutionary score. Born in 1963 in China's central Hebei province, Jiang was the son of a senior captain in the People's Liberation Army. The family moved house a lot. Jiang affectionately recalls the rustic province of Guizhou where cured hams hung inside neighbors' homes and unattended warehouses of machine parts became treasure troves for mischievous 10-year-olds. It was in Guizhou at the height of the Cultural Revolution that the adolescent Jiang saw a performance of The Red Detachment of Women. "Watching the women on the stage with guns and short shorts," he says, "that was the first time I ever experienced sexual feelings."

The Cultural Revolution was the setting for Jiang's first film as a director, In the Heat of the Sun, which won the best actor prize at Venice in 1994 for actor Xia Yu. But it was no ordinary tale from that often portrayed time. The movie, based on a short story by Wang, follows five guys and a girl running wild during one summer of Chairman Mao's engineered chaos: no school, no curfew, no authority figures, just a sexy, violent, exhilarating time. "For people my age," says Jiang, "the Cultural Revolution was actually a lot of fun. We were just kids being kids." When Jiang met American director Martin Scorsese in New York City in 1992, he told him his idea for In the Heat of the Sun. Jiang's directing demigod told him simply: "Do it." It was wise advice. "You can see the person behind the film so clearly," says veteran cinematographer Christopher Doyle, explaining why he considers Heat one of the most remarkable movies he's ever seen. "It is informed by an incredible veracity."

But making the film was hell. Jiang's rigid perfectionism prolonged the shooting by months. Some days he wouldn't film because he didn't know what he wanted. Jiang's assistant director for Heat, Fu Jia, now an executive at Columbia Pictures' office in Beijing, was so scarred by the experience she hasn't worked on the set of a movie since. "It was a nightmare," she shudders. As the shooting of the summer idyll ran into winter, Jiang had freezing actors in summer clothes eating ice cream before takes so that their frosted breath wouldn't appear on film.

Devils on the Doorstep, Jiang's second and, to date, last foray as a director, is set during the Japanese occupation of a rural Chinese village. It was shot in black-and-white with the stark sensibilities of Akira Kurosawa. It tells the tale of a hapless farmer who has two Japanese prisoners dumped on him by the Chinese resistance. He is ordered to interrogate them and deliver a report or face deadly consequences. Caught between fear of the rebels and fear of the Japanese, the farmer hatches a plan of self-preservation that proves disastrous. All the characters display a dose of humanity, even the Japanese soldiers, who by film's end have the blood of the entire village on their hands. This is what upset Beijing's censors: in official China, no one dares admit that the Japanese occupiers were anything more complex than child-gutting monsters.

In the two years that have passed since the film won its award at Cannes, Devils has never been screened in Hong Kong. It opened in Japan only in April and will hit theaters in Korea this month. Jiang won't talk about the movie, most likely to keep on the good side of the mainland's Film Bureau. (He's also been at legal odds with one of the movie's producers, who wanted Devils' 160-minute running time trimmed.) All he will say is: "I don't care what people think of my films. But they should be able to see them so they can have an opinion." When will he try to direct again? It's useless to ask. He won't discuss it.

When Missing Gun was released in China last month, Beijing cineasts thought they saw a bit of Jiang behind the camera as well as on the screen. The film's director is Lu Chuan, a 28-year-old film school grad with only commercials on his résumé. Certain scenes convinced people that Jiang ghost-directed the movie. Not so, insists Lu. "Jiang Wen played a very important role making the movie," he says, leaning forward emphatically in his Hawaiian shirt, "but he spent only 40 days on set. We've worked on this project for two years."

On the set of Green Tea, a guy-meets-girl urban romance due out in the fall, camera equipment and lights are strewn around a dusty Beijing alleyway. Jiang tilts his aluminum patio chair precariously against the alley wall, a cigarette pasted to his bottom lip, meditating on his next scene with actress Zhao Wei. Director Zhang Yuan is in a nearby building reviewing today's footage, while Christopher Doyle and his crew are readying equipment for the next shot. A crew member relates how Jiang has his hands in every part of the shoot—coaching other actors, conceiving new shots, even asking the crew if there's enough film for another take. Suddenly Jiang rights his chair, flicks the cigarette butt and points up to a balcony. "We should set up the camera there," he tells Doyle. "We can shoot me talking to Zhao Wei from here." The crew member laughs and shakes her head: "See, he can never just act." Let's hope he doesn't have to.