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John Woo's 'Chinese Titanic', The Crossing, a triumph over adversity

After his recent health scare, director John Woo returns with a two-part historical epic to promote and a renewed enthusiasm for his craft

While actors can appear insincere when it comes to praising their directors, today is different. You can practically feel the love in the room. "It's a dream for any actor to work with John Woo [Yu-sam]," says mainland actor Huang Xiaoming, one of several stars in an impressive pan-Asian cast in Woo's . "He's like a big father to us," says Zhang Ziyi, who co-stars in the epic based on the Taiping ferry disaster of 1949.

Such sentiments from his stars are understandable when you consider his career: one of the acknowledged masters of Hong Kong cinema, with films such as (1986), (1989), (1990) and (1992) Woo went on to take Hollywood by storm, delivering such blockbusters as (1997) and (2000) there before returning East for a phase of historical epics, notably (2008-2009) a dramatic war epic set at the end of the Han dynasty.

Takeshi Kaneshiro

Yet it's about more than just acknowledging his influence on modern moviemaking. In 2012, Woo was diagnosed with a tonsil tumour; thankfully it wasn't throat or pancreatic cancer - as was reported in some circles - and an operation to remove the tumour in a Taipei hospital was a success. Understandably, work on previously known as both "1949" and "Love and Let Love") was delayed while he recuperated.

The way Zhang tells it, Woo was a changed man when the director finally saw the film roll before the cameras. She has it on good authority from her co-star Tong Dawei, who also starred in , that during that shoot Woo was under "a lot of pressure" and was "very stressed". But on ?

Masami Nagasawa

"He was smiling every day and very relaxed," she says. "After you have a life-changing illness, everything changes."

When we meet, it's in Cannes, shortly after the shoot for has wrapped. Like , it's arriving in two parts - the second due in May 2015. Woo is sitting next to Angeles, one of his three daughters, who features in and previously starred in . "She's very clever," he says. "She made a couple of short films, and now she wants to act. So all of a sudden I have to give her some parts."

Angeles smiles. "He's tough but he knows what he wants," she says.

Song Hye-kyo

Tough doesn't even begin to cover it. Now 68, Woo worked around the clock on the arduous production. "He was not very well, but he can work 24 hours non-stop," says Huang. "I saw him fall asleep many times during filming."

Not that anyone would hold it against him: the logistical challenges for anyone overseeing such an "event" film are mind-boggling, let alone for a man recovering from such an illness.

The production was a far more complex affair than , which was all filmed in Hebei Province; for , the crew shot in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Inner Mongolia and also in Taiwan. With the shoot beset by torrential downpours in Taipei, it lasted over nine months. Factor in the large-scale action involved, 1,000 special effects shots and the conversion to 3D that took place during the editing, and it becomes clear just how demanding was.

Another difficulty was bringing together so many nationalities on set.

Tong Dawei

"For daily filming, we always used English to communicate," says Huang. Somehow, though, it came off. "I think they worked together very well," says Woo. "It wasn't easy to make everybody so natural, because they all have different kinds of performances, different kinds of technique to deliver their performance. So I let them be free to do whatever they want."

Woo also faced mainland censors who subjected the script to changes - not least toning down Huang's heroic character, a high-ranking soldier in the governing Kuomintang. "The officials were not happy about this," he says. "They said, 'Don't make his image too nice'. They thought he should have the bad-guy look. That's the only thing - make the guy more subtle. That was it. They didn't give me a hard time, making changes. They were very polite, very nice to me, and they knew this was a true story and a story they needed."

Zhang Ziyi

Woo, however, couldn't be happier. First, to be making films at all after his illness. Second, to be making such a personal film. "This film is unlike anything I've done before," he says. "Sometimes, movies are just for living. Sometimes, when I do a movie, I need to find out who I am. For so many years, I've also been looking for another creative level, but I've just started. That's important for me. I have made some good films, some box office hits. But in the end, I'm trying to find something very simple that has a pretty big meaning."

Has he ever made a film so personal before? " ," he says, referencing his iconic 1986 film with Chow Yun-fat, Ti Lung and the late Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing.

Woo with Kaneshiro and Zhang Fengyi on the set of Red Cliff

"That was a very personal film. But this one, it's one of my most personal films." (Though, ironically, it's his long-time producer Terence Chang Chia-chen who has a more intimate connection to the story, as he actually had a family member who died during the sinking, a disaster that killed all but 50 of the 1,500 passengers on board.)

Unsurprisingly, is already being dubbed "the Chinese " - a comparison nobody seems to mind, given how well James Cameron's US$1 billion-grossing film did. But there are huge differences: the Titanic sailed four days before hitting the iceberg that sank it, while the Taiping's final voyage lasted just a few hours after leaving Shanghai. Sailing after curfew with its lights out, it collided with a smaller cargo ship.

A battle scene from Red Cliff

"It sank pretty fast - unlike the Titanic," says Woo. "It was in winter, so a lot of people panicked and went into the water. It was so cold, they were freezing to death."

Set during the Chinese civil war, with refugees fleeing as Communist forces surged through the country, the Taiping ferry was a regular outlet for escapees to head to Taiwan. Licensed to carry fewer than 600 passengers, on that fateful night it took more than double that. Yet the film is less about the actual disaster than you might think. Penned by Taiwanese scribe Wang Hui-ling (who wrote Ang Lee's and ), much like James Cameron's film, the script uses the event to tell a love story - or rather three love stories.

A still from A Better Tomorrow

Huang plays KMT General Lei Yifang, "a very good strategist" who falls for the daughter of a wealthy banker (South Korean actress Song Hye-kyo). Then there's Taiwanese doctor Yan Zekun (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a medic in the Imperial Army, who desperately wants to reunite with his Japanese-born sweetheart Masako (Masami Nagasawa). Finally, there is Tong Dawei's character, a lowly soldier in the KMT, who meets with Zhang's lower-class singleton, Yu Zhen - "half angel, half prostitute", as Zhang puts it.

With the water-bound action reserved for the forthcoming second part, this first instalment takes its sweet time, setting up various characters and interactions across four years before the crossing in question. So far at least, splitting the action across two films hasn't put off audiences; the film had a strong opening on the mainland earlier this month, taking 58 per cent of box office receipts on its midweek opening date and grossing 41.8 million yuan (HK$52.7 million) over its first two days in cinemas.

Two for the money: Woo's biggest Hollywood hits, Face/Off (above) and Mission: Impossible II (below).

While he's now putting the finishing touches to the second part, where will Woo go next? Terence Chang estimates he won't return to Hong Kong to make films, simply because the industry here "can't bear the cost" of the epics he's now making. What about the US? "If there is a good script, I would consider Hollywood," Woo says, diplomatically, before explaining how he's "so in love with Indian movies" now. "Bollywood not Hollywood," he laughs.

It might be a long shot to see Woo make a song-and-dance epic in the heart of Mumbai, but he has plans for several movies - including the long-gestating , the story of a group of US pilots who joined the Chinese air force during the second world war. He's also keen to make a martial arts movie, promising it will be "different from the other Chinese martial arts movies, a very human martial arts film" in the style of Kurosawa.

He looks worried for a second, suddenly aware of his mortality. "I don't have much time left, I think."

Hopefully, that's not the case.

A moody battlefield shot from The Crossing

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Troubled waters
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