Starring: Xu Fan, Chen Daoming, Chen Jin, Zhang Jingchu, Li Chen Director: Feng Xiaogang Category: IIA (Putonghua)
An epic subject given an epic treatment undermined by a clich?-ridden script, Feng Xiaogang's grandiose take on the 1976 Tangshan earthquake is ironically one of the director's least moving works.
Not that the movie doesn't have its moments, for the theme of a family torn asunder by one of modern China's greatest tragedies is deeply touching on a fundamental level and the spectacle of the earthquake is the best accomplished on the Chinese screen. It's the type of material a filmmaker of Feng's calibre should have recognised was in no need of manipulative musical underscoring or maudlin dialogue to make its point.
After all, this is a director who first came to prominence purveying razor-sharp satire - The Dream Factory (1997), Be There or Be Square (1998) - and later showed an adeptness at poignant drama with budgets both small (A Sigh, 2000) and large (Assembly, 2007). But with Aftershock, his technical finesse is undermined by a heavy handedness (compounded by an obvious if perhaps unavoidable degree of political correctness) that dilutes the truth of both characters and situations.
The script by Su Xiaorui is unusual in that the calamity takes place within the 130-minute feature's first quarter-hour. This bucks a Hollywood tradition, from the earthquake in San Francisco (1936) to the sinking of the Titanic (1997), in which disaster doesn't strike until after audiences get to know the victims.
When Aftershock's pivotal instant occurs, we only have a sketchy impression of truck driver Fang Daqiang (Zhang Guoqiang), his wife Li Yuanni (Xu Fan) and their six-year-old twin son Da (Zhang Jiachun) and daughter Deng (Zhang Zifeng). It's an interesting approach: the earthquake 'climax' is quickly dispensed with and the focus shifts to how the catastrophe affects the Fang family.