JIANG DONG/CHINA DAILY
Feng Xiaogang has a consistent record of making top-grossing movies, including 2013's Personal Tailor.
This year, I published an English-language book, titled A PracticalGuide to Chinese Cinema 2002-2012 which is now available in the Kindle store, but it does no include two of the most dramatic episodes that happened to me as a film critic. They might have shaped film criticism in China, though.
In summer, I became public enemy No 1 when hundreds of thousands of teenage girls heaped dirt and scorn and invectives on me. I had written a very critical review on Tiny Times, a movie the loved. They had grown up with the novel on which the movie is based. My review and my subsequent volleys with Guo Jingming, the author and director, triggered an avalanche eventually involving government mouthpieces and the Western press.
Imagine an America music critic saying Justin Bieber is an awful singer and see what happens. Of course my story was much more complicated than that. It was interpreted as a tug-of-war of different moral values, or aesthetics or generations or even political agendas. Anyway, I made it a point not to see the second installment, which was made together with the first part and premiered only two months later. Its box-office result was 200 million yuan below that of part one, which some attributed to the absence of my castigation, perhaps in jest. This means bad reviews sell a movie, a possibility more Chinese film-goers now reckon with.
The second controversy I found myself in has not died down yet. It's about Personal Tailor, Feng Xiaogang's dark comedy that debuted on Dec 19. I wrote a largely positive review, with some reservations. It turned out I was among a minority. Most film critics lambasted it. They hated the social commentary embedded in the film. For me, it is a sign of Feng's social conscience which, despite the uneven treatment, deserves credit.
Over the weekend, I went to a discussion of the movie hosted by the China Film Museum. The scores of audience participants voiced a wide range of opinions, with their overall score averaging around 75 points. It dawned on me that what appeared as a polarized reaction online does no reflect a wider audience at all. This has been borne out by the continued performance of the movie at the box office.
Never have I cared about whether my take on a film belongs to the majority or minority, whether it agree with the elite or the masses. I only care that it speaks my mind. But in the eyes of many, a critic should be held up as a barometer of some kind, as if one should act as a popularly elected leader spewing platitudes. We're still a long way from respecting differences in opinion and outlook.
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