Jiang Wen's 2000 black-and-white film "Guizi lai le" (Devils in the Doorway) is a very good and very dark comedy that impressed the audience at the Cannes Film Festival (and the judges who awarded it the Grand Prix), was immediately banned in the PRC, and Jiang was banned form directing movies in China until this year. Solidarity with the persecuted director has, I think, made admirers of the movie (notably Stephen Soderbergh, who provides an enthusiastic but not very helpful introduction to the DVD) a bit overenthusiastic about it.

The movie opens in Rack-Armor Village somewhere in Manchuria with the feet of a man (writer/director/actor Jiang Wen) and a woman (Jiang Hongbo) making love. They are interrupted by a knock on the door. The man (whose name the viewer eventually learns is Ma Dasan, the brother of the woman's slain husband) opens the door to a pistol and a command to close his eyes. He is told by the unseen visitor to take care of two packages that will be picked up on New Year's (that is, the first day of 1945).

Once he opens his eyes, he discovers that the two packages are two gagged and trussed-up men. One is a Japanese sergeant, Kosaburo (Kagawa Teruyuki),, more or less foaming at the mouth. The other is a Chinese translator who works for the Japanese, (Kagawa Teruyuki), and his Chinese translator-collaborator, Dong Hanchen (Yuan Ding).
Kosaburo is like a wild animal, deranged by the disgrace of having been captured (even though he was unconscious at the time and did not surrender). Dong keeps Kosaburo alive by very artful interpretation of what Kosaburo should say (what his captors want to hear) and would want to hear. The disjuncture between what is said and what is presented as "translation" is very funny (there may be Chinese puns lost in English, but the disjunctures are still quite funny).

The villagers are perplexed about what to do with their prisoners after the New Year comes and goes and the prisoners are still there. (The village is just below a Japanese blockhouse overlooking an inlet or a river navigable by gunboat.) Kosaburo's attempts to call attention to his presence are cunning and make the villagers very frightened. Feeding and keeping the prisoners alive and undetected are a major burden. Even outsmarting their masters (Manchuria was annexed by Japan in 1931, the pretext being the "Mukden Incident") ceases to be any fun).

What they decide to do seems rational enough, but fails to factor in Japanese values. The last reel or two are very grim, though dazzlingly filmed. There are two American soldiers who do nothing but chew gum with great determination, and a severely banged-up Kuomintang officer (David Wu). It would be serious plot-spoiling to say any more about the tripartite ending. But I can say that what begins as a sort of "Hogan's Heroes" comedy moves into "Fires on the Plain" country (end of the war horrors)--even more so than in the black comedies about more recent Balkan conflicts, Danis Tanovic's ''No Man's Land'' and Emir Kusturica "Underground." (Wajzda's Kanal is even bleaker a portrayal of horrors near the end of WWII in Warsaw.)

I think that I can mention that there is way too much of a former Q'ing dynasty executioner, contacted in whatever the nearest city is. The version of the film shown at Cannes was 162 minutes. The theatrical release/DVD version runs 139 and it still too long. (I'd be tempted to cut out the "one-strike" executioner altogether, or at least to reduce significantly the search for and interview of him.)

There are many LOL funny moments and artful suspense and great horror in the movie, with the humor drying up very artfully. There is a lot of cursing that is probably softened in translation. And Jiang is a very good actor (Red Sorghum, In the Heat of the Sun [which he also directed], The Emperor's Shadow, Warriors of Heaven and Earth) with a great sense of visual composition (not to slight cinematographer Gu Changwei (best known for shooting "Farewell, My Concubine" and "Ju Dou", Gu also shot Jiang's "In the Heat of the Sun").. I think that Jiang's pacing is a bit slow, though, as I've already noted, he is a master of building suspense. I'm looking forward to "Dang taiyang zai ci shengqi" with Joan Chen, which is in post-production and the first film he has been allowed to make since "Devils."

In addition to Soderberg's appreciative but not very informative introduction, the DVD includes a theatrical trailer. More information about how the film came to be made (was financed) would have been useful.



© 2006, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age