The Sun Also Rises (2007) User Reviews

Don't expect to figure everything out

[pvernezze · 8/10 · 16 September 2007]

The movie basically revolves around two interconnecting stories. In the first story, the mother of an 18 year old boy in the countryside of revolutionary China 1976 begins acting strangely once she falls out of a tree trying to retrieve a pair of her shoes that a mysteriously appearing bird, which was repeating "I know, I know, I know," had stolen. In the second story a teacher at a university in Shanghai (same time, 1976) is falsely accused of groping a female doctor at a film (where he is chased down and beaten by a crowd). The final segment of the movie connects the two tales.

I left the theater with several plot questions unanswered and was glad to find out the Chinese audience I watched it with (in Chengdu, China) were equally as puzzled but just as enraptured with the film. You will definitely leave asking questions that I would assert are not possible to answer from the information provided in the film. But you also soon discover that it is really o.k. and the unanswered questions leave you thinking and talking about the film long after you have seen the movie. The film has a magical quality to it, even though it takes place during that most unmagical of times, the Cultural Revolution, with everything except for one scene at the end being set in 1976. The director, Jiang Wen, has only made three films in 15 years, and this is the only one of his that I have seen. But it definitely makes me want to see his other films.

Captivates with its sumptuous colors

[howard.schumann · 7/10 · 12 May 2008]

Wen Jiang's personality takes center stage in The Sun Also Rises, his first effort since the 2000 Devils on the Doorstep, a film that has yet to be released in China. While The Sun Also Rises captivates with its sumptuous colors, magical realism, high energy, and outstanding performances, its elliptical plot and lack of coherent narrative suggests that Jiang may have purposely clouded the film's meaning in symbols and code to escape the Chinese censors. Loosely based on author Ye Mi's novel Velvet, the film is set in China during the Cultural Revolution. There are four stories and six characters in the film, but they have a tenuous connection to each other.

Three episodes are set in the 1970s and one twenty years earlier, but Jiang provides no intertitles or other indicators to help the viewer recognize changes in theme, time, or place. As the film opens with a tableau of gorgeous colors and people running, a young woman (Zhou Yun) identified as the mother of a teenage boy (Jaycee Chan) buys a pair of embroidered shoes. The colorful shoes are promptly stolen by a mysterious bird, which repeats the mantra "I know, I know, I know," and the woman falls into what seems to be madness—climbing trees, collecting rocks, digging a pit in the middle of the forest, and screaming the name of Alyosha (which we eventually learn was the name of the boy's father). Meanwhile her dutiful son tries to protect her, at the cost of having to constantly leave his job. The segment is playful, magical, and poetic in its songs and poetry, and it suggests that insanity reigned supreme during the Cultural Revolution.

In the second episode, the scene shifts to southern China, where a mob chases Liang (Anthony Wong), a professor at the University of Shanghai, suspecting him of groping women at an outdoor movie, a story that raises issues of rule by mob during the Cultural Revolution. When Liang is beaten, he is comforted in the hospital by Dr. Lin (Joan Chen) who throws herself at him, telling him how much she loves him. For comfort, Liang turns to an old friend Tang, played by the director Wen Jiang. The sequence is raunchy, comic, and absurd, hinting at sexual repression during the 70s.

The scene then moves back to eastern China, where Tang and his wife meet the son of the widow who went mad in the first segment. The son is now a brigade leader and he welcomes the new couple who are following the government's plan for intellectuals to be relocated to perform manual labor in the countryside. Tang adapts to the village, making friends with the local children and going on pheasant hunts while blowing his bugle to provide hunting calls. Meanwhile his lonely wife makes love with the young brigade leader, who is prepared to die as a result. When Tang overhears his wife telling the boy that her husband says her belly is like velvet, he determines to kill the young man but is stopped by the boy's question, "What is velvet?" The last segment shifts to the magnificent Gobi Desert, where two girls cross the desert in search of their lovers. The segment takes us back twenty years to discover how the characters connect, but, as a love child is born amidst the flowers, the film ends on a note as elusive as its beginning.

Like a Painting That Asks Questions

[Andyssoohigh · 7/10 · 22 June 2016]

I won't pretend to understand everything or even half of what went on in this film. I gave up pretty quickly into the film, however, I wanted to keep on watching and the film kept me enticed mainly for that reason.

Sometimes it feels good not to understand? Just to watch for the beauty? The Magic? The craziness? The unknowingness of it all.

I really found this film like I was wandering through a modern art gallery but so much better. It was painted beautifully, the setting and the colours; my mouth watered and i felt like i was eating a six course meal.

The words also seemed to be quite poetically abstract to fit in with it all.

A dream like film.

Top-actor-turned-director JIANG Wen's venture into the avant-garde

[harry_tk_yung · 16 September 2007]

Seen in the Toronto International Film Festival

First thing, the English translation of the title is inaccurate. The Chinese title says "The sun rises as usual". I don't know if the mistranslation is due to oversight, incompetence or, this is a long shot, a sneaky ploy to draw attention to the film by subliminally invoking a connection with Hemingway's novel of the same name.

Top Chinese actor JIANG Wen's third try at the director's chair seems to have been inspired by works like "Amores Perros" (2000), "21 grams" (2003) and Babel (2006). Should that really be the case, what has been achieved is only form, not substance. Under the superficial structure of interlinked stories and non-linear time frames, the complexity of the plot is nowhere near that of the three mentioned. While there are red herrings abound, there is really no ingenuous cause-and-effect links as in these others.

The individual stories are however worth watching. While there are three, plus an epilogue that purportedly links everything together (which it kind of does, but in a rather haphazard way), I'll only mention the middle one. At 46, Joan Chen can still do neurotic-erotic like nobody else can. Anthony Wong, strumming a few acoustic chords and crooning a popular Indonesian folk ballad, is irresistible, to young girls and middle-age women alike:

Bengawan Solo

River of love we know

Where my heart was set aglow

When we loved not long ago

(he sang in Chinese)

Overall, the movie is well shot, with all the once avant-garde elements of camera deployment, montages, mise-en-scene, extensive voice over, visual and audio motifs, occasional wandering into the surreal, you name it. The effort is commendable and the result is watchable. Add a pinch of ingenuity in the next one and director Jiang will certainly be heading in the right direction.

interesting, surreal and kind of pointless

[schwabbeldiwauwau · 6/10 · 19 May 2013]

Jiang Wen is pretty much the most popular mainland Chinese director/actor at present. But whenever I watch any of his movies I can't help feeling that it might be useful being Chinese myself so I could better catch more of the social commentary and humor, which are apparently plentiful in all of his movies. But I am not Chinese, and so Jiang Wen is one of the few directors, whose movies leave me behind feeling stupid and somehow a little guilty for not "getting them", because there is supposedly so much to "get"...

But I also can't help feeling that his movies are pretending to be more than they really are. This is especially true for this movie, which I enjoyed the least of the three Jiang Wen movies I have seen so far (the other two being "Devils on the Doorstep" and "Let the Bullets Fly"). The set-up is really nice, there are interesting characters and stories introduced. First we see one story in one part of the country, then another story in another part of the country, then one character from the second story going to the first setting and encountering characters from there, and then we get to see a flash-back which ties it all together and wraps the whole thing up. And it all works out pretty nicely with very, very beautiful music and sometimes hilarious scenes going on.

BUT there is constantly some surreal sh!t happening that doesn't make any sense at all! We have a goat falling from a tree, a piece of grass and dirt floating on a stream leading to a house built with round rocks, a man committing suicide right after all his problems have been solved and a girl giving birth to a baby on a moving train while she is peeing through a hole on the track, thus dropping the baby on the flower covered train track - just to name a few of those moments. I've read that these events are for the most part supposed to symbolize the crazy futility of the cultural revolution, which is the time-setting of the majority of the film. What?! Really?! Come on! I'm sure there are better ways to depict the futility of the cultural revolution than having something completely (!) random happening in the movie all the time...

Another thing that i found pretty annoying is that Jiang Wen seems to like using unresolved plot lines as a cheap means to have people discuss and think about the movie afterwards. He simply has plot lines ending abruptly or not showing them any more. That doesn't make it deeper, it just makes it a bigger mess.

If you want to watch a movie by Jiang Wen, don't start with this one!

about love and birth

[sunnier_02 · 8/10 · 23 September 2007]

these 4 parts story-telling is popular lately, but Jiangwen's "sun also rise" is the most magic one. compare to the "still thing"by Jiazhangke, Jiangwen use a more passion color and rhythm to make a movie, based on the Chinese life style. maybe you will say there is none connection with these two.but let us focus on the "looking for husband" part in "still thing", is it familiar to the frantic mum story in "the sun also rise". i totally believe the theme is the same. maybe these whole stories are out of the country ,the race, the age or period, it is supposed to happen whenever and wherever, woman is crazy for the man , man is crazy for different women,but life still on.can live in the love ,can death for the love. even can't tell ,the fate was made by a glance or an occasional meeting long time before. which like the wife of the director, also the actress as the frantic mum, said:" when i was very little,the first movie i've seen in cinema,is Jiangwen's "the days under sunshine", i never can expect one day i'm his wife." but for Jiangwen, this is not his first woman. but we can find ,how the new love encourage him and change the way he express himself.in the movie, when the young guy finally say his own opinion about the woman belong to him, Jiangwen, also a character in that movie, put on his gun, and give a shot.He is mad on he is not young.

The sun may rise, but the story here doesn't

[Adorable · 6/10 · 22 October 2007]

One major thing works against The Sun Also Rises. Its attempt to revisit the surreal mystery genre on a mainland China backdrop faces stiff competition from arguably among the best catalogs in that precise brand of storytelling, as the country witnessed a flood of excellent entries in this form circa the late 90's to early 2000's.

Anyone who's ever seen Lunar Eclipse, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Chicken Poets, Dazzling, I Love You, Spring Subway and quite a few others, will easily tell you this.

Also, our friend Jiang Wen, although definitely a superb actor and major contributor to the recounting of tales, is probably better when he's poking serious fun at something, to wit In the Heat of the Sun and the unforgettable Devils at the Doorstep.

When it comes to psychedelia he may not be our first choice, as his previous brush with something similar, albeit as an actor in Green Tea, wasn't really all that hot. And in The Sun Also Rises, we have him as a director, which means he's had more to do with the project, yet the result doesn't feel all that strong. It's in many ways akin to The Missing Gun, another one of his projects and also a decent if uninspired venture.

For Sun Also Rises, Jiang enlisted his own wife, Zhou Yun, probably taking a leaf out of Chen Kaige's manuscript in this sense.

She plays a wacky southerner in some unnamed remote village who goes nuts over a pair of fish-ornamented shoes that never seem to stay put yet always come back, or are somehow found. This comes much to the dismay of her son, a young villager especially good with an abacus (Jaycee Chan). He tries to keep her from going crazy, to no avail, until she proceeds to dig strange holes in the ground, go floating on the river and generally get up to all kinds of irrational mayhem. Nothing seems to help, nor ease her anguish as she keeps calling to someone named Alyosha.

In a different story arc, we move to another part of China (each story takes place in a compass bearing, no place names with the exception of a Beijing cameo), where academics find themselves in a bizarre twist of passion. Here, Jiang Wen and Anthony Wong play what are presumably educators in a secluded rural campus, while Joan Chen does a horny doctor who gets everyone worked up. There are accusations of perversion and hints-a-plenty that this is taking place during the Cultural Revolution.

The third segment in this multi-threaded affair brings a few of the characters together as Jiang Wen and his on-screen wife (Kong Wei) are sent off to the southern village to be "re-educated" in the proper ways of hard work, all under the tutelage of Jaycee Chan's character. Here too lust plays a role, but no caution, it's all friendly in the end.

Finally, the fourth part brings clever closure to the stories, featuring pretty much all the main characters and having that "Ah! That's what that was all about!" effect to a large degree, which is nice. However, it also has Zhou Yun deliver among the most screechingly irritating scenes in movie history.

The Sun Also Rises is one of those OK'ish movies that somehow leaves you thinking there's a couple more viewing in it, so go ahead, give it a chance, you may learn something.

It also fields some of Jiang's old gags from previous movies, another boon, but isn't as witty as some of the other works he's been in and basically has no strong message that we could discern. And unlike those other surreal pictures we discussed earlier, this one opts for bombastic presentation that's completely unlike the understated beauty the genre craves. It makes us think the Kunming department of tourism had a hand in this.

But still, give it a shot, you may enjoy what you get.

A Challenge for Practical Decoders

[lupinyiu · 6/10 · 25 September 2007]

The film is more a self-actualization of Director Jiang himself on his aspirations and far-sightedness than a readily decipherable reading for the audience. Alongside the 4 episodes respectively under the narrative motifs of insanity, love, gunman and dream, the quadruple-segmented parody in a non-chronological structure embeds in its inner core, quite implicitly, a philosophy of karma, cycling, reborn, rejuvenation and blessings. Structurally, events in the last episode (dream) precede those in the first episode (insanity) in temporal dimension but is narrated in a flashback. The interrelatedness between the first episode (insanity)and the third (gunman) as well as the sequential arrangement of the second episode (love) and the third (gunman) provides a bridge that completes the causality in both temporal and spatial dimensions of the story. The last episode (dream), a flashback, closes most gaps, bestowing on the audience a residual brain working activity on leaving the cinema.

The wide spectrum of the director's meditation of the story does not call for a preferred reading on the part of the audience. Instead, it leaves ample rooms for decoding and boundless interpretation. Insanity rides through the entire story in various degrees and in variant forms: insanity reigns in the insanity episode; it then tunes down itself as an over-reaction in the love episode; it transforms itself into an extreme sentiment and lust in the gunman episode; it becomes a possible nirvana (expressed in an aberrant gesture of the character), under a rising sun, on the next generation in the dream episode.

Jiang establishes love as another common narrative theme and the act of running as visual motif in the four episodes. Love sways between parental care and lovers' romance in the sequences. The wide geographical coverage in the story and the western-styled gunman perhaps are projections of the grandiose and ostensible aspirations of the director.

Under fast pacing, fast cutting, elliptical narrative, a deluge of film language and cinematographic techniques, fluidity in temporal and spatial orientations and with abrupt slapsticks in loud volume (ambient sounds), the film presents with comic effects and titillating musical acoustics a contrivance from an essentially intrinsic perspective that swings between perceptibility and imperceptibility to practical decoders.

The Fallacy of History - Review of "The Sun Also Rises"

[kampolam-75813 · 6/10 · 23 January 2023]

Jiang Wen went from actor to director, following the wave of the fifth generation of New Chinese Cinema, starring Zhang Yimou's "Red Sorghum" (1987), Tian Zhuangzhuang's "The Last Eunuch" (1990) and directed his first film "In the Heat of the Sun" in 1993, a blockbuster, followed him while acting and directing. After more than 20 years, he has become one of the most important figures in Chinese Cinema and is internationally renowned.

"The Sun Also Rises" is his masterpiece after "Devils on the Doorstep" in 1998. It has a lot of demand, and the Mainland China media are eager to report and discuss it. The film features Mainland and Hong Kong actors, including Joan Chen Chong and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, in which Jiang Wen played the leading role of Jaycee Chan (son of Jackie Chan). In the production special, we saw Jiang Wen exercise Jaycee Chan very seriously and asked him to play a boy who grew up in a rural China, and the effect of the film came out, Jaycee Chan's performance was more ideal than expected, and several of his rivalry scenes with Zhou Yun, who played his mother, were full of explosiveness and passion. On the contrary, the performances of good actors Joan Chan and Anthony Wong were a bit disappointing, especially Anthony Wong's performance was a bit out of tune with the film, Joan Chan's charming female doctor was also a bit over the top.

The film still maintains Jiang Wen's Chinese "magic" style. The plot is full of absurdity and magic. There are many brilliant strokes, and the political chaos during the Cultural Revolution is used "magic" to reflect the fallacy of history. And Jiang Wen's own unscrupulous wildness and feelings, if the audience can accept it, the observability of the film will definitely increase. The film's final party in the desert is reminiscent of Eastern European films of the 1960s.

By Kam Po LAM (original in Chinese)

Jiang Wen is disappointing......

[roytien2006 · 5/10 · 3 October 2007]

Jiang Wen's "In the heat of the sun" is a master piece and arguably the best Chinese film ever made. His second work "Gui Zi Lai Le" is controversial in its achievement but certainly fun to watch. The Chinese film industry has so much to expect from him after those crappy 'big productions' such as "Huang jin jia", "Banquet" and alike in recent years. But Jian Wen has failed people's expectation with this one. I don't care how high the technical achievement performed in this film. If a story told can not be comprehended by its dedicated viewers, it's not worthwhile watching. I always have an interest in decoding but do not feel like listening to other people's murmur - Jiang Wen's or anyone else'. Unfortunately, it has thus become a two-hour waste of my life. On the acting part, the talented Anthony Wong wasted his talent entirely in the film. Joan Chen's good performance was ruined by the ridiculous plot. As for the competition with "Lust; Caution" in Venice........ oh, come on!