Balancing realism with fantasy, commerce with art, and creative freedom with censorship — legendary Hong Kong director Tsui Hark isn’t just making movies; he’s negotiating the complex realities of contemporary filmmaking.
Speaking with Variety from Udine, Italy after receiving his Golden Mulberry lifetime achievement honor at the recently concluded Far East Film Festival, the mastermind behind “Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants” offers a candid glimpse into his creative process and the forces reshaping Asian cinema today.
Tsui, who is considered the leading figure of Hong Kong’s New Wave of the 1980s and has been dubbed Asia’s Spielberg, is best known for his “Once Upon a Time in China” saga and “Detective Dee” film series, among other titles. His more recent blockbuster action movies — prior to “”Legends of the Condor Heroes” — include “Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back” and “The Battle at Lake Changjin.”
“Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants” is a martial arts epic based on the classic Jin Yong novel set during China’s Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). The film focuses on the story of Guo Jing who, after becoming a martial arts master, protects the borders of the Southern Song Dynasty and becomes a national hero. The lifetime achievement recognition, presented to him by frequent collaborator Tony Leung Ka-fai, comes as the film made its international festival premiere at the event.
Returning to the wuxia genre that has defined much of his illustrious career, Tsui explains his approach to this latest adaptation of the classic martial arts tale. “I was intending to make it more realistic,” he said, distinguishing it from his previous works. “Whenever you do a movie, you already have the intention, and then as you’re doing it… suddenly you suck into your thinking.”
The director says that the final result should be surprising. “I still want to do the kind of attempt I use in [Condor Heroes], but then I think we’re trying to design the action in totally different way than the work I’ve done before,” he explains, describing his treatment of the subject as “half imagination and half realistic.”
Reflecting on Hong Kong cinema’s dramatic evolution since his early days with Cinema City and the “A Chinese Ghost Story” era, Tsui maintains that filmmakers inevitably operate within various systems. “We can never get out of [the] system. The system doesn’t mean it’s like censorship. The system can be the market, the commercial system,” he notes, pointing to financial pressures and investor expectations as constants in the creative process.
Beyond commercial considerations, Tsui addresses the reality of censorship and other constraints modern filmmakers face. “Of course, the censorship is one other system that we always face, something that cannot touch upon, something you cannot over exaggerate,” he says, referencing sensitive elements like sexual content and moral criteria that must be navigated.
The internet’s influence represents another challenge, according to Tsui. “I don’t think it’s my problem. I think there is the problem about every filmmaker in the world, everybody has faced the… influence from the internet,” he observes.
When asked about Hong Kong cinema’s future trajectory and his role in shaping it, Tsui says that pioneering filmmakers like himself “didn’t start off as doing intentionally to change anything.” Instead, his focus has always been on sincerity and personal creative standards.
“Sometimes when we start making a movie out of the script, the script is in words, in text. But movies has everything,” he reflects, explaining how the filmmaking process itself opens up new perspectives beyond initial intentions.
Despite current challenges in the Hong Kong industry, Tsui expresses cautious optimism about overcoming present difficulties, particularly regarding market constraints and regional audience discrepancies. “I would want to believe that we can get out of the difficulty that we’re facing now… hopefully we can cross the border and we can reach out to more audience,” he concludes.
