As the Chinese movie industry gears up for a biopic on Confucius I get closer and closer to my goal of never having to do any work. Soon I will be able to just show movies. Given that they have cast Chow Yun-fat in the lead I hope they end up doing a gritty Behind the Music type of thing. That would actually make some sense. Chinese netizens are already unhappy that this will distort the “true story of Confucius” but given that we have almost no reliable information on his life I suppose they will just be making things up. A life of idealism, with brief and limited fame slowly being drowned in long, bitter dissapointment (without drugs, in his case) would seem about right. Maybe they will do a Han-type uncrowned King version of Big C? Get E. Bruce Brooks to consult? Who will play Yen Hui? Does Gong Li have to be in this one, and if so what does she play?
I may never have to teach again
Confucius: Behind the Analects.
I can see it now:
Zigong, seated in a hotel room, smoking a cigarette, giving the talking head style interview…
“So, yeah, one night the Master screams up to my house in his new red Mercedes, he’s whacked out of his mind, looking bad, and…yeah, this was probably toward the end, if only we knew, but he was beyond help at that point. Yan Hui was dead, they were so close…we always suspected, but nobody ever knew for sure. Anyway, in those last days…*choke*…*sob*…There wasn’t a single ruler who would give the Master a job, nobody cared about the rituals, and in the end, he was left with his bottle, the sheep he would not grudge, and his own pickled bitterness.”
And scene.
The only thing that surprises me about this, and it is a real shock, is that nobody’s done one before. Surely there must be some didactic hack who’s done “Kong who would be King” ….
No?
My only question about the movie is whether it will be dull, tiresome or absurd. I don’t really see much middle ground there….