A filmmaker's real-life drama

Jiang Wen is China's closest equivalent to Stanley Kubrick or Orson Welles. And he keeps astounding an audience that seems to show a growing aversion for surprises.

Most film stories have a three-act structure, and Jiang Wen's new work had run through two of the acts by the time it opened.

First, it encountered a high-profile hurdle when it failed to receive the official green light and had to go through some last-minute revisions. This won him enormous public sympathy.

Then, the newly edited version, which was granted permission for screening, held a belated premiere ceremony.

Unlike such events that generate an avalanche of positive word-of-mouth since everyone in attendance is an invited guest, Gone With the Bullets ended up with so vicious a tide of negativity that some even suspected it was manufactured by the film studio's publicity machine.

This was before the movie opened to a paying audience.

And Jiang had ridden a roller-coaster of being everyone's favorite filmmaker to the arrogant artist who does not care to entertain the public with a good yarn.

To be fair, the responses from the "real" moviegoers have been more mixed, running the gamut from sterling praise to total yawn. But compared with the high hopes that had been building up from his previous work, Let the Bullets Fly, four years ago, this came too little and too late.

Jiang Wen feels like an outcast.

This reminds him of the fate of the main character in Gone With the Bullets, who is played by himself.

Based on a real story in 1920, the movie portrays a college-educated young man - a rarity in China then - who murdered a prostitute for her money. It grabbed the public's imagination to the extent that it spawned China's first feature-length film, among many other retellings.

Jiang twisted the tale by making him responsible for the woman's death but not a murderer.

Ma Zouri, the film's protagonist, is into bragging and acting like Marlon Brando's godfather - the first of numerous winks to classic movies - but in moments of truth he holds to his principles and refuses to compromise, which results in his own death.

When he is on the run, he is turned into a cardboard bad guy by the media and the public, who derive lots of pleasure from lynching him.

The analogy is clearly on Jiang's mind, since he feels he is being unfairly lynched by a mob.

"Some people love to see me falter," he tells China Daily.

"They were like this when my previous works came out. When Devils on the Doorstep was banned, there were celebrations."

When asked whether some in the media intend to test their ability to establish idols and then topple them, Jiang thinks for a moment and says: "Nobody is in a position to do that. We filmmakers are ultimately evaluated by our works."

Jiang elaborates that the character he plays in the movie does not necessarily reflect his own values or personality.