ASSEMBLY (China, 2007)

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

124 minutes, 35mm, in Mandarin with English subtitles
Directed by: Feng Xiaogang
Starring: Zhang Hanyu, Hu Jun, Yuan Wenkang

Showtimes: SUN June 22, 4.45pm at the IFC Center [Buy Tickets];
WED June 25, 6:00pm at the IFC Center [Buy Tickets].
Note: "Buy Tickets" links will take you to the IFC Center website (for shows at IFC Center) and to Japan Society website (for shows at Japan Society). Tickets for each venue must be purchased separately

"...the film is graphic, relentless and moving...very much a reaction against the propaganda war movies churned out by the Chinese film industry in the 1950s and 1960s." (The London Times)

China’s most successful commercial director, Feng Xiaogang, delivers a dirt-in-your-teeth war movie that transforms itself into something richer and deeper about halfway through, elevating itself from an ultra-advanced riff on SAVING PRIVATE RYAN to a human drama that guts you like a bayonet. Opening smack in the middle of China’s 1948 Civil War, the Communist People’s Liberation Army is locked in a bloody, flesh-shredding battle with the Nationalist Kuomintang forces (the KMT). Captain Gu Zidi (Zhang Hanyu) leads his PLA rifle company to a hard-won victory but just when it looks like the carnage is over, in a fit of rage he commits a war crime and is subsequently imprisoned. Given a second chance, he’s sent to the front on a hopeless mission: to protect the rear during a retreat from superior KMT forces. He’s told that his company is expected to hold out until they hear the assembly call, at which point any survivors who can still walk can beat a retreat. Needless to say, things go very, very wrong very, very quickly. But just when you’re about to go insane if you hear one more artillery shell explode, the film suddenly shifts gears and focuses on the problem that confronts every veteran of every war: how do you live with the choices you made on the battlefield once the war is over? In diving down into the depths of Gu Zidi’s postwar soul, ASSEMBLY becomes a movie that speaks directly to Americans who are, right now, watching their own soldiers coming home and trying to fit back into civilian life.

Grossing 180 million yuan ($25 million dollars) ASSEMBLY was the number two hit of the year in China, becoming a blockbuster of massive proportions, out-earned only by Jet Li’s WARLORDS. It’s a surprise that this carnage-soaked movie did so well, until you consider its director. Feng Xiaogang (whose THE BANQUET opened last year’s New York Asian Film Festival) is China’s most commercially successful director, with nine blockbusters under his belt ranging from martial arts epic, to indie art film to romantic comedy. With the help of a special effects and art direction team from Korea (who had just finished working on that country’s Korean War epic, TAE GUK GI) he has assembled a brutally beautiful war movie that focuses on an aspect of war that we would all rather forget: sacrifice. War forces soldiers to sacrifice everything: their innocence, their lives and, sometimes, even their humanity. Feng Xiaogang does not take this lightly, and with ASSEMBLY he wants to show the sacrifices that serve as the foundations of modern day China. As he says, “Every sacrifice deserves respect, whether it is voluntary or not.”

Festivals/Awards
Pusan Film Festival 2007: Opening Night Film