The recent outcome of Tsui Hark's "The Taking of Tiger Mountain" shamed its detractors by being a box-office hit and critically acclaimed at the same time. The movie earned more than 800 million yuan ($128 million) in the box office. Apart from these, critics were treating Tsui with the highest regard in what is now considered his "revolutionary" work.
Before the release of the film, critics were having doubts regarding Tsui's skills as a filmmaker. The fact that the Hong Kong director was raised in the West is a big question whether he can infuse revolutionary values in the movie. A momentary feat and Tsui is maybe not the director for the job. But with the movie's success, critics agree that Tsui accomplished what was impossible, which is to bring the importance and relevance of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76) into the modern times.
Critic Raymond Zhou said: "To understand what Tsui has done, one has to have a firm grasp of China's cultural scene some 40 years ago. To put it bluntly, there was no culture as most would see it today. Almost all artists were sent into exile or labor camps. The whole population subsisted on only a dozen shows, which were filmed and screened repeatedly across the nation."
Zhou also said that what Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark did was "he took the story of Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, adapted the novel the opera was based on, and made it into a Hollywood-style action movie."
He added that the parallels between the so-called genre film and the model opera are evident: Both portray characters in black and white, but the movie is more palatable to modern sensibilities mainly because the main character, Yang Zirong, is now a lone hero with incredible smarts and lots of charisma.
Zhou claimed that Tsui's strategy of substituting the traditional ways and methods with Hollywood-style storytelling appealed to the new Chinese audience, particularly the younger generation. In a sense, bringing the gap between tradition and modern sensibilities.
Zhou added that although Tsui was not the first Chinese director to use this strategy, he is no doubt the first successful filmmaker to pull off this magnanimous task, and will inspire a long line of filmmakers using the same method.