CHOW YUN-FAT, the tough guy actor famed for his roles in hard-boiled Hong Kong gangster movies, has been lined up to play one of his most challenging roles to date – that of Confucius, the great Chinese thinker, philosopher, statesman and educator, who lived over 2,500 years ago and is undergoing a major revival in China.
Western cinemagoers will know Chow as a pistol-toting mobster in John Woo movies, but in his new role he will have to assume a scholarly garb and familiarise himself with the sayings made famous by the philosopher known as Kongjiu.
President Hu Jintao relies heavily on the teachings of Confucius when he urges the masses to learn a “socialist sense of honour and shame” as a way of combating the eight “disgraces” creeping into society.
Confucius lived from 551-479BC and his philosophy dominated Chinese society for centuries, advocating ideas of achieving harmony through self-refinement in manners and taste. His thinking spread to Europe in the late 16th century, and now Chinese film-maker Hu Mei hopes to translate this philosophy onto the big screen.
“We have just signed the deal with Chow Yun-fat,” said Wang Kefei, a spokesman for Dadi Film Group in Beijing, which is one of the backers of the €17 million biographical movie, along with state company China Film Group.
It is a major departure for Chinese cinema – Chairman Mao Zedong condemned Confucius as a feudal ideologue. During the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when ultra-leftist Red Guard zealots turned on any bourgeois decadence they could find, they destroyed Confucius’s family home, family grave plot and a temple in his honour in his hometown of Qufu, destroying some 6,600 priceless relics.
Burgeoning wealth and the rise of consumerism has seen many traditional Confucian values slip away in favour of self-serving, money-grabbing behaviour, the leadership believes. Scholars and, increasingly the Communist Party itself, believe following some sound Confucian principles would be conducive to the building of a “harmonious society”, the cornerstone of Hu thinking.