Chinese film director Zhang Yimou. Li Na / China Daily

When Chinese film master Zhang Yimou brought his latest movie Coming Home to the audience at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, he never imagined that so many people would be affected by the story.

“It's a really emotional film that can stir up a conversation about human beings,” said Trevor Hogg of the website FlickeringMyth.com. “And the performances of the principle actors, Chen Daoming and Gong Li, are worthy of compliments.”

Coming Home is a tale about love, faithfulness, and redemption. Setting during the aftermath of the “cultural revolution” (1966-76), an amnesiac woman, Feng Wanyu (portrayed by Gong Li), struggles to regain her memory and reconnect with her long-imprisoned husband, Lu Yanshi (played by Chen Daoming).

The cinematography creates a sense of intrigue as everything goes horribly wrong for the two spouses determined to run away together.

“This is a psychological love story,” said Arthur J Pais of Rediff.com from New York. “This kind of human love can be seen in any country.”

In 2002, the famous Chinese film director created his martial arts epic Hero, a story about the King (also starring Chen Daoming), who justifies his yearning for absolute power by explaining that this is a necessary condition for world peace. The grand narrative brought Zhang a great commercial success while perhaps an artistic failure according to various voices of criticism.

After 12 years, a cycle of the Chinese lunar year, it is said that Zhang comes back to his artistic success with Coming Home, which is similar to his past films such as Qiu Ju, Not One Less, and Happy Times, all small productions and very humanized.

“I try to look for some treasures in the past. Coming Home is the type I used to be very familiar with. To compress an era into the story of one family, into the lives of three people — that's something I really like to attempt,” Zhang told China Daily.

Zhang emphasized that a healthy market suits different tastes and audiences. “It is completely different from the time when I made Red Sorghum since we have to talk about box office and business besides the politics and art,” he said. “Actually, both types of movies including commercial blockbusters and human interest stories need to be made. I'd say they're like my left and right hands and I try to do both.”

According to Zhang, the Chinese film market is growing fast. China has the second-largest film market in the world. In this period of expansion, the diversities of production and market are very important. The younger people are looking for the big blockbusters and if the director can make it well, it can still carry on a cultural connotation.

With globalization in the film industry, it poses an opportunity as well as a challenge for Chinese filmmakers. The Chinese film industry benefits from global markets and at the same time, it is said that Chinese films find it difficult to compete with Western films, especially those from Hollywood.

“We have a long history and very excellent literature and most of my movies are adapted from literature or novels, including Mo Yan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2012,” said Zhang. “I don't worry about the challenge from outside. Actually, my next film is going to be a Hollywood-style blockbuster film. It's all in English and there will be Hollywood actors, movements, technology and overall vision.”

In his coming Hollywood production, Zhang will go with a younger audience's taste and perspective to deliver certain aesthetics, values, and even basic concepts of Chinese culture. “I hope it can help younger audiences around the world appreciate the history and culture.”

In terms of the story narrative, Zhang said he prefers to tell a story in the context of globalization and use a small piece of the puzzle to illustrate the big picture, like Coming Home. “Time is change, it's a time of the Internet, we're in a connected period now and the whole world is connected,” he said.

renali@chinadailyusa.com

Based on author Yan Geling's novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi, Zhang Yimou's Coming Home is set during China's cultural revolution period and focuses on the reunion between Lu Yanshi and his wife Feng Wanyu. Provided to China Daily