THE SOONG SISTERS
Directed by Mabel Cheung
The Screen NR 148 min.
"Once upon a time in China there were three sisters. One loved money, one loved power, and the third loved her country."
With this legend, over black-and-white footage of three little girls on swings, begins the historical drama of one of modern China's most fascinating families, in an epic film directed by Mabel Cheung from a screenplay by her partner Alex Law. The quote lays out several things for us - the locus of the movie's heart, the tone of its telling, and the source of some of its problems.
The Soong sisters were the daughters of Charlie Soong (Jiang Wen), an American-educated Chinese missionary end entrepreneur. All three were sent to the States to college. The eldest, Ai-ling (Michelle Yeoh), married a wealthy Chinese financier (Niu Zhen-Hua); the middle sister, Ching-ling (Maggie Cheung), married her father's friend Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (Winston Chao), the revolutionary "Father of Modern China"; the youngest, May-ling (Vivian Wu) married Sun's protE9g=E9 and successor, = Chiang Kai-Shek (Wu Hsing Kuo).
The size and sweep of this movie is impressive, and its historical lessons, though they may be simplistic, impart information about an extraordinary 20th century family of which most of us are sadly ignorant. Hong Kong filmmaker Mabel Cheung takes on the difficult job of weaving a huge amount of information into a movie, under the Herculean restraints of co-production with the mainland Chinese and its heavy burdens of ideological censorship. The film was first released with 18 minutes (mostly dealing with Chiang Kai-Shek) cut by China; that footage has been restored here.
Ms. Cheung handles her arduous task with style and grandeur, but also with the clichE9s and trivialities that so often come with this = kind of historical reduction. She's best on the grand scale: there are images that are stunning in their visual and emotional impact. But ultimately the characters, despite some excellent performances, remain stifled by the movie's inevitable shorthand. There are some inconsistencies in the telling, and some lapses in judgment.
The story's conscience, narrator, and central figure is Mme. Sun, the passionate idealist ("loved her country" ) who seized the ideological banner of revolution at her husband's untimely death, and forged China's relationship with the USSR. Maggie Cheung is very good, as is Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger) as the financier ("loved money"). Perhaps best of all is Wu's steely Chiang. The Soong Sisters is digest history, too truncated even at 2-1/2 hours, but it's worth wading through for the education it provides.
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