Mao's Last Dancer - The Movie (Plot Spoilers Alert)

Li Cunxin, the great ballet star, is the subject of a film by Bruce Beresford based on Li's autobiography, which opened in the U.S. last week.  I saw it tonight at the Landmark Cinema.  It is "fantastic."  (Anybody who has seen the film will recognize the significance of that descriptor.)

I had seen the trailer for this film earlier in the summer when I went to Landmark to see "I Am Love."  In a summer when major studio releases worth seeing are thin on the ground, I've found myself more often at Landmark to see foreign films.  This is a foreign film in the sense that the filmmaker is Australian and some of the filming was done in Australia, but it is also a foreign film as the main subject is a native of China and large parts of the film are in Chinese with English subtitles.  Three different actors portray the main subject - as a little boy, removed from his rural village by the authorities to be trained at a ballet academy in Beijing; - as a teenage student of the ballet school; - and as a young man, spotted as potential talent by a visiting choreographer from the Houston Ballet who persuades the authorities to allow him to come to Houston as a student for the Houston Ballet's summer program. 

The film is basically set in Houston during that summer, with lengthy flashbacks to tell the story of Li from his youth to the time of his arrival in Houston, and extended sequences showing Li's development that summer into a star, pressed into service when a lead dancer suffers an injury, making his spectacular debut, and deciding to resist returning to China at the end of the summer, despite the orders of the Chinese government.  This was in 1981, when relations between China and the bellicose early Reagan Administration were quite tense.  Vice President George Bush, who had served as a diplomat in China, intervened to make it possible for Li to remain in the U.S.  He went on to a substantial career as a soloist in Houston, then moved to London and Australia, where he finished his career as a dancer, wrote his autobiography, went back to school for training in financial services, and has started a successful career in finance in Australia, where he lives with his wife, also a retired dancer, and their children.

There are many wonderful moments in this film.  The acting is superb.  The two young dancers cast in the part of Li - Chongwu Guo as the teenager, Chi Cao as the young man - are a bit stiff as actors (in roles that actually call for that quality) but extraordinary as dancers.  Bruce Greenwood is a bit flouncy as choreographer Ben Stevenson, Kyle MacLachlan receives star billing for a very brief turn - little more than a walk-on, actually - as the lawyer who advises Li on how to stay in the U.S. and then intervenes for him in the crucial moments at the Chinese consulate.  The large supporting cast of Chinese, American and Australian actors do fine work, and the directing is fluent.

There is a feeling of honest story-telling about this film, and according to Li's own website, he screened the film twice before it was released and was satisfied with the depiction of his life, although it seems some details were changed for dramatic purposes when one compares the film to the biographical statement on the website.

I love films about the arts that have an air of credibility about them.  But I am sensitive to tampering with music, and the big final dance scene does quite a butcher job on Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps!  On the other hand, the choreography for that scene is spectacular, and they haven't gone to the lengths that Disney went in "Fantasia" in rearranging Stravinsky's work.  This film is onefor anybody who loves dance, anybody who loves the arts, anybody who loves music -- in fact, anybody who loves a heartwarming story of human accomplishment with a happy ending. 

Comments

[Alan Masters]

I loved Li Cunxin's book which I strongly recommend. The film was a big disapointment by comparison. Important to the book is the account of the grinding poverty of his boyhood in China, the separation from his family when he is selected to become a dancer at an early age, and the male friendships which sustain him during this time. (The male bonding is omitted and even, I would say, denied in the film version, alas).

[Art Leonard]

I have not read the book, and was not aware of it until after seeing the film and noting in the credits that it was based on a memoir.

So, from the perspective of somebody unfamiliar with Li's story, the film worked just fine. You have whetted my appetite for the book. Thanks.