Director Without Fear

In director Cao Baoping’s movies， the characters tend to be constantly pushing the extremities of human emotion. They are anxious， fearful， grief-stricken and at times simply falling apart. Cao often presents them in tense， fierce ways. His latest film， The Dead End， reinforced this as his signature style and won over the market when it premiered in late August 2015. The movie grossed 127 million yuan （US$20m） at the box office in its first week. For the most part， reviews have been favorable. On ， one of China’s most popular social networking sites with a focus on the arts， users gave the movie an impressive average score of 8.1 out of 10. The movie’s three leading actors shared the award for Best Actor at the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival held this past June， and Cao won the festival’s award for Best Director.

Adapted from the novel Sunspot by Xu Yigua， The Dead End asks whether or not sinners can truly be redeemed. It tells the story of three men who killed nearly all the members of one family， orphaning a baby girl whom they raise in remorse as they run from the law. With visceral shots that don’t shy away from bloody violence， murder， explicit sex and executions， many marvel at the tension and boldness of the movie while wondering how on earth it slipped past China’s censors. Cao loves tense conflicts and struggles constantly to push emotional boundaries， even if this causes political problems. Dealing with these issues and striving to meet his own high artistic standards makes Cao just like the characters in his movies， constantly filled with worry and unease.

A Different Approach

Crime is a marginalized theme in Chinese literature， just as criminals are marginalized in society. But Cao is drawn to these marginalized figures. “Ordinary people are actually more difficult to depict，” said Cao. “They’re too normal.” Sunspot had the “fierce” elements Cao often finds most attractive. To him， such fierceness means “better commercial potential.” Ever since he entered the industry， he has sought stories with profound emotions embedded in strong， intense conflict.

In 1985， 23-year-old Cao Baoping started college at Beijing Film Academy’s （BFA） department of literature. Many of his schoolmates who entered school roughly around the same time became China’s “sixth generation”directors who later became famous mainly through semi-autobiographical， literary films. Cao remembers clearly how most of his classmates scorned commercial hits like First Blood starring Sylvester Stallone， a movie which was very popular at the time.

But Cao had a different approach to filmmaking. “It’s not my style to make movies about someone’s personal state of affairs， trifling emotions， unimportant art， or smallscale struggle against society， like the ‘sixth generation’ directors did，” Cao told NewsChina. Most importantly， he feels those mov-ies were “not enjoyable” and “had a narrow audience.”

“From the very beginning， I rejected the‘independent，’ French New Wave filmmaking method， choosing a comparatively dramatic and commercial approach，” he said. Having a “commercial mindset” separated Cao from his peers. After he graduated from the BFA， Cao first became a screenwriter. Most of the characters in his scripts were completely fictional. His preference for tension and conflicts naturally led him to themes of criminality. He wrote screenplays with titles like Lawyer and Prisoner and Premeditated Robbery. He later borrowed some of these two stories’ plot points for a film he directed called The Equation of Love and Death， which told the stories of five strangers whose lives intertwined in bizarre and unpredictable ways. He won the New Directors Award？for the film at the 56th San Sebastian Festival in 2008.

Earlier， in 2004， Cao Baoping completed his feature movie debut Trouble Makers. This black comedy tells the story of rural villagers attempting to rise up against the gangsters that run their town with simple storylines and suspenseful pacing. It explores the at times helpless and tragic nature of the fight against oppressors.

High Standards

As his characters are typically caught up in unusual situations， Cao knows quality acting is critical to the success of his projects. Actors know him as an extremely demanding director who places intense requirements on their performances to ensure the complicated inner world of their characters come through the camera.

Duan Yihong， one of the leading actors in The Dead End， said he finally saw for himself how Cao “tortures” his cast when he was on set. Sometimes it took a whole day to shoot just two scenes， and the whole team had to sweat through four or five hours of takes while the burning sun beat down on them， repeating the scenes until Cao was satisfied. At times， the movie set felt more like a battlefield， with the director and actors on opposing sides of a war. “It was like mutually inflicted torture... It was very painful，” Duan said. But he still admires Cao’s films. “They are powerful and meaningful，” he added.

To Cao， drawing emotions out of his cast and weaving them into plotlines are some of the basic skills that a director must master. He accomplishes this by first talking to the actors about the nuances in their characters’complicated mindsets in a given scene， then later judging whether or not they made it believable.

“For almost all of my projects， acting is the key to their success or failure，” Cao told NewsChina. He calls himself a “perfectionist.” “I often ask for things to be done perfectly， which puts a huge amount of pressure on the cast.”

When shooting The Equation of Love and Death， lead actress Zhou Xun experienced this“pressure” firsthand. In one scene， Zhou runs onto an open-air pedestrian bridge， sobbing and screaming. Due to weather issues and Cao’s strict standards， this single shot ended up taking several days to shoot. Zhou spent those days running， weeping and yelling， and by the end she was so frustrated she crouched in a corner of the bridge， banging her head against the guardrail. “I just wanted to blow up the bridge every time I saw it，” she said.

Censorship

Though Cao’s films maintain strong commercial appeal， he is no stranger to controversy. After The Equation of Love and Death， Cao planned to shoot a movie set during the Sino-Japanese War （1937-1945）. He spent a year writing the script， which， unlike typical Chinese movies or TV shows that depict the war， tells the story of a complex romance be- tween a Japanese officer and a Chinese landlord’s daughter in a village that the Japanese army has just seized. The story follows both sides as they deal with the resulting conflict and brutality.

“The story touches on the nature of killing and the motivation behind it. It has little connection with the traditional narratives of Japan’s invasion and massacre，” Cao said.

Yet shortly after Cao’s team started pre-production， censors called a halt to production due to its sensitive subject matter. “It was very difficult for such a story to pass [the censors]. Sino-Japanese relations are too sensitive，” Cao said. He was confident that if the movie was made it would have successfully subverted some of the audience’s preconceived notions and ideas. “But it was too hard，” he said.

His feature movie debut Trouble Makers had faced a similar predicament. The script， adapted from a novel， was finished in 1999. However， as it discussed vicious social conflict in China’s rural areas， censors required revisions over and over again until， several years later， it finally passed inspection.

While violence was the main issue in Trouble Makers， love was the sticking point in The Equation of Love and Death. Censors questioned Cao’s choice of depicting a romance between an innocent girl and a drug dealer.

“Sometimes I felt frustrated and exhausted， even desperate，” Cao said of these battles with censorship. However， he added that the only way he knew to solve these problems was to solve them. When The Dead End was censored in 2012， the authorities suggested revising the execution scene showing a lethal injection because it was “too authentic.” In the end， Cao had to cut the three-minute-long take into smaller pieces.

“We can’t solve [the censor’s] problems perfectly， but we can at least solve them in part. Even if we fail， it’s not like we’ll die，” he said with a smile.