Book/Film Comparison: To Live

Jaswinder Singh Khalsa
5 May 2009

“To Live” on Paper and on Screen

Yu Hua’s novel To Live tells the story of a man named Fugui, chronicling his mistakes, hardships, and moments of happiness in the larger context of the Maoist revolution in China. Zhang Yimou’s film adaptation does the same thing, and yet these are two very different artistic statements. We see significant changes in the areas of plot, character development and mostly in the overall thematic content. Literature and film are two vastly different idioms, of course. Even the shortest of books contains more information than most films could relay in a compelling manner. This phenomenon exists because of the fundamental difference between the way the mind digests words and the way the mind digests images. Making a book into a film is probably a lot like translating an ancient text in a dead language created by a civilization that no longer exists into contemporary English: many adjustments must be made for the work to be intelligible to its current audience. While most people would readily concede this, what is not so readily perceived is the personal philosophy of the translator, who makes editorial decisions according to his or her personal value judgments. It is precisely these value judgments that account for the differences in Yu Hua’ novel and Zhang Yimou’s film. Yu Hua is predominantly concerned, in his own words, with “getting as close as possible to reality” (237). We see this in his refusal to dramatize events in the novel or to in any way glorify any of his characters. Zhang Yimou, on the other hand, appears to be more concerned with a critique of Maoist China. The changes he makes to Hua’s novel consistently serve to illustrate the ineptitude of the regime, the widespread paranoia it creates, and its progressive overshadowing of traditional Chinese cultural values. We can see these changes in what is added, what is subtracted, and what is exchanged for something else.

One of Zhang Yimou’s most noticeable additions to Yu Hua’s novel are the shadow-puppets. These puppets are used as throughout the film at significant points in the plot, and are in many ways exchanged for the use of the italicized passages by another narrator in the novel. We first notice them in the very beginning of the film when Fugui and Longer and gambling. Fugui criticizes the puppet troupe and invites himself behind the screen, following Longer’s goading. The puppets depict a man and a woman flirting with each other, and this is taken to symbolize Fugui’s hedonistic lifestyle, which the film otherwise omits. The next time we see them is also in the brothel, when Jiazhen unsuccessfully confronts Fugui’s gambling addiction. He returns to his game after humiliating her, and the puppets show a man kicking a woman with his back turned to her. The female puppet is on her knees in a supplicating position. The next time we see the shadow puppets, however, Fugui has already lost all his material possessions to Longer, who lends him the puppets so that he can earn living. The puppets have now come to represent Fugui’s newfound commitment to work by the sweat of his brow instead of gambling for profit. In his first puppet show, with Chunsheng collaborating with him, we hear the words “I am lucky to be alive” as the male puppet turns to face the female puppet. We see a montage of the puppeteers traveling around, performing, and collecting money. Again, there is the image of a man and woman embracing, and in a more dignified way than the hanky-panky of the opening scene. Yimou is telling us that Fugui is growing up: part of why this is so effective is precisely because Fugui is recycling something from his days as a gambler and re-appropriating it toward more mature purposes.

When Fugui and Chunsheng are conscripted, it is worth noting that they are not aware of the military contingency that has encircled them until a bayonet pierces the screen. Just as Fugui is learning to be responsible, it seems, more trouble is heading his way. Here begins Yimou’s scathing criticism of the Communist revolution in China, which begins, interestingly, with a literal assault on the arts. From this point on, Fugui’s puppets take on a more nostalgic feeling. While he and Chunsheng are in the Liberation Army, the puppets serve as a connection to their humanity and to symbolize their personal continuity of life in the face of death. When the Maoist regime begins smelting iron as part of the “great leap forward,” Youqing naively alerts the Team Leader to Fugui’s box of puppets as a potential source of metal. Fugui narrowly prevents the box and the puppets in it from being confiscated, and we sense that the regime, in all its enthusiasm for its values, will consume even the most innocent forms of cultural expression in the name of its ideology and material expansion. In other words, the Maoist regime is starting to cannibalize the society from it emerged, and Yimou is again making the point that art is among the first victims.

The next time we see the puppets is in a context filled with personal and societal significance. After Jiazhen chastises Fugui for punishing Youqing too harshly (an event which we will discuss in more detail later), Fugui encourages Youqing to come see his puppet show taking place the same evening. Youqing “gets even” with Fugui with the help of Jiazhen by serving him an intolerable amount of vinegar and chili paste disguised as tea. The enduring image from the scene is Fugui involuntarily spitting out the liquid on the screen onto which the shadows of the puppets are cast. Fugui chases Youqing around, but the mood is lighthearted. When we analyze the scene more closely, we see that Yimou is continuing his commentary on the Great Leap Forward. As the puppet show is being performed, we see the villagers bringing their bicycles and cooking pots to be collected by the military, who will then melt them down in an attempt to manufacture metals for industrial purposes. Ordinary people are sacrificing their practical utilities of daily use for the sake of a theoretical concept which promises utopia if complied with faithfully. It is worth noting that as these household items are being destroyed (I say destroyed because the overwhelming majority of the metal produced during the Great Leap Forward ended up being absolutely useless), Fugui sings: “he uses the secret mirror and blinds all who look within.” This could be taken as a commentary on the naive enthusiasm and idealism of common people that is being exploited and manipulated by Mao, who in this case is being compared to an evil sorcerer. What happens next with the puppets is a vicious battle breaks out, and one of the warrior puppets ends up decapitating three other combatants before Fugui drinks the chili/vinegar concoction. We can of course read the puppets as foreshadowing the “attack” on Fugui, and we may also see it as a representation of China’s cultural values being beheaded by the Maoist regime one at a time. The large crowd gathered to watch the show, and the unusually fantastic nature of the performance, suggest an element of bread and circuses as well as the overall population embracing the total fantasy world Mao presented them with. The people are buying into a plan that is in no way grounded in reality, and this is represented by everybody gathering to watch a fictional battle between good and evil, while their material possessions are being destroyed behind their backs.

If Yimou is saying that Mao’s promises are like a magic mirror that blinds people while their cultural and material wealth is plundered, nothing drives the point home more than the scene where we learn of Youqing’s death due to the combined ineptitude and over-exhaustion of a truck diver, Chunsheng (another change by Yimou that warrants a separate discussion). Specifically, everybody is watching Fugui’s puppet show and while their backs are all turned, Youqing is killed in a tragic accident. It is hard to avoid the observation that if people had not been distracted by the puppet show, now representing the illusion of communist ideals, they might have been more alert, and Youqing’s death might have somehow been prevented. Fugui’s reaction of horrified shock, which appears to border on denial, can be taken to mean “how could something like this happen to me and my family? I bought into this movement; how could it take my son from me?” Again, we ought to consider the significance of Fugui’s puppet show, a fantasy, being abruptly interrupted by the appearance of his son’s gored corpse. Again, Yimou is alerting us to the fact that what is being promised, and what is being delivered, have a vast gulf between them. It should come to us as no surprise that the next time we see Fugui’s puppets, they are burned because of a statement issued by Mao: “the older, the more reactionary.” Indeed, the dream, as well as the memory of the past, has been consumed in the fires of disillusionment.

To keep our attention on the scene we have just discussed, it is worth mentioning in more detail Yimou’s handling of Youqing’s death. In the novel, Youqing is literally bled dry by doctors who are trying to collect blood donations to save Chunsheng’s wife from dying in childbirth. Yu Hua is obviously suggesting a lack of medical ethics on the part of the doctors, but Yimou wishes to alter the specifics of Youqing’s death to bring an even harsher indictment against the Maoist regime. Here, Chunsheng himself appears to be the killer, but what would be more accurate would be to say that his complete exhaustion and lack of adequate training as a driver were in fact the culprits. We learn from a bystander that the driver of the truck had not slept “for three days,” and backed into a wall, which in turn fell over and killed Youqing. Here the fault lies with the regime itself and not with Chunsheng, who is portrayed as well meaning and fundamentally harmless. It is the regime’s impatience and over-enthusiasm for its material goals that are causing it to overwork its labor force without due consideration to the consequences. China is attempting to industrialize so fast that it is completely disregarding the inherent frailty of human beings and the considerably larger margin for error they must be allotted. Mao is trying to move China into the world of mechanized industry, and the bottom line, so to speak, appears to be the only concern. The result is that workers are not trained properly, and are given more work than can be properly executed even by a skilled worker. We see this clearly when we learn that Chunsheng was the driver: when he and Fugui were in the Nationalist army, we see Chunsheng getting behind the wheel of a truck and imagining that he is driving it. He admits that he has always wanted to be able to drive. Careful what you wish for, as the saying goes, because you just might get it. Chunsheng believes his fantasy of being a truck driver is fulfilled, but in reality he has dealt a tremendous blow to a lifelong friend and claimed the life of an innocent boy. Yimou is continuing the impress upon us the horrors of communism, showing that friends can be unwittingly turned against one another in the blind acceptance of the regime’s tactics. Indeed, we cannot blame Chunsheng for Youqing’s death: we instinctively feel outraged because society itself is somehow ultimately responsible.

To return to an earlier point in the film, we see another area where Yimou wishes to draw more attention to the negative impact of communism. In the novel, Fugui has it out with Youqing on several occasions, and the conflict between them could be understood as Fugui struggling to learn patience and to control his temper. In the film, however, Fugui only hits Youqing one time: in the communal dining hall after Youqing pours hot noodles (again, with lots of chili paste) over the head of another boy. It is significant that Fugui does not become hostile toward Youqing until the father of the boy Youqing poured the noodles on accuses Fugui of being a counterrevolutionary. The man angrily claims that Fugui must have instructed Youqing to do what he did to undermine the communal dining hall and thereby undermine the communist regime entirely. Partially to dispel this assumption before it can become a widespread rumor and partly out of a sincere feeling of anger, Fugui publicly beats Youqing with the heel of his own shoe. He wants everyone to know that he does not condone his son’s actions, and he is also afraid of the collective turning on him as it did Longer, and later Chunsheng and even the Team Leader. We do not have to look very deeply to see Yimou’s point here: the inflexible belief system of the Maoist regime is so narrow and so intolerant of dissent that a widespread paranoia is taking place: those who support the regime believe that its enemies are hiding everywhere, and they are therefore always looking for them. Similarly, everyone is terrified of being mistaken for a dissenter, and will incriminate others to avoid being scrutinized themselves. We find a parallel to this in the phase of American history known as the McCarthy era, criticized by Arthur Miller in The Crucible, where the setting of the Salem Witch Trials provided him with an abundance of parallels and relevant comparisons. Similarly, there is something of a witch trial hanging in the air when the boy’s father insists Fugui must somehow be plotting to overthrow the regime, and Fugui’s immediate, and overzealous beating of Youqing, which serves much more to save Fugui’s hide than it does to teach Youqing a lesson.

Something else that the film does, which the book does not do, is emphasize the cult of personality created by Mao. It is true that Yu Hua includes Wan Erxi’s mural paintings of Maoist slogans on Fugui and Jiazhen’s home, but it is not mentioned outside of this single occurrence. In the film, however, we see the family’s living space being gradually filled with paintings of Mao. When the Team Leader comes to announce a possible match for Fengxia, we see that Fugui’s home is already full of photographs of Mao, and there are little stacks of propaganda books in plain sight. After Wan Erxi fixes up their home with two very extravagant murals of Mao, it seems that every time we see the interior of their home there are new paintings and photographs of “the chairman.” When Wan Erxi and Fengxia are married, they sing propaganda songs instead of actual marriage songs. The lyrics deify Mao and say nothing about the married couple at all. Commitment to Maoist values, it seems, is the only value at all: that is to say, the value of being dedicated to the values seems to have completely obscured the values to which the regime is dedicated. Mao himself, and the regime itself, is the new God in a theoretically Godless society. While these propaganda songs are being sung, Jiazhen and Fugui sit inside their home, reminiscing about Youqing. She still misses him, and she cannot exchange the loving memory of her son for the cheap emotion aroused by a political cause. We feel her pain when Chunsheng brings Fugui and Jiazhen a very expensive looking framed photograph of, you guessed it, The Chairman. The idea that the regime can continue to cover up its crimes, and the broken homes and broken hearts left in its rapacious advance by plastering Mao’s image everywhere is established as offensive but impossible to resist. They do in fact place Chunsheng’s painting on their wall, and the life that is authentically theirs again continues to be swallowed up by the insincere grin of that psychotic megalomaniac whose name is synonymous with the murder of innocent people. When Chunsheng visits them for the last time, still consumed by guilt over Youqing’s death, heartbroken over the suicide of his own wife, and on the verge of suicide, Jiazhen opens the doors of their home to invite him in, showing that almost every inch of wall space has the image of Mao nailed to it. When Chunsheng wanders off into the night for the last time, every inch of the public streets are covered with propaganda slogans. Friends, spouses and children are all swallowed up by Mao’s face and words: the festering wound of reality hidden beneath a band-aid of idealism and empty promises.

In Yu Hua’s novel, Fugui is left with nothing but life itself. He loses his father, his mother, his wife, his son, his daughter, grandson, son in law, and best friend, and is left with an ox and his memories. As the back of the book identifies, Fugui “stands as a model of flinty authenticity,” his continued presence on Earth his true contribution to humanity. Although he endures an unrelenting stream of tragic events, abated only for a few moments on Fengxia’s wedding day, ultimately he stands as a kind of humbly triumphant figure: he has weathered the storms of life, and he has uttered barely a word of complaint regarding the hand life has dealt him. There is a kind of nobility in this. Zhan Yimou preserves more of the family unit, and Fugui is surrounded by Jiazhen, Wan Erxi and “Little Bun.” While the novel suggests that an individual can go on living no matter what is taken away from them, Yimou prefers to emphasize the family’s ultimate victory over the roller coaster ride of the regime. The tumult created by communism trying to establish power and phase out the old way of life took many casualties, but in the end, by sticking together, people can make it through and still keep the relationships and values that really matter in their lives. For all of Yimou’s condemnation of Mao and of communism, he sends the message that the darkness still cannot stand before the right of real love and real values. Personally I feel that both the novel and the film were highly enjoyable, and the changes that appear in the film were perfectly appropriate in the context of Yimou’s larger objectives in making the film. Nobody really wants to simply repeat the ideas of someone else in another medium, and to do so would really not be very much of a contribution in the first place: it is expected that Yimou should add something new and something uniquely his to the adaptation of Hua’s novel. Taken side by side, they give us two complimentary windows into the truth of what is.