Guizi lai le (2000)

Director:

Wen Jiang

Writers:

Wen Jiang (screenplay)
Wen Jiang (story)
(more)

Release Date:

14 March 2001 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | War

Plot:

During the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant's home in a small town...

Plot Keywords:

Prisoner | Japanese | Village | Japanese Occupation | China

Awards:

6 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Wen Jiang	...	Ma Dasan
Yihong Jiang	...	Yu'er (as Hongbo Jiang)
Teruyuki Kagawa	...	Kosaburo Hanaya
Ding Yuan	...	Dong Hanchen
Zhijun Cong	...	Grandfather
Zi Xi	...	Liu Wang
Haibin Li	...	Me
Kenya Sawada	...	Inokichi Sakatsuka
Weidong Cai	...	Er Bozi
Lianmei Chen	...	Aunt
Yoshimoto Miyaji	...	Koji Nonomura
Qiang Chen	...	'One-Stroke' Liu
David Wu	...	Major Gao
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Junichi Kajioka	...	Japanese sergeant (uncredited)

Directed by
Wen Jiang

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Wen Jiang		screenplay
Wen Jiang		story
Haiying Li		writer
Xing Liu		writer
Jianquan Shi		writer
Ping Shu		screenplay
Ping Shu		story
Fengwei You		novella "Shengcun"
Fengwei You		screenplay

Produced by
Ping Dong	....	executive producer
Wen Jiang	....	producer
Zi Xi	....	line producer
Hua Zhang	....	line producer
Quangang Zheng	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Jian Cui
Haiying Li
Xing Liu

Cinematography by
Changwei Gu

Film Editing by
Folmer Wiesinger
Yifan Zhang

Production Design by
Jianquan Shi
Shiyun Tang

Art Direction by
Weidong Cai

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Yijun Zhao	....	assistant director

Sound Department
Steve Burgess	....	sound re-recording mixer
James Harvey	....	sound effects editor
Francis Ward Lindsay	....	foley artist
Ling Wu	....	sound recordist
Quangang Zheng	....	executive

Camera and Electrical Department
Min Wang	....	camera operator
Xiaoshi Zhao	....	camera operator

Other crew
Nina Huang Fan	....	assistant to director
Junichi Kajioka	....	bilingual production assistant
Junichi Kajioka	....	script translator

Production Companies

• Asian Union Film & Entertainment
• Beijing Zhongbo-Times Film Planning
• CMC Xiandai Trade Co.
• China Film Co-Production Corporation
• Huayi Brothers Advertising

Distributors

• Filmmuseum Distributie (2001) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• Cowboy Pictures (2002) (USA) (subtitled)
• Océan Films (France)

Other Companies

• AAV Australia  telecine
• Cinevex  film processing
• Mandarin Laboratory (International) Ltd.  subtitles
• Soundfirm  post-production sound services

Also Known As:

Devils on the Doorstep (International: English title)

Runtime:

139 min | France:162 min (Cannes Film Festival)

Country:

China

Language:

Mandarin | Japanese | English

Color:

Black and White | Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

South Korea:15 | France:U | Netherlands:16

Company:

Asian Union Film & Entertainment

Trivia:

David Wu's character Major Gao in his first entrance to the compound ordered at the Japanese army peddler to move his belongings away in Cantonese, then in Mandarin.

A must-see film, especially for Chinese

This is the second time I see this film. As a Chinese, I feel a strong urge as well as an obligation to write some comment about it. I can safely conclude that the film vividly showed what the real situation was during the Japanese occupation in China back in WW2.

It is totally different from those main-stream anti-Japanese war films we can see throughout our early life, which still can be seen being replayed in CCTV (China Central Television) over and again again. In those films, almost all Chinese, young or old, men or women, were all warriors fighting against the Japanese invaders. We all know that it wasn't true. From this film, we can see how ignorant and stupid those Chinese peasants were. It gives us a chance to review what was really going on during that time. It is a history we cannot deny. As a matter of fact, this film was banned in mainland China by some kind of a "censorship" mainly because it revealed so much truth.

The director of the film, Jiangwen, is my only favorite director from China. You can say he is ambitious, a genius or whatever. But i say that he is a director with a sense of responsibility to our nation, to our people, to those heroes and civilians died in the war. He is not afraid to dig up the less-bright side of the history and present it to us, to those younger generation who never go through the war. It reminds us never to forget history.