Abstract
Previously known as a Hong Kong director of action-filled and visually spectacular blockbusters, Tsui Hark made a surprising move in 2014 by shooting a 3-D remake of the 1970 Maoist revolutionary opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy in mainland China. Existing scholarship tends to see the remake as a reflection of the close marriage between politics and commerce in contemporary Chinese cinema. This paper attempts to offer a more nuanced perspective on the remake, revealing its long historical dimension that generated complexity and subtlety in Tsui’s directorial approach. Rather than just commercially packaging and disseminating current state ideology, the remake reflects Tsui’s long-term personal and artistic navigation across multiple national and ideological borders. It embodies Tsui’s signature way of constructing alluring cinematic shapes for a liminal “Chineseness” that lacks substantial reference, consistency, and clear origin. Precisely for its void in the core, the “Chineseness” may offer traces of identification for a diverse range of Chinese cultural, political, and ethnic subjects.
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