From The Sound of Music to Indiana Jones, films set overseas in the 1930s have often been the darlings of American moviegoers. Mired in changing times, international dispute and perpetual conflict, the decade is certainly a fascinating chapter of world history to explore. Director Roger Spottiswoode drew his attention to one of the era’s lesser-known figures: an Englishman named George Hogg.
“The young man went to China during a three-way war, and he didn’t speak a word of Chinese when he got there,” Spottiswoode said in an interview with The Diamondback. “He wanted to be a reporter, and he ended up looking after some children. It’s a strange and weird and interesting story, which I thought was fascinating and very compelling.”
In The Children of Huang Shi, Spottiswoode (Shake Hands with the Devil) explores the life of Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers, August Rush), an eager young English journalist who travels in 1937 to China, a country being simultaneously torn apart by civil war and Japanese invasion. After disguising themselves as members of the Red Cross, Hogg and his colleague, Barnes (David Wenham, 300), fall right into the thick of the action, reporting from the ravaged city of Nanjing.
The ominous shadow of war looms heavily throughout, and Spottiswoode’s technical expertise allows him to paint a vivid portrait of the chaos. At one moment, Hogg stands alone amid the smoke, rubble and corpses of Nanjing. Not long after, he escapes an explosion-laden ambush with the help of charismatic Chinese communist Chen Hansheng (Chow Yun-Fat, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End). As Barnes puts it simply, “The next Great War has already begun – folks back home just don’t know it.”
After witnessing a brutal mass execution of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers, Hogg finds himself in danger and is subsequently hidden in the mountains of Huang Shi by Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell, Rogue), a hardened Australian nurse. There, he reluctantly takes on the responsibility of caring for more than 60 Chinese children living in a run-down orphanage. Repairing the electricity, planting crops and tutoring the orphans, Hogg emerges as an unlikely savior. His story is faithfully adapted thanks to the work of biographer James MacManus (who co-authored the screenplay), aided by accounts from the actual children.
“Most of the information came from [MacManus] because he had spent time researching everything and going through Hogg’s letters and so forth,” Spottiswoode noted. “The children themselves remember a remarkable amount, although they all remember it slightly differently.”
Although it is certainly an intriguing tale, the translation of Hogg’s time in Huang Shi to the screen is not as engaging as one might hope. The narrative only touches on the children’s personal stories and drags considerably in the film’s second act.
When Hogg and the children embark on an epic journey across hundreds of miles of mountains and desert, the film is revived by its aesthetic merits. Though the set designs and costumes are stellar throughout, it is the pure beauty of China’s stunning landscapes that drives Huang Shi’s visual excellence. Capturing the setting, however, was not an easy process for Spottiswoode, who, after more than six months of scouting for locations, ended up shooting the entire film in reverse sequence to accommodate the area’s harsh weather patterns.
“We didn’t decide to do it that way – it just happened,” Spottiswoode said. “We just found ourselves working our way south away from the coldest weather, which is the story backwards.”
Chow, who Spottiswoode describes as an “old-fashioned movie star,” commands the screen whenever his character appears, overshadowing a fairly bland effort from Meyers. The screenplay, weighed down at times by surplus expositional dialogue, is solid, if unremarkable.
“It’s a little bit trickier because you try to not make too much up, or what you do have to make up, you make sure it’s actually grounded on something, like putting two events together,” Spottiswoode explained. “You try to do justice to the subject and the history and the story.”
tfloyd1@umd.edu
RATING: 3 STARS OUT OF 5
