It’s a strange thought, in a way, that poetry could save a nation. In reality, it didn’t quite. The An Lushan rebellion significantly weakened the Tang dynasty and contributed to its rapid decline. Nevertheless, Tang was an era in which art, culture, and freedom of thought all flourished. Animated feature Chang’an (长安三万里, Cháng’ān Sānwànlǐ), named for the imperial capital of that time, attempts dramatise the era through the lives of its poets and the eyes of Gao Shi (Yang Tianxiang) reflecting on his youthful and often distant friendship with the legendary Li Bai (Ling Zhenhe) whose poems are still recited by the school children of today.
As the film opens, Gao Shi is an old man and embattled general staring down inevitable defeat at the hands of the invading Tubos emboldened by the weakening of borders following the failed An Lushan rebellion. But that’s not the reason he’s being visited by an imperial inspector who is far more interested in his relationship with Li Bai and the political importance it may have gained. Through this framing sequence, Geo Shi narrates the previous 40 years of history as he and Li Bai each age and take different paths in life while maintaining a distant if deeply felt friendship.
To that extent, Guo Shi is the earnest and practical son of a once noble house attempting to resurrect his family legacy, while Li Bai is a free spirited libertine attempting to overcome his lowly birth as the son of a wealthy merchant to gain government office through his skill as a poet. Then again, as future great poet Du Fu (Liu Jiaoyu / Sun Lulu) remarks, in this age poetry is something anyone can do and distinguishing oneself through it is no mean feat. It is however the only option for a man like Li Bai and the film in part seems to be an advocation for meritocracy in which those of ability would be free to prosper without needing to rely on social standing or personal connections. Despite the supposedly classless society of the modern day, this world may not yet have emerged. Another hopeful laments that she alone of her brothers inherited military skill yet as a woman there’s no door that is open to her to serve her country.
Serving one’s country is the virtue that Gao Shi praises most highly and in effect his life’s purpose while Li Bai’s is more personal advancement and the perfection of his art. His poems are often melancholy and reflect on a sense of loneliness and longing for home, or else raucous celebrations of the art of drinking. Gao Shi does not approve of Li Bai’s party lifestyle and his debauchery later places a strain on their friendship. The film tacitly implies that this decadent behaviour is behind the decline of Tang, but also the reason that art and culture flourished amid a sense of destruction and despair. Having learned a few lessons in underhandedness from Li Bai, Geo Shi in effect restores order, albeit temporarily, through strategy and courage, while Li Bai first chooses isolation and then in its opposite after being pardoned for an apparently accidental and entirely thoughtless act of treason.
But what the film is keen to emphasise is the deep-seated friendship, or perhaps more, between the two men that makes the victory possible suggesting that a society needs both practicality and art to survive, not that Gao Shi was not a great poet himself if one well aware that Li Bai surpassed him in skill and keen support his success. Even so, as Gao Shi points out, a poet is not always an easy thing to be and in his old age those who once drank with Li Bai are either dead, one beaten to death at the age of 70, exiled or imprisoned. In a sense, both men achieve their aims if perhaps not in the way they intended. Gao restores his family name, and Li Bai finds a kind of immortality in his work that he otherwise failed to find spiritually in devoting himself to Taoism. The often beautifully rendered backgrounds capture a sense of a society on the brink of eclipse, such as the striking beauty of Gao Shi’s first entry to Yongzhou with its blossoming cherry trees lit by the warm light of lanterns under a full moon, only to turn to darkness on his return amid the twilight of the Tang dynasty.
Dazzler Media presents Chang’an in UK and Irish cinemas from 28th February.
UK trailer (Mandarin with English subtitles)
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