Wan Ren (Director)

aka Wan Jen. Born: 1950, Taiwan.

Wan is perhaps the most explicitly political and the least auteurist of the New Cinema directors. Political, because Wan directly exposes social problems and, hence, has constantly run into trouble with censorship. Because Wan’s work crosses a wide range of topics, genres, and styles, he cannot be easily accommodated within the auteur pattern.

He made the 'Taste of Apples' segment of the foundational New Cinema film The Sandwich Man, which had created some controversy. After making the family melodrama Ah Fei (You ma cai zi, 1983), Wan, with his third film Super Citizen (Chaoji shimin, 1985), again faced state censorship. Super Citizen begins with a young man in search of his missing sister in the capital. In his relentless search, the man from the country encounters characters living on the fringes of the city—a con artist, a prostitute, a punk girl, and a lunatic bum. The film thus unfolds a decoupage of poverty, corruption, crime, and disillusionment with modern development and urban prosperity. The brother never finds his sister, but he decides to stay in Taipei in the end. By following his sister’s path, he, too, is engulfed by the metropolis’s black, underground economy. Motifs of “search” and “rescue” remind us of the famous captivity narratives in John Ford’s The Searchers and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and perhaps even Lino Brocka's Manila in the Claws of Light.

Like Wang Tong, Wan chose a middle-way approach in making his films palatable to local audiences. Other new directors failed the high expectations of producers and exhibitors in their second or third films. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) and Summer at Grandpa’s (1984), Edward Yang’s embarrassing 1984 box office flop Taipei Story, and Zeng Zhuangxiang’s Nature Is Quite Beautiful (Wu li de disheng, 1984) were all major disappointments. In comparison, Wan’s Ah Fei and Super Citizen both achieved modest commercial success. According to Wan, his approach in the New Cinema was different from the main paradigm. Beginning with 'The Taste of Apples', he wanted to make films that were accessible to the audience but at the same time allowed him to make strong social commentary.

Super Citizen was a joint production by Long Shong and New Cinema City’s Taipei office, chaired by none other than John Woo. Woo was not only the film’s executive producer, he also edited the trailer for the film. Certainly this Hong Kong connection meant Wan no longer could stay on the middle ground. He was expected to follow suit behind the Hong Kong New Wave and transform elements of Taiwan New Cinema into more commercial ingredients. Wan Ren was not fully ready for this. Problems arose when Tsui Hark produced his next film, 'The Farewell Coast' (Xibie hai’an, 1987). Wan intended to maintain his critical edge and, as a sequel to Super Citizen, wanted to make another topical film about youth crime. Meanwhile, Tsui wanted to push for a Taiwan version of A Better Tomorrow, an action thriller about the most wanted gunman on the island. Tsui hoped to add more gunfights to sensationalize Wan’s cool depictions of the teenager-cum-fugitive. Wan refused to reshoot and insisted on making the film as a social exposé rather than a pure genre picture.