Psycho's Movie Reviews #324: Wolf Totem (2015)

Wolf Totem (Chinese: 狼图腾, French: Le dernier loup, "The Last Wolf") is a 2015 drama film based on the 2004 Chinese semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Jiang Rong. Directed by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, the Chinese-French co-production features a Chinese student who is sent to Inner Mongolia to teach shepherds and instead learns about the wolf population, which is under threat by a government apparatchik.

The Beijing Forbidden City Film Corporation initially sought to hire a Chinese director, but filming humans with real wolves was considered too difficult. New Zealand director Peter Jackson was approached, but production did not take place. Annaud, whose 1997 film Seven Years in Tibet is banned in China, had his personal ban lifted and was hired to direct Wolf Totem. The film was produced under China Film Group and French-based Reperage. The French director, who had worked with animals on other films, acquired a dozen wolf pups in China and had them trained for several years by Andrew Simpson, a Canadian-based animal trainer. With a production budget of US$38 million, Annaud filmed Wolf Totem in Inner Mongolia, where the book is set, for over a year.

The film premiered at the European Film Market on February 7, 2015. It was released in China on February 19, 2015, for the start of the Chinese New Year, and it was released in France on February 25, 2015. It was originally reported that the film had been selected as the Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards. However, when the final list was announced by the Academy, China's submission was listed as Go Away Mr. Tumor by Han Yan. The film was the final film released in James Horner's lifetime before his death four months later in June 2015.

Plot

In 1969, student Chen Zhen is sent to the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia to teach shepherds. Instead, he learns about the shepherds and the bond they share with the wolves, a bond that is threatened by a government apparatchik.

((While staying with the nomadic herdsmen of Mongolia, a young Chinese student (Shaofeng Feng) develops a fascination with the wolves that roam the plains)).

Production

Wolf Totem is based on the 2004 Chinese semi-autobiographical novel Wolf Totem written by Jiang Rong. French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, despite a history with China, adapted the film, which was produced by China Film Group, Edko Films, and Reperage. Chinese censors had allowed the book to be published, and it became a bestseller in China. The Los Angeles Times reported that many were surprised by the novel's lack of censorship. The newspaper said, "The protagonist expresses contempt for the group-think that China's majority Han ethnicity forces on ethnic minorities and disdains the Confucian principles that the Communist Party has recently revived in its political rhetoric even in the 21st century." Rights to the novel were acquired by Beijing Forbidden City Film Corporation in 2004. Its CEO Zhang Qiang approached Chinese directors to adapt the book, but filming humans with real wolves was considered too challenging. In 2005, the corporation entered an agreement with New Zealand director Peter Jackson and his company Weta Digital to co-produce a film adaptation. Production with Jackson did not take place, and Beijing Forbidden City struggled to find a new director to film the adaptation. According to Annaud, the producers sought to produce a film adaptation to release in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In 2008, English- and French-language versions of the novel were published. Jiamin and his friends at the production company were familiar with Annaud's films and approached the director for the task. Annaud said of their choosing a French director for adapting the novel, "They said a Chinese director can't say these things; that it's too sensitive. They didn't want an American. I'm sort of neutral. And I have made a lot of films with animals." The director read the book in French, and the story appealed to him. He said, "It has been my conviction to find true stories about the environment." He turned down an offer to film Life of Pi (2012), and he instead signed a contract with Qiang.

By August 2009, Annaud began developing the project and scouting locations in China with Jiamin, whom he had befriended. The filmmakers acquired wolves to raise and train in preparation for filming. The director worked on the first outline with writing partner Alain Godard, who died before they finished it. Annaud brought a draft to China in mid-2012. Chinese screenwriter Lu Wei wrote the second and third drafts of the screenplay. The draft was translated to French for Annaud to give feedback, and it was subsequently translated back to Chinese for Jiamin to revise. Preliminary filming of Wolf Totem began in July 2012.

By 2013, Qiang had moved on to become vice president of China Film Group, which now backed the film. Bill Kong, CEO of Edko Films, had joined the project in 2010. In April 2013, a co-production deal between China Film Group and Edko Films was signed at the Beijing Film Market. Actors William Feng Shaofeng and Shawn Dou were cast in the leading roles. The film marked the first Chinese production by a non-Chinese director. For filming, 420 Chinese and seven French crew members were hired. Annaud filmed Wolf Totem in Inner Mongolia, the region of China where the book is set, near the town of Wulugai. Filming in Inner Mongolia lasted for over a year. The website China.org.cn reported, "The director and his team had to overcome harsh difficulties in the wild, such as low temperatures, extremely bad weather, and mosquito swarm attacks." To preserve the grasslands, Annaud had his crew walk to locations with the equipment wherever possible, avoiding use of vehicles, despite the slower process making production more costly. The director said he sometimes walked over 10 kilometres to that end. Annaud said one of the most challenging scenes was depicting a pack of wolves attacking horses during a blizzard in the middle of the night. A prop horse marked with the scent of sausage, and filmmaking grips pushed the horse away from the wolves so they would chase it. Some footage was also filmed in Beijing. Annaud filmed Wolf Totem in 3D. The production budget totalled US$40 million.

Animal Training

In the novel and the film, Chen Zen is sent to work on the steppes of Inner Mongolia (a region of China) during the Cultural Revolution, and a government official orders all wolves in the region to be killed. The filmmakers used real Mongolian wolves (Canis lupus chanco) for the film. Annaud had experience filming with animals in his previous films The Bear (1988) and Two Brothers (2004), working with bears and tigers respectively. He said dogs were traditionally used to depict wolves in film but that he sought to use actual wolves to show authentically their hunting method.

Annaud and others visited zoos around China to find wolf pups to acquire for the film. He said, "Wolves in Mongolia are very different from North American wolves. They are brown with bright eyes. They are more the colour of lions." A dozen pups were acquired from a local zoo in Harbin. The filmmakers hired Scottish animal trainer Andrew Simpson to raise and train the wolves, which ultimately numbered 35. Since China has a dwindling wolf population, the government did not allow any wolves to leave. Simpson moved from his ranch in Canada to China to train the wolves to sit, snarl, and fight on cue. Four bases were built in Inner Mongolia and in Beijing for raising and training the wolves. The wolves were trained for over four years to be used in the film. Training revolved around feeding the wolves. They had a diet of dried dog food and chopped chicken, but during training, Simpson fed them "ruby red cubes" of fresh meat. The wolves were kept under control behind long, double fences and were trained not to avoid the cameras. During filming, the crew permitted the wolves to rest every hour. Despite precautions, actor Feng Shaofeng was injured by a wolf. While Annaud filmed live footage of the wolves, he planned to use technology in post-production to create scenes that would normally be impossible to film. After filming, the wolves were ultimately relocated to Canada since they only understood commands in English.

Other animals were also prepared for filming. The Mongolian gazelle was difficult to find in Inner Mongolia, so filmmakers had to travel to the neighbouring country of Mongolia to acquire gazelles.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film premiered at the European Film Market on February 7, 2015. It was released in China on February 19, 2015, the start of the Chinese New Year. It was released in France on February 25, 2015. Alibaba Pictures acquired rights to distribute Wolf Totem in territories outside of the United States.

The French film company Wild Bunch acquired European sales rights for Wolf Totem at the European Film Market in February 2013. Wild Bunch held a private screening of the film at the 7th UniFrance Rendezvous for distributors who bought rights and for interested German buyers. Variety reported, "Buzz... is that director Jean-Jacques Annaud is back."

Wolf Totem had preview screenings in China starting on February 14, 2015. The film grossed US$7.4 million in preview screenings. The film was officially released in China on February 19, 2015 for the start of the Chinese New Year.

With the presence of Ankhnyam Ragchaa, the movie premiered in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on 27 February 2015. A Mongolian-language version of the film will also be released so audiences unfamiliar with Mandarin Chinese could see it.

The film grossed US$122,745,328 worldwide, with US$110.95 million from China and US$8,811,832 from France.

Wolf Totem received mixed to positive reviews. As of June 2020, the film holds a 67% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 30 reviews with an average rating of 6.55 out of 10. The consensus states: "As a visual experience, Wolf Totem boasts thrills that compensate for the significant narrative sacrifices made in bringing Jiang Rong's novel to the screen." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 58 out of 100, based on 13 reviews, signifying "mixed or average reviews".

Maggie Lee, reviewing for Variety, said, "Despite its magnificent natural vistas and some pulse-pounding action in stunning 3D, 'Wolf Totem' boils down to a familiar environmentalist allegory that doesn't move or provoke too deeply." Lee said Jean-Marie Dreujou's cinematography "rivetingly conveys" the wolves' primal behaviour but that the film failed to authentically dramatize the friction between humans and animals. She found the film to lack any "new perspective to environmental themes long expounded on in the West" and that the screenplay "considerably softened" the devastation and led to a weak conclusion. The critic also found the book's "thought-provoking cultural-political subtext" missing from the film and that the film's character development was weak with a "too muted" potential romance introduced late in the film. Lee commended the visual effects of the wolves in motion and composer James Horner's score for its "strong emotional sweep" in non-dialogue scenes.

Budget US$38 million

Box Office US$125.7 million

My Review

French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud's China-France co-production is his third enterprise tackling with human-animal equilibrium, after The Bear (1988) and Two Brothers (2004), Wolf Totem is adapted from a popular semi-autobiographical Chinese novel of the same title and is shot in the majestic Inner Mongolian steppe.

In this Chinese-French coproduction, there are a lot of wolves and talk about wolves and people getting angry about wolves or loving them, but they are not the main characters. Relegated to the subject of a conversation, wolves play a minor part in this film that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. It shows a little bit of Chinese Cultural Revolution, but not enough to be of any relevance or warrant the wrath of Chinese authorities. It shows the free way of the Mongols living in the steppes, but it doesn't go in depth. It shows some beautiful wolves, but most of the time they just look pretty and don't do much. It shows men in love with women, but it never goes into romance territory. It shows city boys being schooled in the ways of the steppe, but it doesn't really make anything of it.

The stand-off between humans and wolves will reach its heroic climax after the ravenous wolf pack assails a sheep corral during one night and this time, the entire pack is almost being extirpated by bullets and unrelieved vehicle chase, witnessed powerlessly for Chen, if anything, powerless is the omnipresent feeling, wherever humans tread, there are black sheep undermining the natural grandeur and harmony, disasters are bound to ensue, a central message cannot be dissipated by the film's lugubriously concocted positive vibe in the end. It is a big relief Annaud doesn't settle for facile wishful-thinking or radical aggression in its tonality, so that the film manage to retain an organic slant which conforms with his previous similar oeuvres.

The striking animal stunts orchestrated by dexterous trainer Andrew Simpson greatly hone up the set pieces, especially against its ferocious surroundings (the scenes of frozen animal corpses are manifestations of the primordial power of nature), and it goes without saying the film is a continuous landscape-porn (plus two emphatic examples of cloudscape), although sometimes its immaculateness unfittingly instigates the suspicion of an overachieved CGI-preening during the post-production.

The human cast understandably takes a back seat from its awe-inspiring canine counterpart, but the dialogues sound clunky to a Chinese ear, and the character development barely exists, since when Chen and Gasma (Ragchaa), the widow and daughter-in-law of Bilig, become an item? The emphasis is so top-heavy on Chen and his wolf cub, which makes the romantic subplot comes off as abrupt and fluffy. In the main, Wolf Totem doesn't short change its forte: the spectacular vista and pulsating action sequences, and it also circumspectly bypasses the sensitive political agenda (the film was a mammoth box-office player two years ago during the golden spell of Chinese Spring Festival) and allows the story itself to stimulate reflections on a broader picture: human vs. nature, simply within ecological parameters. 8.4/10