I’ve been thinking about the news from Variety for a few days:

China Film initially said it had made no cuts, then declined to comment on a Beijing News report that it had cut scenes involving too much violence and horror.

[…]

It also cuts his reading of a poem by Tang dynasty poet Li Bai (701-762) called “Guan Shan Yue” (The Moon Shining Over the Mountain on the Border).

First of all, I am a bit unimpressed with that translation of the title. The poem is about separation and longing due to conflict — costs incurred by a point of control, from a security viewpoint. This makes me think of something like “The Moon Shines on the Mountain Border” or “The Moon Shines Over the Wall on the Mountain”, or maybe even “Moon on the Mountain Pass”.

Second, how does this have anything to do with the Beijing News mention of violence and horror? Variety mentions a censored poem and then stops. Perhaps they didn’t feel it necessary to research the rationale and the history of the poem’s importance, or just didn’t care to elaborate?

Here is a closer look at the issue. 300 Tang poems has a page called Tangshi II. 1. (38), where you can see the text of Li Bai’s poem as well as English and French interpretations. Note the title of the poem:

Here’s their version in English:

The bright moon lifts from the Mountain of Heaven
In an infinite haze of cloud and sea,
And the wind, that has come a thousand miles,
Beats at the Jade Pass battlements….
China marches its men down Baideng Road
While Tartar troops peer across blue waters of the bay….
And since not one battle famous in history
Sent all its fighters back again,
The soldiers turn round, looking toward the border,
And think of home, with wistful eyes,
And of those tonight in the upper chambers
Who toss and sigh and cannot rest.

And, since 300 Tang site conveniently explains all the characters, here’s mine:

Moonlight shines upon the mountain
bringing clarity through a deep blue sea of fog.
The constant winds from almost ten thousand miles
blow against the Jade pass garrisons.
China’s men climb upon an empty path,
as Tartar soldiers gaze across a blue-green sea.
Because great battles in history
never return all men to their beds,
many look back upon the garrison
with eyes of pain, and think of home.
Those who this night lay upstairs
toss and turn, they cannot rest.

I just saw this, on the recommendation of a friend, and I have to say it was an excellent film.

The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II.

On the one hand it’s a fascinating modern tale of tragedy. The movie does a fine job working within a narrow band of time. However, I couldn’t help but wonder on the other hand about the larger picture (pun not intended) of conquest throughout the ages. For example, many of the items in modern galleries around the world, such as the British archives, were looted from foreign lands during times of conquest and conflict. But I guess the point is that if we limit our scope to the 1930s and 1940s, the Germans (and maybe the Russians) turned out to be the undisputed bad guys of the (art) world.

Needless to say, the movie also focused in on physical objects of treasure but not the ideas of art or the intellectual capital. Countless brilliant poets and their poems were destroyed, but the film made no mention of their fate…