Samuel Wright had already made up his mind. He absolutely hated the old version of himself who would bend at the first sign of trouble. He wanted to change all of that—this was an opportunity, an opportunity he had to seize!

Samuel Wright stood up and stretched, then said, “Mom, Dad, I’m fine. I’ll take the exam!”

At that moment, for some reason, Samuel Wright’s parents saw something different in their child, as if he had grown up…

As the large group entered the exam hall, Samuel Wright kept recalling the lingering memories in his mind. In truth, he wasn’t very confident. He had so many grievances about this exam.

Actually, failing the exam wasn’t entirely because he fainted—there were other reasons. For example, in previous exams, Samuel Wright had sometimes gone a bit overboard with his answers.

To use a popular internet phrase from later years: TOO YOUTH TOO SIMPLE SOMETIMES NAIVE!

At this moment, Samuel Wright was still somewhat young. Although the young are fearless, he was also a bit immature and didn’t consider things thoroughly. That’s where things went wrong for him this time.

Originally, Samuel Wright wanted to apply for the directing department, but in 1997, Yanjing Film Academy didn’t recruit undergraduate students for directing. They would only start recruiting a class the following year. So, when applying to the Film Academy, Samuel Wright had no choice but to choose the literature department.

Actually, another art college—Central Academy of Drama—did recruit undergraduates for directing, but Samuel Wright had always been fascinated by the Film Academy since he was a child, so he didn’t apply there. This made him miss an opportunity, and as it turned out, this was just the beginning of his mistakes.

The first round wasn’t a big deal—it was all basic knowledge. As long as your IQ was decent, you could get through. But when it came to the second round, that’s where the problems started.

The second round for the literature department was film analysis and writing. This was actually Samuel Wright’s strong suit—he’d loved this since he was a kid. At this point, wasn’t this just a piece of cake?

But when Samuel Wright saw the topic for this round, he couldn’t help himself, because the film chosen for the exam was “The Story of Qiu Ju”!

Chapter 002: Beauty and Ugliness

“The Story of Qiu Ju”—this film, which won multiple awards both domestically and internationally, was the subject for analysis in this exam. There weren’t many restrictions for the exam—you could write however you wanted.

This film is very deep and is quite suitable as an exam topic. What’s being tested is the candidates’ understanding and artistic analysis of the film.

But when it came to this film, Samuel Wright always had something he just had to get off his chest: this film made Chinese people look a bit too ugly!

In terms of plot and character development, there’s nothing to criticize. Director Zhang truly deserves his reputation as an international-level director—his skills are formidable. The film successfully created several vivid characters: the simple and stubborn Qiu Ju, her cowardly husband, and the village chief who, though overbearing, ends up saving Qiu Ju and her child. The multifaceted personalities of the characters are portrayed to the fullest—extremely realistic.

To be able to turn a great beauty into a dirt-poor peasant woman—this is practically magic!

So what did Samuel Wright want to say?

In the last decade or so of the twentieth century, China was still quite closed off. Western countries had no real understanding of the situation here, so how did they learn about it?

Through these films!

Since the reforms of the 1980s, domestic films—especially those with rural themes—have repeatedly won major international awards. As long as you made a deep, humanistic film, winning awards was no problem at all.

But to make a film “deep,” you naturally had to dig into the darker sides of things, which meant showing the less flattering aspects of Chinese people.

Overall, “Qiu” was still a pretty good film. There were plenty of positive elements and a lot of human brilliance in it. But many other films weren’t so principled. Because winning international awards—or at least getting nominated—was possible, many directors started churning out these kinds of films: rural themes, poverty, hardship, the ugliness of human nature, the darkness of society—everything as ugly and dark as possible. It even became a trend: as long as you filmed like this, you’d have a shot at some big award. The darker, the better.

Ugly Chinese people—this was the message these films sent. Western judges and audiences got exactly that impression. In their eyes, our country was still so shabby, so poor and miserable. If your film showed skyscrapers, they wouldn’t even look at it. In a word:

Fake!

And to go further, they’d say you were speaking for your government, that you were a mouthpiece for the “poisonous vegetable” government!

This trend only intensified. It was as if, if you didn’t make films like this, you’d be embarrassed to call yourself a director or an artist.

Because he loved movies, Samuel Wright watched many award-winning films—even though they were banned domestically, the reach of the piracy empire was incredibly strong. Samuel Wright took great risks to watch them out of curiosity, but after seeing them—oh, it was unbearable!