Rent Confucius (2010)

Chinese Nationalistic Propaganda - Confucius review by PV

As it usual with Chinese films such as Red Cliff, this film os full of CGI battle scenes and clan warfare. So far, so good. For a Western audience the melodrama is overplayed to comic levels, of course, and the history may well be a bit confusing. But this is not my main criticism. It is clear from the subtitles given on the actual film at the end especially that the purpose of this film is to make the claim that Confusius is the greatest thinker ever - of all time - which is actually written on screen at the end! Not Socrates, Plato or Aristotle then; not Shakespeare or Newton or Einstein; no, because you see, they are not Chinese! Watching this is like watching one of those nazi propaganda films from the 30s - claiming that the master race is German, or Chinese in this case, and the trying to build a foundation for that 'truth' by trawling through ancient history and myths to prop up bigoted nationalism. The Chinese olympic ceremony was like the Berlin 1936 olympics too. As such, this film is very offensive and dangerous. It is also rather a boring movie, but no doubt Chinese nationalists will agree with its sentiment that ' a love of country comes before anything else'. This is film making as propaganda for a claim to Chinese superiority and that all other races are inferior. Backwards and old fashioned film making. Avoid.