How the Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple" Became "A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop"

Acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) has made the first Coen brothers remake -- by turning Ethan and Joel's first film, the bare bones Blood Simple, into the sleek black comedy A Woman, A Gun and A Noodle Shop. The Chinese version develops the style that (eventually) put the Coen brothers on the map, but wasn't fully in place when they made Blood Simple with Frances McDormand back in 1984. Yimou talks about how his version rates.

Q: How did you first come up with the idea to turn Blood Simple into a Chinese film?

A: I have always very much liked the work of the Coen brothers. After the Olympics I didn’t have a suitable screenplay in hand to immediately jump into my next feature and then I thought back to the 1984 film that first put the Coens on the map – Blood Simple. I thought about doing a remake, but at the same time, I didn’t want to simply follow the same pattern as the original. I instead hoped to add new elements, such as a comic style and elements of structure and color from traditional Chinese arts.

Q: What was it about Blood Simple that translated easily, and what didn't translate?

A: The suspense of the film’s original plot can be adapted and one can draw certain lessons from the story, however some of the film’s social symbolism and metaphoric imagery proved more difficult to express. Therefore my decision to set the film in ancient China comes from my aim to make the story more abstract and inject it with more legendary elements.

Q: The original film is very sparse, and your film is very colorful -- how did you make that choice? The original film is also very stark, while yours is funny -- what motivated that?

A: The strong color scheme is often used in traditional Chinese folk art. There is an old phrase in China, “hong nan lu nu,” or “red men and green women,” which refers to the type of colors men and women wear during the Chinese New Year and other traditional holidays. In the film the male and female protagonists all wear combinations of red and green to reflect this. I hope that the colors of the film can capture some of the unique qualities of traditional Chinese folk culture, with a touch of exaggerated humor and the absurd.

In terms of the film’s structure, I intentionally set out to utilize some of the more symbolic elements from Peking Opera, which meant simplifying the environment and compressing the characters’ actions under the rubric of a limited space. All of the characters’ actions seem to revolve around a single noodle shop and this has to do with the Chinese operatic tradition where “you ascend the stage, as I step down from the stage; you come, I go.” In Chinese we call this zou ma deng, referring to “revolving horse lanterns,” which describes different groups of people running in circles. It represents a cyclical philosophy.

Q: Most of the Coen brothers films are distinctly American -- what other ones could or should be remade or translated (either as Chinese films, or something else)? How would you tackle them?

A: There is indeed something distinctly “American” about the Coen brothers work, at the same time there is also something quite “marginal” about their films, it is these two elements that make their films quite difficult to remake – it is just so hard to capture those qualities that make their work so distinctive. Even Blood Simple wasn't that simple -- it took quite a lot of effort to remake the film in this style.