A scene from the film

Starring a cast of Taiwanese and Japanese actors, Chih-yu Hung’s epic “1895″ opened recently in Taiwan, weighing in at a good 110 minutes. The film is being screened now Hakka and Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles.

The film is based on a Taiwanese novel by Li Chiao, and it tries to bring to life, in a kind of history lesson” way, the story of Taiwanese resistance to Japanese troops during the early Japanese occupation of Taiwan, which lasted from 1895 to 1945. The film should do well in Taiwan, and in Japan as well. How it will play overseas in North America and Europe is another question. And it will likely never be screened in communist China, according to sources.

There’s a big battle scene, of course, in central Taiwan’s mountains, where some 4,700 Japanese and 14,000 Taiwanese freedom fighters died in the carnage.

Japanese actor Koichiro Kijima plays Ogai Mori, a Japanese doctor who was sent to Taiwan in 1895. A talented band of Taiwanese actors add to the film’s power and majesty, and if in the end all it turns out to be is a grand history lesson on celluloid and DVD, it’s worth a viewing or two. History buffs will love it.

The film has received mixed reviews in Taiwan, in both the Chinese-language and English-language media — with some critics calling it an important part of Taiwan film history, and others
dismissing the movie as nothing more than a boring history lesson for high school classes to watch on a rainy afternoon.

But for some Hakka people in Taiwan, descrendants of the Hakka people depicted in the movie, “1895″ resonates. A 28 year old graduate student at Chung Cheng University in southern Taiwan, who is herself a Hakka, said the movie touched her deeply.

“There are so few movies about Hakka people or Hakka history here in Taiwan, so to go to a movie theater in my own country and see a film about my own people, even though it is somewhat of a tragic story, it touched me and brought tears to my eyes,” Minnie Lin told this
reporter. “Most of the movies in Taiwan are imported from Hollywood, like the 007 movies which always are huge box office hits here, or the art films by Taiwanese directors such as Ang Lee or Tsai Ming-liang or Hou Shiao-shien, and those movies are great, I love them, too, but for
once, with this movie, director Hung has given us Hakka, and all Taiwanese people, a chance to see Hakka history unfold on celluloid. It doesn’t happen very often.”

Lin told me that the Hakka people came to Taiwan from China long ago, and they speak one of the main subdivisions of the Chinese language, a language also called Hakka. It developed numerous variants or dialects, spoken in even today in China, Malaysia and Taiwan.

As for the term “Hakka,” Lin explained that it literally means “guest families” or “guest people”. Because of their history of moving around a lot in China before coming to Taiwan, Hakka people are often called the Jews of Asia, known for their strong family values, business acumen and sense of solidarity with one another, Lin said.

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