“Nobly deciding to film in the location where the original novel was set, Zhang Yimou was disappointed to discover that the locals had stopped growing sorghum altogether, instead preferring more lucrative cash crops like peanuts. In order to match the novel’s descriptions of tall, waving gaoliang grass, he would have to pay the locals to actually plant some, and so as the script was being written, farmers in Shandong were being paid to sow sorghum seeds on sixteen acres of waste ground.

“Shooting was delayed by almost a month, when Zhang and his crew returned to the area to find that the farmers had neglected to water the fields – sorghum can be a fast-growing crop, but it is thirsty, and the crew had to spend several weeks tending to it, while the production money bled on a daily basis.

“Mo Yan’s original novel ends in the present day of its composition – the 1980s – with the narrator visiting his family graves, and fuming at the sight of a new, modern form of sorghum. He angrily berates the locals for bringing in ugly, squat hybrid sorghum from Hainan far to the south.

“Hybrid sorghum is a high-yield crop, but tastes awful, causes constipation and, most importantly isn’t red. To Zhang Yimou’s great horror, his tame farmers had sown eight acres with the wrong kind of grass…”

From my video essay in the new Blu-ray of Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum, coming in July from Whole Grain Pictures (US).