Fall of Ming

The year is 1642, and the Ming dynasty, close to three centuries old, is coming apart. Li Zicheng’s rebel army has surrounded Kaifeng, the seat of Henan province, and has only just been pushed back. Sun Chuanting, a field marshal in disgrace and in prison, is summoned by the Chongzhen Emperor and handed five hundred thousand men to put the rebellion down. At the same time an itinerant physician, Wu Youke, is on trial accused of poisoning a patient with an unorthodox treatment. When soldiers in the camp start falling to an illness nobody can explain, and the senior physician fails to contain it and dies of it himself, Sun lets the outsider test his theory that the disease travels through the air. Wang Jing’s film opened on 25 October 2013, with Leon Dai as Sun and Feng Yuanzheng as Wu.