Robert van Gulik (1910-1967), a Dutchman, wrote a series of krimies featuring Dee. Gulik was an orientalist and lived most of his life in the Far East. Scrupulously following the trail of historical authenticity in the novels, Gulik’s Dee is a judge, rather like a circuit court judge who travels around China finding wrongs and righting them, and not a detective. One supposes that the label ‘detective’ is used to make Dee accessible to contemporary audiences, unlikely to know their own history. Having read a couple over the years, when I saw this title in the SBS line up, I was curious to see what contemporary Chinese would make of a European’s appropriation of their society fifty years ago.
Robert van Gulik
The short answer is not much. This is an original story, per the IMDB information, and the title does not match any of Gulik’s at my glance. I rather think this film takes more liberties with Chinese historical accuracy than did Gulik. It seems as free as a Hollywood script, veering this way and that, with talking animals, ghosts, and other excuses for CGI, CGI, and more CGI, without a meaningful story line or characters with any depth. A moving comic book, but then Stan Lee has ascended to royalty on that. I let it run but assigned only 1% cognitive attention to it while plowing through the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle.
IMDB scores is 6.6 and some reviewers found it ‘enthralling’ and ‘sumptuous.’ I found it repetitive, predictable, incomprehensible, and boring by turns. Something for everyone then.
There are ghosts in the Dee stories I know, but inevitably it turns out that some villain is trading on the belief in ghosts to get up to some dastardly deed, and the no-nonsense Judge Dee soon settles that!
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