Is the Chinese novel Red Sorgumn cinematic?

Catching up w/ a few "international" writers whom I've somehow overlooked, I am currently about 60 pp. in to Mo Yan's 1988 (English tr., 1993) novel, Red Sorghum. The narrator of this novel recounts the experiences of his grandparents and his father and others in their small Manchurian (or at least NE China) village during - at least in the first section of the novel - the Sino-Japanese war int he 1930s. The first chapters are full of drama, violence, and brutality, very vividly depicted, maybe too much so for some readers, but it all has the ring of authenticity and veracity. Most English-language readers will have a lot more information about Japan during this period - from novels and films as well - and will have read/seen little for the Chinese standpoint, so here it is - and it's a grim depiction of the Japanese atrocities, to put it mildly. In the first section, a Chinese military commander, Yu, leads a small military unit to the highway that the Japanese had been building with enforced slavery of the men from nearby villages; the Chinese army is planning a surprise attack on the Japanese, but another expected division fails to show - we don't yet know why, so the attack is called off. The youngest member of the army unit is the narrator's father (the commander may be his actual grandfather, through an illicit relationship w/ the grandmother). Powerful scenes in this section include the torture and death of a man who mutilated his mules rather than let the Japanese army seize them, the execution of a Chinese soldier who'd raped a young village girl, and the marriage day of the narrator's grandmother, whose wedding party is attacked by a bandit en route to the ceremony (the young Yu helps kill the bandit and wins the grandmother's heart - with complications to follow). I might describe these scenes as cinematic - they are certainly dramatic - but "cinematic" often means "would make a lousy movie"; I believe Red Sorgham was filmed (in China?), but I don't know anything about the movie version. I suspect that what seemed "cinematic" at first would be overbearing on screen.