Recovered Memory
by Howard Schumann

Wen Jiang’s personality takes center stage in The Sun Also Rises, his first effort since the 2000 Devils on the Doorstep, a film that has yet to be released in China. While The Sun Also Rises captivates with its sumptuous colors, magical realism, high energy, and outstanding performances, its elliptical plot and lack of coherent narrative suggests that Jiang may have purposely clouded the film’s meaning in symbols and code to escape the Chinese censors. Loosely based on author Ye Mi's novel Velvet, the film is set in China during the Cultural Revolution. There are four stories and six characters in the film, but they have a tenuous connection to each other.

Three episodes are set in the 1970s and one twenty years earlier, but Jiang provides no intertitles or other indicators to help the viewer recognize changes in theme, time, or place. As the film opens with a tableau of gorgeous colors and people running, a young woman (Zhou Yun) identified as the mother of a teenage boy (Jaycee Chan) buys a pair of embroidered shoes. The colorful shoes are promptly stolen by a mysterious bird, which repeats the mantra "I know, I know, I know," and the woman falls into what seems to be madness—climbing trees, collecting rocks, digging a pit in the middle of the forest, and screaming the name of Alyosha (which we eventually learn was the name of the boy’s father). Meanwhile her dutiful son tries to protect her, at the cost of having to constantly leave his job. The segment is playful, magical, and poetic in its songs and poetry, and it suggests that insanity reigned supreme during the Cultural Revolution.

In the second episode, the scene shifts to southern China, where a mob chases Liang (Anthony Wong), a professor at the University of Shanghai, suspecting him of groping women at an outdoor movie, a story that raises issues of rule by mob during the Cultural Revolution. When Liang is beaten, he is comforted in the hospital by Dr. Lin (Joan Chen) who throws herself at him, telling him how much she loves him. For comfort, Liang turns to an old friend Tang, played by the director Wen Jiang. The sequence is raunchy, comic, and absurd, hinting at sexual repression during the 70s.

The scene then moves back to eastern China, where Tang and his wife meet the son of the widow who went mad in the first segment. The son is now a brigade leader and he welcomes the new couple who are following the government’s plan for intellectuals to be relocated to perform manual labor in the countryside. Tang adapts to the village, making friends with the local children and going on pheasant hunts while blowing his bugle to provide hunting calls. Meanwhile his lonely wife makes love with the young brigade leader, who is prepared to die as a result. When Tang overhears his wife telling the boy that her husband says her belly is like velvet, he determines to kill the young man but is stopped by the boy’s question, "What is velvet?"

The last segment shifts to the magnificent Gobi Desert, where two girls cross the desert in search of their lovers. The segment takes us back twenty years to discover how the characters connect, but, as a love child is born amidst the flowers, the film ends on a note as elusive as its beginning.

*

After completing a 13-month world tour in which they promoted their fourth album, the rock-oriented “Takk,” the band Sigur Rós came home to Iceland in the summer of 2006 to give free concerts as a sign of their gratitutde to their country. Director Dean DeBlois (Lilo and Stich) was there to film them as they toured the stark, almost alien-looking landscape, performing a series of mostly unannounced concerts in a variety of locales throughout the country. There was an abandoned fishing town, a mountain foothill, a camp where locals are protesting the building of a dam, a wilderness outpost, a national park, a community coffee shop, and a large concert venue in Reykjavik which if course had been announced.

The result is a 97-minute documentary called Heima, which means “at home” or “homeland.” The film features gorgeous photography of the country’s mountains, rivers, valleys, and waterfalls as background for live performances of songs from all four Sigur Rós albums, as well as two two new songs: "Guitardjamm," and "A ferd til Breidarfjardar 1922," performed with poet Steindor Anderson. Though there are interviews in the film with the unassuming band members whose recordings sell in the millions, they are not very revealing. What does come across, however, is their humility, love of nature, and opposition to the exploitation of their land by global corporations. While I would have liked to have learned more about each member, this is not a film about the psychology of the band members or why they have been successful, but a celebration of the group’s elegant and hypnotic music and their love letter to the people of Iceland.

Formed in the late 1990s, the band consists of singer-guitarist Jon Thor "Jonsi" Birgisson, bassist Georg "Goggi" Holm, keyboard player Kjartan "Kjarri" Sveinsson and percussionist Orri Pall, together with backup musicians. They are distinguished by experimental cutting-edge songs lasting between six and thirteen minutes, enhanced by the otherworldly sound of Jonsi’s falsetto voice. Their music has been called “glacial”, “post-rock” and “transcendent.” Whatever the label, their sounds have a way of penetrating your outer shell and reaching deeply into your soul.

Those that came to see the concerts were not the usual excited young people that you might expect at rock concerts, but folks of all ages, including families with their children. The band’s connection with their audience is very real, and the concerts have a feeling of warmth and intimacy. Simply listening to the ethereal music of Sigur Rós is a revelation, but seeing them on the big screen performing their music in their native country is a spiritual experience. If you are a lover of Sigur Rós, this is a must see. If you are not, Heima may make you one.

©2008 Howard Schumann
CineScene