Waves of Longing
by
Howard Schumann
Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures is a powerful
depiction of the spiritual malaise afflicting Chinese youth as a result
of global capitalism. The story is set in a small, impoverished Chinese
city in the remote Shanxi province close to the Mongolian border. Two
19-year olds, Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei) and Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong) are heavily
influenced by American culture and seem to be motivated only by their
own immediate pleasure. They live on the margins in a city where, according
to the director, two-thirds of the population were unemployed in 2001.
They drink Coke, chain smoke cigarettes, covet U.S. dollars, talk excitedly
about Hollywood movies such as Pulp Fiction, and dance to Western-style
music at the local club.
Bin
Bin lives with his mother (Bai Ru), who works at a local textile factory
and sympathizes with the Falun Gong (a Buddhist religious sect that
has been persecuted by the Chinese Communist government). Apathetic
and disengaged, with no job and nothing to do, the two friends hang
around the local community center playing pool and chatting with the
regulars. After trying out for an acting job, Xiao Ji becomes attracted
to Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) whose protective lover is a gangster named Quiao
San. Xiao follows her around but seems unable or unwilling to make a
move. When they finally go dancing, Xiao has to confront the threats
of Quiao San's goons, who finally catch up with him and slap him around.
Bin
Bin also has a girlfriend, Yuan Yuan (Zhou Qing Feng), but their romance
seems to consist only in watching movies in a hotel room and singing
popular songs with words that echo their own lives. Yuan Yuan seems
to have more purpose in life than Bin Bin, and wants to study international
trade in Beijing. In an example of the director's wry humor, Xiao Ji
puts Yuan's studies in perspective by saying, "WTO is nothing. Just
a trick to make some cash," while Bin Bin declares that international
trade is about buying rabbits to resell in the Ukraine. With few interests
in common, the two slowly drift apart. In a telling scene, as Bin Bin
sits in a booth inside a train station staring blankly, Yuan Yuan rides
her bicycle around and around, waiting for him to throw off his lethargy
and join her.
Though
the boys hear about events in the outside world on television, for example,
the winning of the Olympic Games by Beijing and the arrest of the leaders
of the Falun Gong in Japan, they don't seem affected. Seemingly inured
to unexplained violence, they are just mildly perplexed when a bomb
explodes nearby with tragic results. Bin Bin asks whether the United
States is attacking China.
The
film is shot in digital video, which enhances its authenticity. Jia
avoids pathos and sentimentality, opting for a documentary-style realism
that is deeply affecting. Although he focuses on the boys as victims
of social and economic dislocation in China, the theme is more about
feelings of abandonment, loneliness, and emotional numbness. Jia, one
of the best of China's new generation underground "indie" directors,
has captured this sense of ennui more palpably than any movie I've seen
in a long time. When Xiao finally abandons his sputtering motor bike
in the middle of a new superhighway, Jia seems to be suggesting that
both he and China itself are at a precarious crossroads in their existence
and must discard what isn't working if they are to move on.
Springtime
in a Small Town is the first film in a decade from renowned
Chinese director Tian Zhuangzhuang, one of the leading figures of the
so-called "Fifth Generation" until he was banned from making pictures
after his 1993 film, The Blue Kite, which was sharply
critical of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This new work, a remake
of the 1946 drama, Spring in a Small Town by director Fei Mu,
does not delve into any explosive political issues, but is actually
quite conservative in its ethic. "Making this film felt like communicating
with a master," states Zhuangzhuang. "I never stopped learning from
Fei Mu. That's what made it possible to restart my career as a director."
Dai
Liyan (Wu Jun) and his wife Yuwen (Hu Jingfan) live in a war-damaged
house with Liyan's sister Xiu and their housekeeper Huang. The film
beautifully captures the atmosphere of a once-grand mansion that has
barely survived. The married couple sleep in separate rooms, their lives
without intimacy or passion as a result of Liyan's undiagnosed illness
that he believes to be tuberculosis, though the film hints that it may
be psychosomatic.
When
an old friend, a 30-year old doctor from Shanghai, Zhang Zhichen (Xin
Bai Qing), comes to visit and discovers that Liyan's wife was his childhood
sweetheart, his passion is immediately re-ignited. The ensuing rivalry
of two very different men for the love of one woman is played out with
subtlety and intelligence. Similar in theme and mood to Wong Kar-Wei's
In the Mood for Love, each character is forced to conceal his
or her true feelings, perhaps out of social propriety or moral concerns.
Though I admired the inner nobility of the characters, I felt distanced
by the husband's extreme passivity, and saddened by the unfulfilled
longing of the two central protagonists.
I
have always wanted to probe deeper into the roots of humanity. While
shooting The River, I kept reminding myself to probe into the deeper,
the darker half of ourselves. We don’t always live happily ever after.
Materialism boosts human greed to an unglorious height. We have everything
we ever wanted, yet there is something lurking in the dark to keep us
from being really happy.”
-- Tsai Ming-Liang
In
Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang's 1997 film The River,
Xiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), meets a young woman (Chen Shiang-chyi) on
an escalator in a downtown Taipei mall. The woman introduces him to
a film director (Ann Hui) who recruits him to play a corpse floating
down a polluted river. Shortly afterward, Xiao-kang mysteriously experiences
severe neck pain. Although he receives medical, chiropractic, and acupuncture
treatment, his condition worsens and he spends most of the film groaning
in pain and holding his neck. As in Todd Haynes' Safe (1995),
another film about illness that worsens despite treatment, it remains
uncertain whether the cause is physical or psychological.
There
have been many films about the failure of modern society to provide
a coherent set of values for people, but none convey the feeling of
emotional deadness and isolation more effectively than The River.
It is so alienating in its lethargic pace that it makes Andrei Tarkovsky
look like Michael Bay. With no close-ups, no soundtrack other than environmental
noises, minimal dialogue and plot, and long takes that focus on objects
for minutes at a time, the film challenges us to stay tuned in.
Relationships
in The River are cold and impersonal, and Xiao-kang's family
is about as profoundly isolated as can be imagined. All we see in the
beginning are three individuals going their separate ways, performing
most of life's routine chores exclusively by themselves. It is well
into the film before we even know that they are a family unit. They
never speak to each other, sleep or eat together. The father (Miao Tien)
is a retired, dumpy-looking man who frequents the gay saunas. Xiao-kang's
mother (Lu Hsiao-ling) is an elevator operator who watches pornographic
videos that she obtains from her secret lover. Xiao himself has a brief
affair with the young woman he met at the beginning of the film. There
is no emotion - only the brief, anonymous sexual encounters provide
any form of intensity. These scenes are shot almost entirely in the
dark with only little snippets of light showing parts of trembling bodies.
This technique creates a sensual yet rather unnerving and distancing
experience.
Water
is a prevalent thread throughout the film - in the polluted river, the
leaking ceiling of the father's bedroom which ultimately floods the
apartment; rain showers, bathing showers and baths at the sauna. It
plays a central symbolic role, perhaps as a metaphor for the flow of
life. The River is a meditation on people thrown together in
big cities, living in close proximity, and yet emotionally and psychologically
distant. They live surrounded by silence, unwilling or unable to reach
out to each other, handling problems with inaction and patchwork solutions.
I found this film to be a very unsettling experience, unpleasant to
watch but very powerful in its dark message. In a shocking scene towards
the end of the film, father and son meet in a sauna at a gay bathhouse
but fail to recognize each other. This tender but disturbing depiction
of emotional disconnection succintly summarizes the film's vision.
Goodbye
South, Goodbye (1996) presents a beautifully delineated portrait
of a generation of Taiwanese cut off from their society's traditional
values. Director Hou Hsiao-Hsien records a world stuck in short-lived
businesses and scams in which the characters have no real shot at economic
advancement. The film follows two small-time scam artists and one of
their girlfriends as they wander around Taiwan trying to get rich. The
characters are cold, rootless, and basically corrupt. No real communication
is taking place here. The movie portrays the connection between feudal
tradition and modern gangsterism from a rigorously detached perspective.
Somehow,
Hou transcends this feeling of entrapment and aimlessness with long
takes of lyrical beauty. For example, there is the green filter that
is shown when the three are riding through a tunnel in Taipei, or when
they are riding their motorcycles up a steep hill in a moment of grace
and freedom. The camera in this film does not judge. It simply records
the unfolding of events. Employing a style of patient observation and
extreme dispassion, Hou discloses the character of complex relationships
and situations. This film is pulsating with rhythm - the rhythm of a
train, the rhythm of punk music, the rhythm of life.
©2002 Howard Schumann
CineScene
