Tag: China

Eat Bitter (Pascale Appora-Gnekindy & Sun Ningyi, 2023)

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“Happiness is not about what you eat or what you wear but mutual understanding” according to Luan, a Chinese construction manager, in Pascale Appora-Gnekindy & Sun Ningyi’s documentary Eat Bitter. Mutual understanding is perhaps something he’s striving for in his working life in the Central African Republic which is as the opening titles state one of the poorest places on Earth. As China deepens its economic investment in Africa, Luan is one of many who’ve travelled overseas in search of higher salaries to provide better lives for their families.

His struggles are mirrored in those of Boa, a local man who works a sand diver gathering the raw materials that Luan needs for his construction work. Boa’s wife has recently left him with their two children whom he can barely support, though as it later turns out that may partly be because he had conceived a child with another woman whom he subsequently tries to marry only to see the relationship fail when she regards him as unkind and can no longer live with him. Luan’s status as a migrant worker has also placed a strain on his family life. Having left when his son was a teenager, he worries that he wasn’t there to effectively parent him at an important age which has contributed to the difficulties his wife is currently facing in her relationship with him. Luan and Yuzhen talk every day on the phone and she generally seems upbeat but later makes an attempt on her life in the depths of her loneliness being separated from her husband and estranged from her son. 

The film’s title comes from a phrase that Luan utters close to its conclusion that one must eat bitter before tasting sweet, meaning that in order to find happiness one must endure hardship. But then the hardships that he and Boa are facing are obviously very different. Luan is here to build to a bank, a slick and modern building that symbolises a new future for an otherwise impoverished country which might be one reason the president wants to come in person to inaugurate it with an election looming along with the rise of a new militia threatening civil war. While working on the project, Luan complains that the local workers are slow in comparison to the speed and efficiency common in China while it’s clear that health and safety concerns are almost non-existent. A large group of men standing on a skinny girder joke that they’ll die if they fall but no one is wearing helmets or other safety gear. At one point it’s suggested that they were provided but the workers opted not to use them. In any case, a local worker is eventually killed due to a fall on site causing Luan to reflect that he should have made helmets mandatory and has perhaps failed in his duty of care to the casual workers he employs. 

Boa says his job is dangerous too and that he’s caused himself injury due to being preoccupied with his complicated domestic situation. His dream is to buy a canoe and go into business for himself, something which his current boss supports and even offers to help him with even if the sand diving business appears to be semi-legal and precarious. The authorities soon close down the site where Boa and the other men were gathering sand and gravel stating that they want to redevelop it but when the boss returns sometime later he discovers that nothing has been done and wonders why they had to be moved on. 

Later Luan and his wife attend the opening of a new apartment building for a banquet hosted by his hitherto unseen boss Madame He but it seems unlikely that many of the local residents would be able to afford to live in a place like this even if like the bank it is intended as symbol of what the Central African Republic could become rather than what it is now. Asked for his opinion on the Chinese, Boa states that he feels they’ve got a raw deal. The Chinese are just like white people, he remarks, they say they’ve come to help but they earn a lot more money and the terms of the deal are disadvantageous to men like him. Perhaps this is an ironic inversion of the mutual understanding Luan was talking about though admittedly more in reference to his now much happier relationship with his wife who has finally agreed to relocate in order to be with him. In any case, it’s true that both men are intent on building a mutually beneficial future even if it’s one where the scales are very much tipped. 

Eat Bitter screened as part of this year’s DOC NYC.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman (目中无人, Yang Bingjia, 2022)

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A blind swordsman takes revenge against the evils of feudal society in Yang Bingjia’s impressively helmed action drama, Eye For An Eye: The Blind Swordsman (目中无人, mùzhōngwúrén). Set in the “lawless” society of the Tang era following the Tianbao rebellion, the film has a western sensibility with its twanging guitar score and dusty roads not to mention jumped up gangsters trying to get a foothold in the legitimate order simply because they have become too powerful and no one is willing to resist them. 

Ni Yan (Gao Weiman), a young tavern woman who lost her brother and husband when her wedding was attacked by the Yuwen clan asks for nothing more than “justice” but that’s something no one can give her. Wandering swordsman Cheng Yi (Mo Tse) who’d taken a liking to her because she offered him some of her wine and even gave some to his horse reports the crime to the local magistrate after claiming the bounty on a fugitive, only he tells her directly that he will do nothing because the Yuwen clan have already moved beyond justice and not even he will touch them. 

In a way, Cheng is depicted as a failed revolutionary and his blindness a symbol his despair in a world he no longer cares to see. A bounty hunter by trade, his work is facilitated by old comrade Lady Qin (Zhang Qin) who, in contrast to him, seems to live a cheerful life repairing musical instruments while much loved in the town around her. Though they pretend to be saving money for an operation to restore Cheng’s sight, their line of work is perhaps cynical in taking advantage of the times while accidentally outsourcing a justice the authorities can no longer provide in the weakened Tang society. The Yuwen have infiltrated most institutions and cultivated relationships with important people that allow them to ride roughshod over ordinary citizens who are now completely at their mercy.

There might be something quietly subversive in these references to a corrupt and authoritarian institution which tries to brand Ni Yani the criminal in her pleas for justice, insisting that she admit to killing her brother herself in resentment of his criminal past while he is also hunted by the Yuwen because he knows to much about their dodgy dealings including raiding tombs to get precious gems to use as bargaining chips in a dynastic marriage negotiation. Cheng Yi did not originally want to get involved, himself too cynical and having given up hope of “justice” in this “lawless” society, but finds himself sympathetic towards Ni Yan because of the kindness she showed him and the obvious suffering her ordeal has inflicted on her. 

In a sense, his eyes are opened to the injustice of the society around him to which he had been wilfully blind if ironically accepting that he will never see again. He alone is willing to stand up to the Yuwen while even within their ranks petty resentments are growing as a princeling grows ambitious to escape his own oppression at the hands of an authoritarian brother who berates him for his weakness. 

Despite the budgetary issues which often plague straight to streaming cinema, Yang’s elegantly lensed drama brings a real sense of place to the dusty provincial towns where Cheng plies his trade along with the ornate elegance of the realm of Lady Qin whose flowing robes belie her military past. Drawing inspiration from the western as well as Japanese genre classics such as Yojimbo the film presents a world in decay in which the wandering swordsman becomes a moral authority, delivering justice if for a price. The irony is that it isn’t money which opens his eyes, but the reclaimed ability to see with his heart in deciding to help Ni Yan in her quest to avenge the deaths of those close to her. A series of excellently choreographed and well-shot action scenes along with Yang’s post-modern take on the material lend this tale of wandering swordsmen and feudal abuses a sense of the legendary that hints at further adventures for wandering sword for hire Cheng Yi bringing his own brand of justice to a lawless place. 

Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman is out in the US on Digital, blu-ray, and DVD on 28th November courtesy of Well Go USA.

US trailer (English subtitles)

Into the Shaolin (在少林, Sun Hongyun, 2023)

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Like many of the monks at the centre of Sun Hongyun’s documentary Into the Shaolin (在少林
zài Shàolín), our associations with the name are almost exclusively tied up with martial arts movies. Yet as they discovered on entering the temple, it’s not all about kung fu which to some at least came as a disappointment when they were still novices tasked with performing ordinary chores. Then again, many of them do not necessarily anticipate being monks all their lives and so long spent in contemplation leaves them with few other ways to support themselves in the secular world other than through leveraging their martial arts training.

As we can see, many monks come to the temple in childhood often to escape poverty or because they were thought to be troublemakers at home. Sun follows the little monks with empathy, capturing both their mastery over the craft at such a young age and the pain and difficulty it often causes them raising series ethical issues over whether it is right and fair to expect so much from small children who often cry in pain or frustration. Others also remark that they miss their parents having essentially been sent away though one boy explains that his mother managed to get a job nearby so that she can still spend time with him and observe his training.

It’s these familial ties that present the strongest contradictions to the monks and bind them more fully to the secular world. One young man who came to the temple for lack of other options contemplates remaining there for the rest of his life and is a little resentful that even at 18 he still has to get the permission of the grandparents who raised him to go on a mountain retreat. The grandparents, who lost their son, his father, in a workplace accident they believe caused by overwork, want nothing more than for him to get married and start a business and so they flatly refuse to allow him to go on being a monk forever instructing him not to bother contacting them again if that’s what he plans to do. 

But then as others have said, being a shaolin monk doesn’t teach you how to live in the secular world and gives you few transferable skills that would allow you to support yourself. An older monk explains that most of the monks who came to the temple at the same time as him have left but almost all still work with martial arts in some capacity as there’s nothing else for them to do. Even so, the little monks talk of doing other things with their lives once they grow up one hoping to become a soldier defending China and another a movie star. Many came to the temple specifically because of their love of kung fu films starring Jet Li, Donnie Yen, or Wang Baoqiang who himself trained in Shaolin martial arts. 

Others meanwhile have found serenity in the rhythms of the temple and may no longer be suited to living outside of it. The show the boys are preparing utilises a series of boxes of the kind they usually sleep in which as one monk admits to the untrained eye closely resemble coffins but as he puts it no one really needs much more space than their body naturally occupies and it doesn’t really matter where they sleep. Of course, to those in the secular world those things mean a great deal and there’s probably a big difference between a box at the temple and one on the street. Another monk reflects on the shaolin name which means “few trees” though at the temple few is a lot and less is more. He thinks that it’s a fallacy to consider a “return” to the secular world because the true “return” is to your true self which you only discover by leaving home. 

That might be a sentiment shared by a Serbian doctoral student staying at the temple while researching her thesis and in particular the concept of “Chan”. Offering her own insights as a foreigner living at the temple she reflects on the differing attitudes to nature found in China while she seems to be the only woman currently in training. She remarks that it might be odd to call a temple home but that’s what it’s been to here even as she prepares to leave it. Sun’s documentary has an ambivalence to it, at once admiring of the monks in their asceticism, but also somewhat sad not only for their inability to escape their suffering, merely exchange one kind for another, but also for the predicament they my find themselves in should the time come to leave the temple whether by their own will or otherwise.

Into the Shaolin screened as part of this year’s DOC NYC and is available to stream in the US until Nov. 26.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Crocodile Island (巨鳄岛, Simon Zhao & Xu Shixing, 2020)

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Monster movie streamer Crocodile Island (巨鳄岛, jù è dǎo) became a surprise hit in the early days of the pandemic as people increasingly preferred to entertain themselves at home, though of course in a way it may be somehow comforting to see people battle more obvious threats that they can actually see and physically resist. In any case, the film never promises much more than its nature as fodder for online streaming would suggest while admittedly pinching plot elements from other similarly themed movies such Train to Busan and positioning the central conflict as effective paternity rather than the monster itself.

A brief prologue finds American pilots flying through the Dragon Triangle during the Second World War while ominously carrying cargo labeled as containing dangerous radiation though the reason they later crash on an uncharted island is that they are suddenly attacked by what appear to be pterodactyls. Nevertheless, the radiation is later given as an explanation as to why all the creatures on the island have evolved into huge and terrifying monsters including the titular crocodile.

Flash forward to the present day and grumpy middle-aged man Lin Hao (Gallen Lo Ka-leung) is escorting his estranged 19-year-old daughter Yiyi (Liao Yinyue) home to China following the sudden death of her mother in Australia where the pair had been living. Yiyi has secretly been accompanied by her university student boyfriend Cheng Jie (Wang Bingxiang) of whom Lin clearly does not approve, not yet able to shift his perspective on the daughter he hadn’t seen in five years to realise she is no longer a little girl. Family bonding will however have to wait as the plane they’re travelling on alongside a pregnant lady and her husband, an influencer, and an obnoxious man travelling home for a heart transplant, is pulled into Dragon’s Triangle by magnetic interference and crash lands on the island where several of the survivors are quickly swallowed by the crocodile. 

Those who remain are therefore faced with a series of dilemmas as to whether to help each other or prioritise their own survival with Cao Fang (He Qiwei), the heart transplant candidate, actively pushing several of his fellow passengers towards the crocodile so that he can get away. Lin meanwhile quickly takes charge and is more or less unchallenged as they try to explore the island in search of clues hoping that the radio equipment in the ‘40s plane they read about in a diary one of the pilots left behind will allow them to make contact through the outdated tech of radio waves. 

This is might be something of a plot hole seeing as it obviously didn’t work for the American pilot though perhaps there just weren’t any ships in range given the circumstances, and it seems he too might have come to a sticky end. But thanks to his sudden promotion to father of the group, Lin begins to reassess his role as a father to Yiyi in beginning to cede ground and actually listen to some of her ideas along with accepting support from Cheng Jie to help him protect her not lease because he realises he may not survive. There are also a few other giant and very hungry monsters on the island who in this case turn out to be more of a threat than other people who with the exception of Cao Fang are more community minded than individualistic. 

A mild social message is conveyed through Yiyi’s eventual discarding of the cigarettes she secretly smoked, symbolising the end of her rebellion and the re-acceptance of her father along with his patriarchal authority as if shifting back onto the right path thanks to the experience of fighting a giant crocodile together and realising that he really did stay to protect her instead of just going off on his own. Some undeniably ropey special effects and a general lack of coherence in the film’s internal logic frustrate its ability to maintain momentum though English-speakers aside, the performances are strong even if the plot developments at times feel unoriginal. Even so the film sells its message of family reunion and perhaps less palatably patriarchal social conventions as Lin Hao steps up to protect his daughter and community from the threats that surround them be they giant crocodiles or otherwise.

Crocodile Island is out now in the US on Digital & DVD courtesy of Well Go USA.

US release trailer (English trailer)

Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly (Li Shasha, 2023)

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In her personal essay film Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly, Li Shasha finds herself meditating on her rootless life and traditional attitudes to the natural world when confronted firstly by ecological disaster and then by global pandemic. In the traditional culture of the Nakhi People among whom Li grew up in the remote landscape of the Himalayas, they say there was once a war between humanity and the spirits because humanity took too much from the Earth and gave nothing in return. As wildfires rip through Oregon where she handled settled and begun a garden, she wonders if we haven’t reneged on our bargain and are paying for our lack of regard for nature.

On a return to the US, it suddenly seems odd to her that grasshoppers and frogs appear only as motifs on shop window displays amid the grey concrete of the cities. As child, she had taken part in rituals honouring fire but now sees its terrifying potential as the world around her is reduced to ashes. In the wake of disaster, she pays a visit home to see the grandmother who raised her while her her own mother studied abroad but encounters a different kind of destruction as the village she once new has become a living museum. Now designated a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, most of the original residents have moved away and rent their traditional-style homes out to the throngs of tourists which now descend on the region. Wandering around the town she sees a bustling night life scene in which the traditional dance of Nakhi People has been repurposed as entertainment for outsiders drinking in the many bars.

In order to rediscover Nakhi culture she must head further into the mountains, but also observes that this way of life has also been disrupted by encroaching modernity. She finds a little girl who, as she once was, is being cared for by grandparents while her brother and mother work in the city. Her cousin has returned from university for the summer and remarks how much more difficult it is to readjust to rural life than it is become used to urban living. It seems much hotter here than he remembered, he’d never have thought to bring a hat, and given the ongoing drought they now farm corn rather than rice. The young man asks if America is more ecologically friendly than China, which seems like an ironic question but prompts Li into a reconsideration of her own relationship with the natural world along with the uncomfortable reminder that as she walks through America she treads on the land of another displaced indigenous people. 

Li celebrates Lunar New Year with the villagers and only hears of an imminent lockdown and a mysterious new disease that seems again like a kind of rebuke for the way mankind has treated the Earth. Presented with a choice, she can’t decide whether to stay or go and reflects that far from uniting us the pandemic has presented only more division. But then even on her return to the US she finds new ways of being and echoes of a more traditional culture in a local community garden that reminds of the way the villagers live tending to the earth with togetherness and replacing what one takes in a gentle symbiosis with nature. 

Using mainly English when talking about her life in America and Mandarin for that in China, Li laments she knows no Nakhi and has lost touch with her culture which seems to be retreating even further in the face of encroaching modernity. Even so, she begins to reevaluate the balance of her life while asking if it’s already too late or if we, like her ancestors, can find new ways to repair our relationship with nature and learn to live in harmony with it once again. Li’s poetic voiceover lends a touch of melancholy to her exploration of all we’ve all lost in a bid for modernity but also perhaps a note of hope that scorched earth can still be replanted though it may take many hands to do so. 

Heaven Rain Flows Sweetly screened as part of this year’s DOC NYC and is available to stream in the US until Nov. 26.

Total Trust (Zhang Jialing, 2023)

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“The government strives to provide a stable society, fair legal system, and quality services to ensure the fulfilment, happiness, and security of its people,” according to a news reader at the beginning of Zhang Jialing’s documentary exploring the contemporary surveillance state of the modern China, Total Trust. In recent mainstream narrative cinema, there has a been a clear message that the Chinese citizen is safe nowhere other than at home, but here other voices tell us that threat comes not only from abroad but from within and the co-operation of all citizens is necessary to ensure the nation’s security. 

Early scenes see what others may regard as busybodies enforcing public order by picking up rubbish or monitoring minor parking infractions, but it’s precisely this sense of oppressive community pressure that “social management” systems are designed to create. Utilising cutting edge technology, the authorities harvest big data to assess the “trustworthiness” of the ordinary citizen and accord them a rank which then affects all aspects of their lives from their ability to gain or maintain employment to the right to use public transport. Social responsibility is rewarded with points for the above mentioned activities but also for keeping an eye on your neighbours and ensuring they aren’t planning to do anything “subversive” while your neighbours also watch you. 

But this trustworthiness is not so much towards the society as it is towards the Party. Many of Zhang’s protagonists are lawyers and their families who were targeted during a recent crackdown and charged with subverting state power because they defended those who claimed they’d been falsely convicted of crimes which is problematic because the Party cannot be wrong and it doesn’t make mistakes. Chang Weiping was arrested in 2020 and sent back to his hometown for house arrest leaving him separated from his wife and son. He recounts frequent torture which caused him permanent physical damage while his wife has also found herself targeted by the surveillance state after protesting his imprisonment. 

Other families report similar harassment. Wenzu Li’s husband Quanzhang Wang was imprisoned because of his championing of human rights and though he’s since been released the couple have effectively been banned from social media with any photos featuring their faces automatically removed by AI technology and the accounts that posted them limited. They are constantly watched while the police have also motivated their neighbours to monitor and shun them. After being invited to speak at an international conference, their door is blocked by mysterious mask-wearing neighbours who physically prevent them from leaving (they later appear at the conference via Zoom). Their son has also had to change schools almost every term because of the persistent harassment and their own low social credit ranking.

As another persecuted journalist, Sophia, points out after generations of censorship, a degree of censure has become internalised and in general people tend to self-censor without necessarily regarding it as an infringement on their freedom. Many people welcome this kind of oppressive “security” because it makes them feel safe while others are too afraid of the potential consequences to resist. Weiping’s wife takes his father to task for giving up on the campaign against his imprisonment as he remains reluctant to challenge the Party of which he has been a lifelong member, while he agrees that he is simply old and frightened and doesn’t want to be subjected to state harassment himself. 

Weiping’s wife eventually decides to emigrate to the US believing there is no future for her son in China while Weiping himself remains imprisoned. The journalist makes plans to study abroad in the UK, which might in itself be ironic given the increasing authoritarianism of the British government. The UK is already one of the most surveilled places in the world and similar kinds of AI-based facial recognition technology are already being employed in law enforcement. In any case, she is arrested at the airport and prevented from the leaving the country before being detained and charged with the same “subverting government power” line as the lawyers. According to the closing titles, she remains in prison. Emergency powers introduced during the pandemic have only enabled a wider authoritarian power grab with authorities now able to manipulate “health ratings” to silent protest or otherwise make lives unliveable by simply switching the reading to red meaning that the target can be arrested simply for leaving their home. Citizens may need to reevaluate the “trustworthiness” of the government but are of course prevented from doing so in a society in which their every movement is already closely controlled.

Total Trust screened as part of this year’s DOC NYC.

Trailer (English subtitles)

How to Have an American Baby (Leslie Tai, 2023)

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“Mama, why wasn’t I born in America?” a salesman promoting a programme bringing women from China to give birth in the US so that their child will have citizenship rather manipulatively states in an almost certainly made-up quote from a child jealous of another’s life of baseball playing freedom abroad. The never quite explained mystery at the centre of Leslie Tai’s documentary How to Have an American Baby is why exactly so many families find US citizenship so desirable given that they have no immediate intention of living there themselves.

A father later suggests that he was looking for “security”, perhaps implying a sense of anxiety regarding the future direction of China while others insist they want their kids educated in the US presumably to take advantage of more global opportunities (additional press materials also suggest a desire for a legal security not afforded to children born out of wedlock). But it’s also true that the US has shockingly high maternal mortality rates in comparison to the rest of the developed world and that, though it seems they may not have realised it, these women are risking their lives and the lives of their unborn children undergoing an incredibly stressful and difficult period of confinement and later medical procedure usually alone and unable to speak the language. Most of the women appear to be under the care of Mandarin-speaking doctors, yet their manner is often rough and unkind while at least one woman seems to suspect that the advice she’s being given may not be impartial. As non-residents who do not have medical insurance, the parents assume that the hospitals are taking advantage of the Chinese patients and charging whatever they like with rates far higher than locals would typically pay.

One could therefore say that this is a very circular business. The hospitals make their money and they’re happy, while a small industry seems to have arisen with Chinese migrants running maternity hospitals to facilititate this practice. However, largely unable to speak English themselves, they can offer little help in a crisis and as they are operating in a legal grey area are not keen to get involved in any disputes. One woman, Lele, who unfortunately loses her baby she suspects as a result of medical malpractice is kept isolated from the other mothers and given almost no support. In the lengthy birth scene in which one mother undergoes a difficult labour lasting more than a day, the director is called away to translate for Lele with alarming warnings about a baby “coding” and that there is something wrong with their heartbeat all of which only places further stress on the mother giving birth who worries that her own anxiety is the reason the delivery is taking so long.  

Meanwhile, alarm is being raised by residents of the local area in which many of these “maternity hotels” are situated. They complain about increased traffic and noise due to the fact that ordinary family homes are now being used for a commercial purpose though one woman’s suggestion that they report such an innocuous sound as a baby crying (incorrectly assuming the women are also giving birth at the hotel) could obviously have unintended consequences and speaks to a greater degree of ingrained prejudice. A local government representative suggests that beyond instituting checks to ensure building safety there isn’t much they can do as the hotels aren’t breaking any laws or occupancy rules and even if they were they’d just pay someone to lease another property under a different name and set up somewhere else. 

As the salesman had suggested, for some of the women US citizenship is a status symbol and something they’re made to feel they’re denying their children if they chose to give birth to them at home. This process is expensive, and many of the families lead lives far more materially comfortable in China than they likely would in the US yet they see US citizenship as something that will be extremely beneficial to their children and so naturally want to give them the best if also securing their own status in being able to give it to them. Perhaps as one man at the neighbourhood meeting suggests, it’s only “smart” to take advantage of this obvious business opportunity but it’s also true that it’s the families who are perhaps being exploited in being missold a safe and easy path to engineering future possibility for their as yet unborn children. 

How to Have an American Baby screens Nov. 14 as part of DOC NYC and will be available to stream in the US until Nov. 26 before making its broadcast premiere on Dec. 11th on POV.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Youth (Spring) (青春, Wang Bing, 2023)

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There’s an almost eerie quality to the absence of age in Wang Bing’s sprawling exploration of the Zhili textile industry Youth (Spring). Perhaps for reasons of tact, the ages of older workers, unlike those under 35, are not displayed while they are also predominantly female. One has to wonder where the young men who currently work on the shop floor will later end up if they generally do not stay in this line of work though alternatively it may be further evidence of generational shift in which the young men of 30 or 40 years ago simply did not take up jobs as seamstresses. In any case, the only older men we see here are factory owners and floor managers while the older women are often at the forefront of mostly futile attempts at collective bargaining. 

Many young migrant workers apparently prefer the factories in Zhili because they offer a greater degree of freedom than the large state-run complexes which often micromanage the lives of their employees in almost prison-like conditions. But then it’s also obvious that they struggle and largely cannot earn a living wage despite the long hours they are often forced to put in. One younger worker tries to complain about the lack of overtime pay on offer, explaining that he needs to make at least 4-500 yuan a day and cannot do that without the extra payment but the manager simply tells him that he pays better than other shops and in any case there are plenty of rural youngsters who will be happy to take his job. 

The later part of the film is largely concerned with attempts at collective bargaining led by veteran workers who find themselves frustrated by the system. This kind of work is often seasonal and ironically unavailable in the spring during which many workers return home to their villagers. They are paid on piece rate contracts but the rate is set by the kinds of garments they’re making and they often can’t know how much money they’ll be getting by the end of the season. Consequently they try to work up the rate on certain items while at times resentful of other workers who’ve been able to make more solely because they were assigned different tasks which pay better. The managers give them all the usual excuses, largely refusing to budge or offering only a modest per item increase which as one worker points out will barely make a difference if the quota is small anyway. 

Wang gives more of an overview rather than focussing on a series of individuals but discovers an ironic intersection of the legacy of the One Child Policy and the economic realities of today. At the first workshop, a couple who met on the shop floor experience an unexpected pregnancy. The young woman, Shengnan, seems to be given little choice in the matter which is largely being decided by the respective parents on each side. Because of the additional complications of the residence system (they are each from different districts) the parents both want the couple to move closer to them especially as the boy’s parents are economically dependent on him as they age. Shengnan’s mother puts her foot down and negotiates with the manager to get Shengnan time off for an abortion but he refuses until Shengnan has finished her current quota after which he says he’ll be very happy for her to take some rest at home to get over it though as another suggests, trying to offer comfort, an abortion is just like getting bitten by a dog and then biting back. He does however accept that it’s the girls who suffer while all the men are “little emperors”.

Evidence of sexism is rife. Another worker needles his girlfriend about her job in an overnight internet cafe, telling her that it’s not good for girls and that it might cause acne while seemingly not bothering to think about how his long shifts at the factory might be affecting him. “Women are useless” another man later exclaims despite being largely supported by them in the workplace, not least by his own mother who works in the same factory. The younger workers are often cheerful, messing around with silly banter and constant flirting. It’s not surprising that relationships often arise with people trapped together such long periods of time with little possibility of going out to meet someone else, but they’re also largely impossible given the futility of trying earn enough to support a family through seamstressing. Another man faces a similar dilemma when he discovers his girlfriend has also become pregnant but cannot decide if he wants to get married, worrying about shouldering the responsibility of a wife and child while financially insecure. 

All of which would seem to conflict with a wider anxiety about children not getting married as parents often reject a potential suitor based on low economic status or residency while young men find themselves frustrated unable to envisage a time when they might be financially stable enough to start a family. Meanwhile, the old-style factory dorms are strewn with rubbish and in general depressing in their grey concrete exteriors and poorly lit rooms. An outburst leading to a physical confrontation between workers seems only natural given the fraught conditions though Wang presents it as a howl of despair from a generation trapped between the old China and the new with very little to show for it.

Youth (Spring) screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Hidden Blade (无名, Cheng Er, 2023)

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In a moment of calm in Chang Er’s Hidden Blade (无名, Wúmíng), a man is served drunken shrimp and watches the poor creatures flail as they’re cooked alive in a bloody soup before placing them in his mouth still kicking, the red liquid dripping from his lips. The heroes are to some extent much the same, plunged into the dangerous waters of the Sino-Japanese war and drowning among its myriad confusions no longer even certain of their own identity let alone that of others. 

It’s at this that the Chinese title, Anonymous, hints for in this world of constant duplicity names are rarely exchanged or on occasion given only posthumously. That is aside from Mr. He (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) who introduces himself promptly after giving a secret knock to enter a hotel room marked with a Japanese character to meet a Mr. Liang who, it seems, intends to betray the Communist cause and instead serve the Wang Jingwei Regime which has sided with Japan in the puppet state of Manchuria, though we can in no way be sure if either of these men are telling the full truth or are who they claim to be. 

Chang replays this scene later with additional content as he will with several scenes throughout the film adding new context as he goes. Like Lou Ye’s Purple Buttlerfly, the fractured narrative hints at the chaos of an age in which nothing is quite as it seems and the truth is always obscured if at times irrelevant. Spanning the second Sino-Japanese war and its immediate aftermath, the film suggests that the motivations underpinning Japanese imperialism are anti-Communist and that Manchuria is a key asset for them as a bulwark against Soviet incursion. Collaborating with the Japanese, the Wang Jingwei Regime is the third point in a triangle lodged between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and the Communist Party with the implication that it essentially needs to drop out lowering the barriers for a confrontation between the two and the eventual victory of the Communists which occurs three years after the end of the film in 1949.

Technically the third part in the “China Victory Trilogy” which was conceived as “a gift to the Communist Party for its centenary” the film may make some bold claims as to the role of Communist spies in the 1930s but nevertheless neatly aligns the covert resistance movement with the Party’s eventual triumph if subversively ending on a note of loss and melancholy which leaves the survivors in lonely exile, ideologically victorious but emotionally ruined. Both Liang and the ambivalent Japanese soldier Watanabe (Hiroyuki Mori) talk of wanting a quiet life retiring to ancestral land as ordinary farmers freed from the murky world of politics but are each frustrated while He and Watanabe’s young goon Ye (Wang Yibo) wrestle with the romantic costs of their political choices. Yet the most dignified performance is reserved for an impossibly beautiful KMT assassin caught before she was able to take out a government minister while posing as his mistress “He used to write poems, now he writes execution orders,” Watanabe laments of the Minister (Da Peng) who later it seems pays a heavy price for his ruthless opportunism. At least his would-be-assassin remained true to her ideals and accepted her fate with dignity. Indeed, she may be the only one who is certain of herself and her identity even in her impeccable elegance which is a something of a mixed message given her political affiliation. 

In the end, it may be the self-denial that slowly erodes their souls while forced to conceal their true intentions even to those close to them. Then again, it’s impossible to know what’s for real and what’s for show. An intensely emotional exchange could in fact be intended for someone else’s ears or merely a cruel tragedy of misrepresentation. The real hidden blade is the self-repression living in an atmosphere of oppressive suspicion requires rather than the communist sleeper agents who in this version of the tale beat the Japanese into retreat. Featuring top notch production design and costuming, Chang’s oscillating venture through an abyss of cruelty and betrayal finds its heroes victorious but no so much anonymous as robbed of both name and country, lonely exiles of a war not quite won. 

Hidden Blade is available digitally in the US courtesy of Well Go USA.

US trailer (dialogue free)

Only the River Flows (河边的错误, Wei Shujun, 2023)

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Spoiler warning

In the opening moments of Wei Shujun’s Only the River Flows (河边的错误, Hébiān de Cuòwù) children run through an abandoned building playing cops and robbers amid the ruins of a changing China. One could argue that detective Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) is little different from the boy who chases after the other children with a plastic toy gun in his hand and an apparent love of justice in his heart only to enter a room and find himself on the edge of precipice looking down on a digger several floors below already sweeping up the rubble while Ma and his police partner look on obliviously. 

Wei fully recreates the aesthetics of sixth generation cinema, filming on grainy 16mm with a score that immediately echoes the films of the 1990s. Yet this small town in southern China is also a noirish place full of dank corridors and crumbling buildings that reflect the slow death of the old factory system along with the accompanying anxiety and displacement. Ma Zhe is also somewhat displaced. As he’s first introduced it’s as the only plainclothes detective in a room full of policemen in military uniform. His genial boss sells a message of “collective glory” that sounds somewhat outdated and is continually undermined by the fact he seems to do little himself and in fact continually instructs Ma to close the case he is working on even if he isn’t really convinced that primary suspect really is the guilty party. 

Based on a novel by Yu Hua, the film’s Chinese title more accurately means “a mistake on the river bank” which could refer to the murder itself, a strange case of an apparently well liked old lady killed with a sharp object, or to an encounter Ma later has with the suspect who is referred to only as “The Madman”. Apparently adopted by the old woman, Granny Four (Cao Yang), to stave off loneliness after her husband’s death (presumably they had no children of their own) the Madman is middle-aged with some kind of learning difficulties and otherwise mute and docile never having displayed any signs of violence or volatility. Yet in his way Ma is also a “madman”, increasingly out of touch with objective reality and driven near out of his mind by his preoccupation with the case. 

Pushed past his limit, Ma feels himself stalked and eventually descends into a lengthy dream sequence in which he watches his recollections projected on a cinema screen only for the negative to dissolve in flames as if it were burning a hole in his memory. His own perceptions are not reliable as confirmed by the confusion surrounding a commendation he received at a previous posting that he can no longer find, while a friend he contacts says he can’t remember him every receiving it and would have been surprised if he had as back then Ma was drinking quite heavily. Overburdened by the case, he begins drinking again and is also filled with paternal anxiety while his pregnant wife spends her time to trying to construct the image of their family by completing a jigsaw puzzle featuring a picture of a mother and child. 

The couple are told, by a very unsympathetic doctor, that there is a small chance the baby may be born with a genetic abnormality that could result in cognitive impairment. While Ma leans towards an abortion (the one child policy in this era perhaps influencing his decision) his wife is determined to keep it, calling Ma a heartless man but also suggesting that the fate that has befallen him is some kind of karmic retribution. He feels the Madman in himself echoed in the fate that awaits his child and is unwilling to accept it, wondering what their life would be like with the world the way it is.

His sense of “madness” is centred in his individuality as the member of a collective and something that he finds echoed in the frustrating dead ends of his case. Several witnesses saw the body but did not report it, fearful of their own secrets being exposed. More deaths soon occur, not exactly related to the first but somehow as a result of it as if murder were catching and Ma is a point of infection bringing a hidden truth to light that accidentally exposes something others would have preferred remain private. Ma’s quest is to quell the madman within himself, as perhaps he does in once again putting on his uniform and joining the collective even if it means accepting their truth above his own or the doubts in his heart. A brief coda featuring Ma and his wife happily bathing their son in an atmosphere of warmth and comfort might suggest that order has been restored were it not for the unsettling look in the child’s eyes in the film’s final frame. Beguiling and mysterious, the film lends itself to multiple viewings in its consistently slippery realities and noirish sense of existential dread as Ma attempts to find himself amid the contradictions of ‘90s China in a land very much under construction. 

Only the River Flows screened as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival and will be released in UK & Irish cinemas in spring 2024 courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.

International trailer (English subtitles)