There’s something quite strange going on in Zhang Yimou’s New Year legal dramedy Article 20 (第二十条, dì èrshí tiáo). Generally speaking, the authorities have not looked kindly on people standing up to injustice in case it gives them ideas, yet the film ends in an impassioned defence of the individual’s right to fight back in arguing that fear of prosecution should not deter “good” people from doing “the right thing” such as intervening when others are in danger. Nevertheless, the usual post-credits sequences remind us that the legal system is working exactly as it should and the guilty parties were all caught and forced to pay for their crimes.
In this particular case, the issue is one akin to a kind of coercive control. Wang (Yu Hewei) stabs Liu 26 times following a prolonged period of abuse and humiliation. After taking out a loan to pay for medical treatment for his daughter who is deaf and mute like her mother Xiuping (Zhao Liying), Wang was terrorised by Liu who chained him up like a dog and repeatedly raped his wife. Prosecutor Han Ming (Lei Jiayin) eventually argues that his attacking Liu qualifies as self defence under Article 20 of the constitution because even if his life was not directly threatened at the time it was in the long term and he did what he did to protect himself and his family from an ongoing threat.
Han Ming becomes mixed up in several different cases along the same lines only with differing levels of severity. Some years ago he’d worked on the case of a bus driver who was prosecuted after stepping in to help a young woman who was being harassed by two louts. His problem was that he got back up after they knocked him down and returned to the woman which makes him the assailant. Zhang has spent most of his life since his conviction filing hopeless petitions in Beijing. Meanwhile, Han Ming’s son, Chen (Liu Yaowen), gets into trouble at school after stepping in to stop obnoxious rich kid and Dean’s son Zhang Ke from bullying another student.
Now jaded and middle-aged, Chen first tells his son that he should he give in an apologise to get the boy’s litigious father off his back though Chen is indignant and refuses to do so when all he did was the right thing in standing up to a bully. Bullying is the real subject of the film which paints the authoritarian society itself as a bully that rules by fear and leaves the wronged too afraid to speak up. The choice Han Ming faces is between an acceptance of injustice in the pursuit of a quiet life and the necessity of countering it rather than live in fear while bullies prosper.
The thesis is in its way surprising given that the last thing you expect to see in a film like this is encouragement to resist oppression even if the idea maybe more than citizens should feel free to police and protect each other from the immorality and greed of others. It is true enough that it’s those who fight back who are punished, while the aggressor often goes free but according to Han Ming at least the law should not be as black and white as some would have nor be used as a tool by the powerful, or just intimidating, to oppress those with less power than themselves.
Other than the theatrical drums which play over the title card, there is curiously little here of Zhang Yimou’s signature style while the film itself is not particularly well shot or edited. It also walks a fine line between the farcical comedy of Han Ming’s home life in which he perpetually bickers with his feisty wife (an always on point Ma Li) who worries he’s too interested in his colleague Lingling (Gao Ye) who turns out to be an old flame from his college days during which he too was punished for standing up to a bully by being relegated to the provinces for 20 years. A minor subplot implies that the justice-minded Lingling is largely ignored because of the sexist attitudes of her bosses who feel her to be too aggressive and often dismiss anything she has to say in what amounts to another low level instance of bullying. The film ends in a rousing speech which seems more than a little disingenuous but even so ironically advocates for the right to self-defence against a bullying culture while simultaneously making a case for the authorities having the best interests of the citizen at heart which would almost certainly not stand up particularly well in court.
Article 20 is on limited release in UK cinemas courtesy of CMC.
International trailer (English subtitles)
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