Last Train Home is a fascinating documentary by director Lixin Fan about the massive human migration from Chinese cities to the country side at the time of the Chinese New Year. Some 130 million people whose families live in the country commute over days and weeks from hundreds of main industrial metropolises back home to see their loved ones. The film focuses on the Zhan family and how this annual trip both affects their relationships as a unit and how it is a symptom of a greater erosion of the family structure in modern-day China, among the working class at least.
As the film opens in 2006, Changhua and Suqin Zhang are a husband and wife living in the massive production capitol of Guangzhou. They are having difficulty getting a train ticket to go back to her mother and father who are looking after their teenage daughter and preteen son, Qin and Yang. After striking out several times, they finally get two tickets to take the two-day trip back to their home in a rural part of the Sichuan Province, thousands of miles away.
Once they get back it becomes clear that there is a dramatic schism between them and their children. They never had much luck in school and left at a very early age to work in factories. Their kids are both smart and doing well in school, but there is a strong pull from the outside world and life factors to take Qin, who is now 16, out of school and send her to work in a city factory. This happens, and it basically ruins her life. She immediately is overwhelmed by the bigger world. She gets depressed and falls in with a bad group of friends. She is never happy and carries her bad attitude around with her everywhere.
At the following New Year's reunion back home, the parents can barely recognize the character of their formerly respectful, joyful daughter. They consider stepping in an changing her life again, but also know that the money she makes in her factory is drastically needed for their family. They discuss how they want to send their son Yang to work too, but now they can't because they can't let what happened to Qin happen to him.
For the Zhang family, it is a fundamental question of what is the true value of the money they get from Qin's work. Is it worthwhile if she is unhappy as a result? Is it worthwhile if it ruins their family bonds? What is the most important thing for everybody and do they even have a choice in the first place?
This is a fascinating debate and wonderful to look at next to Zhang Ke Jia's brilliant pseudo-documentary 24 City from last year. In that film the director shows how brazenly the Chinese government pushed farmers from the country to the cities and how the people responded to the change with happiness and hope. It then shows how now that some of those new cities created in the 1950s and 1960s are now dying (as new cities crop up), the people are left totally rootless. Last Train Home is a story of how people are trying to keep their connections to their native places (perhaps this is a post Cultural Revolution change in culture), but how difficult it is to stay absolutely traditional in such a difficult and modern environment.
I especially appreciate how the director doesn't really judge the bigger facts of the situation - that people are forced to move to big cities to work in sometimes substandard environments for pennies an hour. Rather he shows that taking those facts as a given, the people on the ground are faced with an impossible dilemma about the need for money, the hope for education and upward mobility and the love of tradition and history.
Most interestingly this film points out how very "here-and-now" contemporary China is both policy-wise and psychologically. There is no greater government body looking out for people's interest in China; people look out for themselves. As a result, most have to make dramatic decisions about their lives from one moment to the next, sometimes hurting themselves down the line in order to save themselves today. There is no long-term strategy for most in China and on a human level that is desperately frightening.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Monday, September 6, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Spring Fever (Friday, August 6, 2010) (95)
I admit that I am not an expert on so-called queer cinema. As much as I see movies that are necessarily gay or gay-focused, I really don't seek them out or know much about the genre or the merits therein. I don't think I have ever seen a gay Asian movie before, let alone any gay movie that was this interesting.
This is a film that if it were American would be a mumblecore movie. It basically has the same non-three-act structure of most mumblematerial and the same approach to the technical aspects of the filmmaking process as well as the same view of sex and relationships as cultural commodities. I am very interested in whether director Ye Lou knows the American mumblemovement or if this is just a wonderful parallel evolution.
As the film opens up, we see Wang Ping and Jiang Cheng, two professional men in their late 20s escaping the city to have a sexual tryst in a remote country house. We soon see they are being followed by another young man, Luo Haitao, who has been employed by Wang Ping's wife to spy on her husband and see if he's cheating on her, as she suspects.
Luo Haitao has his own girlfriend, but as he continues to follow Jiang Cheng (past the deal with Wang Ping's wife) he begins a sexual affair with him, which clearly threatens his relationship with her.
Basically the movie is about young people fucking other young people despite relationships they might have and despite their necessarily prescribed "sexuality," inasmuch as society deems them gay or straight. On a more specific level, the film is about how Jiang Cheng is a catalyst for the sexuality of a whole group of people, either leading them to have sex with him (homoerotic sex) or leading the women to act in ways they might not otherwise act.
In many ways this is a generally gay twist on Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig's 2007 film Hannah Takes the Stairs. Sexuality is a fluid thing that strikes you at unexpected moments. It can be traded with people for power, love or companionship, but the suggestion is that there is always a transaction of some sort - something is being traded for the sex. (In Hannah's case, she used sex as a way of gaining power over men and killing boredom; in Jiang Cheng's case, sexuality is a way of giving love and friendship to lost people as a way of relating to them.)
I think this is fascinating and very modern, especially in the setting of modern-day China which is so super-capitalistic. Sex and sexuality is merely another service that can be bought or sold (metaphorically, at least). Some people, like Jiang Cheng, are "rich" because they are sexually liberated, an object of attraction for many and get a lot of it; some people, like Luo Haitao, are purchasers on the market because they are in need of a connection and less comfortable in this world.
The style of the film is very beautiful and simple. It was shot digitally by Jian Zeng, much like its mumblefriends across the globe, and transferred to celluloid which gives an eerie grainy quality to the images. It's mostly blue-gray and dark, which is a very evocative look in general, but also relates well to the general melancholy, secretive tone of the film.
The one non-mumblething about the film is the score and musical sound track, which is quite beautiful and sad - but much more polished than the rest of the film. It is not used throughout the film, but comes in to heighten moments of drama and emotion. (I think the score might be the evidence that Ye Lou just happened to make a mumble-like movie by chance rather than by design. No mumblecore movie has a score nearly as traditional as this one. But that's a happy variation in this case, I think.)
My main problem with the film is something I'm rather embarrassed about. Through my non-Asian, Western eyes, the story is a bit hard to figure out as the two main women look a hell of a lot alike and play almost the same role (a woman whose husband is having an affair with Jiang Cheng). On top of this, the actors who play Wang Ping and Lou Haitao look somewhat alike (and also look a bit like another secondary character), making following the narrative a bit tricky. I do not mean to say "all Asians look alike," but these actors happen to look very similar. Considering I don't speak the language, it was a bit confusing (especially because the story has effectively two cycles and an AAB form, where the story repeats itself in the second act with different characters).
But I really do like this story structure and like it's mumbleness - how the three-ish acts really flow into one another and are not as clearly delineated as they would be in a traditional script. I like the gentleness of the film and how Ye Lou lets characters sit and gaze into the distance (into their deep thoughts) without interruption. This is not a fast-paced movie and I really like that. It's slow, steady and quiet with a very interesting and powerful message about love, relationships and sex.
Stars: 3 of 4
This is a film that if it were American would be a mumblecore movie. It basically has the same non-three-act structure of most mumblematerial and the same approach to the technical aspects of the filmmaking process as well as the same view of sex and relationships as cultural commodities. I am very interested in whether director Ye Lou knows the American mumblemovement or if this is just a wonderful parallel evolution.
As the film opens up, we see Wang Ping and Jiang Cheng, two professional men in their late 20s escaping the city to have a sexual tryst in a remote country house. We soon see they are being followed by another young man, Luo Haitao, who has been employed by Wang Ping's wife to spy on her husband and see if he's cheating on her, as she suspects.
Luo Haitao has his own girlfriend, but as he continues to follow Jiang Cheng (past the deal with Wang Ping's wife) he begins a sexual affair with him, which clearly threatens his relationship with her.
Basically the movie is about young people fucking other young people despite relationships they might have and despite their necessarily prescribed "sexuality," inasmuch as society deems them gay or straight. On a more specific level, the film is about how Jiang Cheng is a catalyst for the sexuality of a whole group of people, either leading them to have sex with him (homoerotic sex) or leading the women to act in ways they might not otherwise act.
In many ways this is a generally gay twist on Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig's 2007 film Hannah Takes the Stairs. Sexuality is a fluid thing that strikes you at unexpected moments. It can be traded with people for power, love or companionship, but the suggestion is that there is always a transaction of some sort - something is being traded for the sex. (In Hannah's case, she used sex as a way of gaining power over men and killing boredom; in Jiang Cheng's case, sexuality is a way of giving love and friendship to lost people as a way of relating to them.)
I think this is fascinating and very modern, especially in the setting of modern-day China which is so super-capitalistic. Sex and sexuality is merely another service that can be bought or sold (metaphorically, at least). Some people, like Jiang Cheng, are "rich" because they are sexually liberated, an object of attraction for many and get a lot of it; some people, like Luo Haitao, are purchasers on the market because they are in need of a connection and less comfortable in this world.
The style of the film is very beautiful and simple. It was shot digitally by Jian Zeng, much like its mumblefriends across the globe, and transferred to celluloid which gives an eerie grainy quality to the images. It's mostly blue-gray and dark, which is a very evocative look in general, but also relates well to the general melancholy, secretive tone of the film.
The one non-mumblething about the film is the score and musical sound track, which is quite beautiful and sad - but much more polished than the rest of the film. It is not used throughout the film, but comes in to heighten moments of drama and emotion. (I think the score might be the evidence that Ye Lou just happened to make a mumble-like movie by chance rather than by design. No mumblecore movie has a score nearly as traditional as this one. But that's a happy variation in this case, I think.)
My main problem with the film is something I'm rather embarrassed about. Through my non-Asian, Western eyes, the story is a bit hard to figure out as the two main women look a hell of a lot alike and play almost the same role (a woman whose husband is having an affair with Jiang Cheng). On top of this, the actors who play Wang Ping and Lou Haitao look somewhat alike (and also look a bit like another secondary character), making following the narrative a bit tricky. I do not mean to say "all Asians look alike," but these actors happen to look very similar. Considering I don't speak the language, it was a bit confusing (especially because the story has effectively two cycles and an AAB form, where the story repeats itself in the second act with different characters).
But I really do like this story structure and like it's mumbleness - how the three-ish acts really flow into one another and are not as clearly delineated as they would be in a traditional script. I like the gentleness of the film and how Ye Lou lets characters sit and gaze into the distance (into their deep thoughts) without interruption. This is not a fast-paced movie and I really like that. It's slow, steady and quiet with a very interesting and powerful message about love, relationships and sex.
Stars: 3 of 4
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