previously published on Asian Movie Pulse
While
the specific sociopolitical moment (the re-emergence of censorship in
China affecting the line-up of this year's Berlinale with eliminating
Zhang Yimou's "One Second" from the official
competition due to "post-production issues" being only the
most prominent example) surrounding the world premiere of "So
Long, My Son", the newest film by the Chinese 6th generation
director Wang Xiaoshui, might be forgotten in the next couple
of months, the film itself, the skill it was filmed with and its
social relevance are here to stay with us for quite a period of time.
The world premiere at Berlinale was crowned with the double Silver
Bear for both of the leading actors and more of the festival exposure
is likely to occur for Wang's three-hour epic examining the social
and humane cost of the decades of the "one child" policy in
China.
For
the first hour of the film, the viewer might get lost in places, time
frames and the network of secrets, lies and relationships between the
characters. The film opens in mid80's at the river bank somewhere in
the north, where one boy, Haohao, tries to convince another,
Xingxing, to go to the water. In the next one, we see Xingxing, now a
teenager played by up and coming Roy Wang, being his
rebellious self, playing video-games at the dinnertime to disapproval
of his caring mother Liyun (Yong Mei) and his more stern
father Yaojun (Wang Jingchun). However, in the following scene
shot discretely from afar, a boy got drowned and his family, Yaojun
and Liyun, as well as their friends carry him on their hands to the
hospital. So, did Xingxing survive the drowning somehow?
As
it plays out, logically, he did not and the "new" Xingxing
is the boy adopted before or when Yaojun and Lijun left their home in
the north and moved to the southern coastal town of Fujian where
they, unlikely many northern immigrants chasing quick cash, live a
quiet life and keep to themselves, not even speaking nor
understanding the local dialect. Xingxing, raised as a typical member
of the generation of "little emperors" (the term forged for
boys in particular during the years of "one child" policy),
runs away from home when trouble he was looking for finally finds
him.
Meanwhile,
in the series of flashbacks we learn about Haohao's parents, the
Party official Haiyan (Ai Liya) and Yingming (Cheng Xu)
and the role they played in Liyun and Yaojun's life. Liyun was
"encouraged" by Haiyan to follow the official policy and
abort her second child, which left her unable to have more children
in the future, while the relationship between Yaojun and Yingming's
cousin Moli (Qi Xi) hired as his apprentice in the factory
grows out of professional limits.
From
the description, the plot seems melodramatic with lost sons, prodigal
sons and sons born outside the wedlock, but the director Wang who
also co-wrote the script with Ah Mei, rarely aims for pathos
and over the top sentimentality. Instead, he focuses on the
repercussions of the different social and economic policies ran in
China over the course of three decades, from the dusk of Cultural
Revolution and hard line communism to the boom of consumerism under
the wing of state-sponsored capitalism witnessed at the turn of the
millennium. The consequences are being shown from the perspective of
ordinary people, using the two families as an example focusing more
on the individual than wider social level of the scope.
Ambition,
guilt and shame is something Wang deals with, while the wheel of
history and politics stays always in the background. That is the
principal reason for the non-linear structure which makes the film
hard to follow in the beginning, while it pays off in the end, with a
rare example of an earnest, non-sappy happy ending in the recent film
history.
The
acting is masterful throughout. Both Yong Mei and Wang Jingchun were
crowned for there performances at the festival's award ceremony,
rightfully so for the layered portrayals of complex characters, but
the rest of the ensemble deserves a shout as well. That especially
goes for the young Roy Wang who shows some real star power and the
tactile Qi Xi whose beauty is even more stunning than in her
breakthrough role in Ye Lou's "Mystery".
Regarding
the technical aspect, "So Long, My Son" is an accomplished
piece of cinema with mesmerising cinematography by Kim Hyun-seok
who applies just the right amount of camera movement for the film to
be neither static nor hectic and the unobtrusive music written by
Dong Yingda in a pretty classical fashion. In the end, the
mathematics is pretty simple: the viewers who remain patient for the
first hour of the film will be rewarded in the end with a subtle and
detailed piece that shows Wang Xiaoshui is close to the top of his
game.
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