The film is shot in and around Fengjie, a town in Sichuan Province upstream from the 3 Gorges Dam Project and due to be flooded. The existing town was being demolished and the people relocated to "new Fengjie". The landscape of the river and the Gorges dominate the film
The film follows 2 stories. Sanming is a coal miner from Shanxi who comes to Fengjie to try to find his ex wife who ran away 16 years previously. He wants to meet their daughter. He locates her brother on a ship in Fengjie who advises him to wait until his wife's ship returns. He joins a gang of labourers demolishing buildings and lives in a boarding house while waiting for his ex wife.
Shen Hong is a nurse whose is trying to track down her husband Guo Bin who came to Fengjie 2 years ago. She has someone else in her life now and tracks down Guo Bin through his friend Wang Dongming so she can persuade him to divorce her.
These stories run in parallel with each other but the characters never meet.
The photography and the pace of the film make the viewer slow down and look for details as the camera unhurriedly pans across a vast landscape. The view is of the river dominated by precipitous hills, with the blocky concrete shapes of modern housing clinging to the slopes. In the context of the Three Gorges Dam project, a vast undertaking affecting millions of people, so the camera captures the vastness of the landscape that humans are struggling to tame. The landscape is a constant and oppressive presence that refuses to go away. The river flows on regardless of what people do.
The characters are frequently filmed simply in front of the camera with the view of river and hills in the background maintaining the feeling of the vastness of nature and the smallness of people, reminiscent of the style of traditional Chinese ink painting.
When scenes change away from landscapes, the people are framed up in the empty windows of abandoned houses, overlooking demolished buildings, or up against piles of rubble. The chaos of demolition contrasts with the efforts of the people to maintain the routines of their lives, eating, working, sleeping, socializing. The camera in its slow long takes of people looks for details in their lives. These are not heavily made up characters, in fact they are shown just as they are with the rough hewn physiques of manual labourers, bad teeth, scars from the school of hard knocks. The camera lingers like an observer on individuals, allowing the audience time to get to know them and their mannerisms.
The dialogue between the personalities is sparse and reticent, with long pauses in which all the unspoken questions are aired and acknowledged. An example of this is the conversation between Sanming and Missy Ma when they meet after 16 years of separation. In this brief exchange this couple find they still have a future together. The undercurrent in these conversations is like the undercurrent of the river, hidden but acknowledged and always moving on.
Further on in a scene in a derelict building Ma offers Sanming a White Rabbit toffee which he accepts bites in two and share it with her. With this simple gesture they agree to reactivate their relationship. As they do, suddenly a tall building in the far background is blown up and collapses, suggesting the end of the old and the potential for a new start.
The soundtrack compliments the film and provides reminders of themes. A traditional song plays as the tourist ships moves up through the Gorges but it is interspersed with the sounds of demolition. The background to the characters is punctuated by horn blasts from ferries and ships moving out, a scene of labourers hammering down walls has a soundtrack of machinery overlaid onto it. The soundtrack maintains the pace of the film giving the audience a feeling of relentless movement, of the progress of events. In the interaction between the couples, romantic music is heard.
The film is rich in symbolism. The characters for liquor, tea, cigarettes, and toffee appear at critical junctions and mirror traditional Chinese elements of life like rice, cooking oil, fuel and salt. Attributed to "Chinese Wasteland" by Shelley Kraicer http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs29/feat_kraicer_still.html accessed 07/09/2010
There is a scene where Shen Hong walks past men are rhythmically hammering to no purpose at an abandoned industrial plant. Both Sanming and Shen Hong in their quest for resolutions to their respective relationship problems encounter a young boy wandering aimlessly singing a romantic song
The director wanders into the surreal at times, with the appearance of a UFO streaking across the sky behind Shen Hong. In the restaurant where Sanming waits for his friend, there is the incongruous sight of actors in full Chinese Opera costumes playing Nintendo games The strange building Hong can see from Wang Dongming's apartment, suddenly becomes a rocket ship and blasts off when she turns away, and, at the end of the film as Sanming and his friends are leaving, he turns and sees the incongruous sight of a high wire artist walking a wire strung between two buildings in the process of demolition.
Dominant impressions I got from this film were a sense of the vastness of China and Chinese society, the smallness of the humans on the landscape, the relative insignificance of their hopes and dreams. Progress seems like a juggernaut, relentlessly moving onward, pushing aside the people and their hopes for a good life. The river serves as a metaphor for progress. The illuminating factor is the quiet courage of the people as they deal with the circumstances they have to live with, and despite these adverse times push on with their efforts to have a good life.
The film follows 2 stories. Sanming is a coal miner from Shanxi who comes to Fengjie to try to find his ex wife who ran away 16 years previously. He wants to meet their daughter. He locates her brother on a ship in Fengjie who advises him to wait until his wife's ship returns. He joins a gang of labourers demolishing buildings and lives in a boarding house while waiting for his ex wife.
Shen Hong is a nurse whose is trying to track down her husband Guo Bin who came to Fengjie 2 years ago. She has someone else in her life now and tracks down Guo Bin through his friend Wang Dongming so she can persuade him to divorce her.
These stories run in parallel with each other but the characters never meet.
The photography and the pace of the film make the viewer slow down and look for details as the camera unhurriedly pans across a vast landscape. The view is of the river dominated by precipitous hills, with the blocky concrete shapes of modern housing clinging to the slopes. In the context of the Three Gorges Dam project, a vast undertaking affecting millions of people, so the camera captures the vastness of the landscape that humans are struggling to tame. The landscape is a constant and oppressive presence that refuses to go away. The river flows on regardless of what people do.
The characters are frequently filmed simply in front of the camera with the view of river and hills in the background maintaining the feeling of the vastness of nature and the smallness of people, reminiscent of the style of traditional Chinese ink painting.
When scenes change away from landscapes, the people are framed up in the empty windows of abandoned houses, overlooking demolished buildings, or up against piles of rubble. The chaos of demolition contrasts with the efforts of the people to maintain the routines of their lives, eating, working, sleeping, socializing. The camera in its slow long takes of people looks for details in their lives. These are not heavily made up characters, in fact they are shown just as they are with the rough hewn physiques of manual labourers, bad teeth, scars from the school of hard knocks. The camera lingers like an observer on individuals, allowing the audience time to get to know them and their mannerisms.
The dialogue between the personalities is sparse and reticent, with long pauses in which all the unspoken questions are aired and acknowledged. An example of this is the conversation between Sanming and Missy Ma when they meet after 16 years of separation. In this brief exchange this couple find they still have a future together. The undercurrent in these conversations is like the undercurrent of the river, hidden but acknowledged and always moving on.
Further on in a scene in a derelict building Ma offers Sanming a White Rabbit toffee which he accepts bites in two and share it with her. With this simple gesture they agree to reactivate their relationship. As they do, suddenly a tall building in the far background is blown up and collapses, suggesting the end of the old and the potential for a new start.
The soundtrack compliments the film and provides reminders of themes. A traditional song plays as the tourist ships moves up through the Gorges but it is interspersed with the sounds of demolition. The background to the characters is punctuated by horn blasts from ferries and ships moving out, a scene of labourers hammering down walls has a soundtrack of machinery overlaid onto it. The soundtrack maintains the pace of the film giving the audience a feeling of relentless movement, of the progress of events. In the interaction between the couples, romantic music is heard.
The film is rich in symbolism. The characters for liquor, tea, cigarettes, and toffee appear at critical junctions and mirror traditional Chinese elements of life like rice, cooking oil, fuel and salt. Attributed to "Chinese Wasteland" by Shelley Kraicer http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs29/feat_kraicer_still.html accessed 07/09/2010
There is a scene where Shen Hong walks past men are rhythmically hammering to no purpose at an abandoned industrial plant. Both Sanming and Shen Hong in their quest for resolutions to their respective relationship problems encounter a young boy wandering aimlessly singing a romantic song
The director wanders into the surreal at times, with the appearance of a UFO streaking across the sky behind Shen Hong. In the restaurant where Sanming waits for his friend, there is the incongruous sight of actors in full Chinese Opera costumes playing Nintendo games The strange building Hong can see from Wang Dongming's apartment, suddenly becomes a rocket ship and blasts off when she turns away, and, at the end of the film as Sanming and his friends are leaving, he turns and sees the incongruous sight of a high wire artist walking a wire strung between two buildings in the process of demolition.
Dominant impressions I got from this film were a sense of the vastness of China and Chinese society, the smallness of the humans on the landscape, the relative insignificance of their hopes and dreams. Progress seems like a juggernaut, relentlessly moving onward, pushing aside the people and their hopes for a good life. The river serves as a metaphor for progress. The illuminating factor is the quiet courage of the people as they deal with the circumstances they have to live with, and despite these adverse times push on with their efforts to have a good life.