Tag: slow cinema

Return to Dust (Yin Ru Chen Yan)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN!

China might have made massive economic advances in the last few decades, but what of the people caught between the cracks of the country’s huge economic achievements? Li Ruijun looks at a simple farmer couple in northernmost Gansu, creating a poetic tale that unfolds with the simplicity of a fable.

Ma (Wu Renlin) and Guiying (Hai Qing) didn’t have much say in their marriage, arranged by their respective families, but slowly warm to each other anyway. She is severely disabled, unable to hold her bladder, while he is very taciturn, happiest when working the field. Their relationship is sweetly rendered by Ruijun, whether it’s the way they cook for each other, keep one another warm or imprint the shape of a flower on each other’s skins with individual grains. You won’t hear phrases like “I love you” or see them making love or cuddling, yet the love they have for each other is self-evident. But they are hopelessly, bitterly poor, their poverty viewed by others in the community as more of a hindrance than a problem to be solved. This pride and passion eventually clashes against a world that seemingly has no more use for them.

This is a sad yet dignified story, buoyed by slow cinema techniques that rarely cut away. Shooting with a boxy frame, the beauty and toil of working the land gains epic dimensions, the characters often dwarfed by the sky behind them. The pain and reward of their lifestyle is rendered in unwavering detail, the camera utilising long takes in showing the process involved in farming. With so many films using computer generated effects almost without thought, there is something epic about the physicality and realism of the landscapes and the way they are transformed here.

Both Renlin and Qing turn in fine performances — there is a real skill in being able to play people with so little without delving into caricature or moral simplicity. Ruijun doesn’t have any grand speeches or wider sociological screeds, but seems to simply observe, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions.

The film asks: who are these rapid changes for and why are people being left behind? When offered an apartment Ma points out that there would be no space for his trusted donkey, pigs and chickens. But when you’re proceeding on a so-called Grand Plan — the likes of which the Chinese government loves to implement — considering every individual’s problems simply isn’t an option. With so much Western focus on China on its huge population and staggering technological advances, Ruijun invites us to zoom in and focus on the minutiae of rural life, with people kept in a trap of poverty through no fault of their own. The final result is quietly devastating; there’s no bang, but a long sad whimper.

Return to Dust plays in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, running from 10-20th February.

Robe of Gems (Manto de Gema)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN!

The limits of good intentions are sorely tested in Robe of Gems, a moody crime-and-family drama simply too inscrutable for its own good. Despite boasting assured mise-en-scène, fine naturalist performances and a sense of lingering dread, it had me constantly asking all the wrong questions, namely: who, what, when and how?

The where is easy. This is rural Mexico, a place where crime appears to be rife and even the local police are in on the take. Gangsters boast of the ease with which they can buy guns from a show in the USA, disassemble them and then legally transport the parts across the border. The middle-class Isabel (Nailea Norvind) returns to her mother’s villa, where they learn that their long-time domestic servant María’s (Antonia Olivares) sister has gone missing. Isabel, despite warnings to the contrary, goes on a quixotic quest to get to the bottom of this drama, her story intersecting with a policewoman’s son (Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño) working for the local cartel.

This is Natalia López Gallardo’s first feature, having previously worked as an editor on the films of Amat Escalante, Lisandro Alonso and Carlos Reygadas. There is a touch of Reygadas to the start of the film featuring a long take of the sunrise that brings to mind Silent Night (2007). And despite the real-life relevance of the story — considering a shocking 100,000 people are currently missing in Mexico – she takes a similarly slow and atmospheric approach throughout the entire film.

On a purely formal level, it’s very well-made and contemplative: whether it’s shooting at the twilight hour, delving into dream sequences, making use of epic floating takes or turning up the sound of insects to an almost unbearable degree. But it doesn’t proceed story-wise with dream logic, allowing us to find poetic connections between characters, but with a kind of 4D chess approach — making it hard to know who is who, why they are acting in certain ways or why we should care. This approach is most effective when these women brush up against the banality of evil found in the local crime scene, but I don’t know why the film itself had to be so banal at the same time.

In the right hands, this kind of angular drama can be effective, such as Ridley Scott’s The Counsellor (2013), which had a similar sense of tragic inevitability while also needing a roadmap to sort things out. But on top of becoming confused, I was also annoyed: the film more interested in piling moments together than ever throwing in a few clues to help us along. Additionally, the camera often shoots scenes where we only see one character’s face while the other is talking, or with no one’s face at all; simply lingering on the tools they use at work or eating at the family table. While in a drama with a couple of players, this approach makes sense, it proves fatal in an ensemble piece.

By the end, I had one final question to ask myself: why? I definitely can’t answer that one.

Robe of Gems just premiered in competition at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival, running from 10-20th February!

Who is Sleeping in Silver Grey (Bai tian zong shi tai guo man cahng)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

On a purely aesthetic level, Who is Sleeping in Silver Grey is a masterpiece. On a narrative level it frustrates as much as it beguiles, resulting in an impenetrable experience. One repeated motif is a bird smashing its head against a glass windowpane. I couldn’t help but feel like this bird, seeing the images in front of me but unable to get through to their genuine meaning.

It begins in Shanghai, 1927; pre-revolution, bustling and international. The first thing we notice is the rain, constantly pelting down in almost every early scene. A New Year’s celebration is led by an Italian jazz band; it quickly cuts to a funeral for the Italian pianist. The young Yang Zipei (Ze Ying) carries his baby, facing an uncertain future.

We learn nothing more of her, the film quickly jumping decades into the future, with her granddaughter Cheng Die (Yinyin Ma) teaching piano in Dehai City (which doesn’t seem to exist in reality…). It’s clear from this epic jump in time that Who Is Sleeping in Silver Grey is uninterested in telling a conventional story, often confusing in its depiction of who relates to who, why something is happening or how certain scenes develop. It uses nightmare logic to create a poetic reverie, the topic of which is frustratingly out of my grasp. Soon Die is kicked out of her town for sleeping with one of the student’s parents and sent to mysterious Linyuan Town, a place where no one speaks and everyone seems haunted. It’s hard to say exactly what happens next, let alone what it means.

It’s better to focus on the great filmmaking itself. The use of the academy ratio is inspired, realising the full cinematic and epic potential of such frames. Many people use it as an intimate shorthand, filled with small details and intense close-ups, but here we see so much more potential from the format. As the square aesthetic gives the impression of a high vertical plane, director Liao Zihao uses plenty of negative space to create some immaculate mise-en-scène, whether it’s our hero situated in the corner of the frame, seeing her subsumed by the space around her, or planimetric compositions bisected into halves and quarters, allowing us to feast on the beauty of the production design.

Fans of slow cinema — cinema that’s more about the look than the story — will be delighted. One seemingly incongruous reference to The Suspending Step of the Stork (Theodore Angelopoulos, 1991) seems to show where Zihao’s inspiration lies. The black-and-white cinematography makes the most of contrast between light and dark while casting a wide depth of frame, resulting in a genuinely transportive experience. Still, I couldn’t help feel that I would rather attend a gallery exhibition of the same frames as opposed to actually watching the sequential film again.

With mythological creatures, centaurs and angels, occasionally coming into view, as well as foggy moments that recall Kenji Mizoguchi’s ghost-like fables, there is evidently a crucial Chinese context that I am missing here — perhaps to do with ancient tales, perhaps to do with the Chinese revolution. Nonetheless, when I let my critical brain go and the images wash over me, I found some of the most assured directing from a first-time director in many years. It’s the kind of film you should go to see with your friends. Maybe if you work together, you can figure out what it’s all about.

Who is Sleeping in Silver Grey plays in the First Feature Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12th – 28th November.