48th San Francisco International Film Festival Part 2

Although mainland director Tian Zhuang Zhuang is most famous for Blue Kite, one of the best films ever made in China that summed up the tragic years of political movements under communism, he first gained international recognition in late eighties for two earlier films, “On the Hunting Ground” and “Horse Thief”. Tian seems to have deep interest in China’s ethnic groups and the ways they survived in some of the harshest environments on this earth, and these two films used Mongolia and Tibet as the backgrounds where he applied many wide angle shots and slow pacing to bring out the bleak landscape and its human stories. It came as no surprise when he decided to make a documentary (Delamu) about the Tea Horse Trail, the highest caravan route that cuts through the edge of Tibetan plateau and down to the north India. Regardless of the spectacular scenes of snow peaks and rivers that run deep down in the gorges, the film really focused on the human stories that Tian uncovered along the road. Here he offered an ensemble of local characters of various ages and religions, which included a 104-year-old woman who recalled how she outlived two husbands and all the hardships, an aged pastor telling stories of missionaries and his own imprisonment, a Tibetan young man who shared a wife with his brother, and many more. In the end we realized that these people who seemed to be living so remotely also have to deal with the same problems as we do, struggling through love and loss and pain. And the larger history, such as the civil war between the nationalists and the communists, the religious cleansing after the republic, the Dalai Lama’s escape to India, and China’s rapid modernization, did not spare these common people either and is still constantly changing their lives.

Interesting enough, another film legend, Wener Herzog who was once one of the representatives for German New cinema, also made a new documentary (White Diamond) on an equally remote area, the Amazon jungle in Guyana. Herzog apparently also has some attachment to jungles. Aguirre, the wrath of the God, the film that brought him to the world fame, was shot entirely in jungles. But once again, even with all those breath-taking shots of canopy, waterfall, reptiles and flying swifts, the new film is really about humankind, about how human dreams and conquers the nature but nature forever holds its mystery. Herzog is drawn to human stories much as a scientist drawn to unsolved puzzles. He shows them in a specific setting and studies them as an anthropologist. In this film he followed a British aeronautic scientist named Dr. Dorrington who built small airship to fly through the jungles. Funny, self-deprecating, idealistic, sentimental, mistake-prone, Dr. Dorrinton by default became the perfect central character much of the film is based on.

There has been a lot of hype for Jia ZhangKe’s new film The World. It was hailed as the first “above-ground” film that was made by him through official channel in China after he already made three other underground films, all of which were critically-acclaimed festival favorites and firmly positioned him as one of the youngest film masters. But the film opened to box office disappointment in China. I personally think this is his best film. Using a world miniature theme park as the setting, the film slowly unfolds the story of two main characters, both of whom came to Beijing to look for opportunities from a provincial town. The fantasy and falsehood of the locale contrasts absurdly with the real struggles these small people face. Jia avoids quick sentimentality and tells the story with restrains only until the very end. His meticulous attention to details made these characters so real. Jia’s favorite actress Zhao Tao deserved an acting award for he excellent performance too!

I chose the Moroccan film “In Casablanca Angels don’t Fly” partly due to my own fond memory of Marrakech. How often do we ever see a Moroccan film anyway? It also tells the plights of migrant workers, and in this case, they are the Berbers who left their native villages to make money in Casablanca. The film followed three waiters who all worked in the same restaurant, although the three stories don’t quite fit together. One subplot that really stands out is a tear-jerker, but a good one. I only wished that the director could have focused on this single thread and elaborate more on the few characters, but in the end we only got a glimpse of them.