ShangHai Dreams: Wang Xiao Shuai

Wang XiaoShui has always been hailed as one of the leading directors from so-called Sixth Generation of Mainland Chinese directors. You can at least find three of his films from Netflix (Frozen, So Close to Paradise, Beijing Bicyles), which is a hard evidence of his ascendance in the art-house arena. Characters in all his films don’t end up well. They either go insane, or commit suicide, or get violently beat up, all due to high external pressures and their inability to control their fates. It is easy to see why all his earlier films get banned in China. These external forces eventually all point to the system’s flaws, and to the social injustices and inequalities. His protagonists struggled hard but in the end still could not escape their tragic ends. These stories inevitably made him infamously underground as well as a favorite of all the film festivals.

Shanghai Dreams, Wang’s first film that ever passed the strict censorship in China, was released in Mainland this summer and got abundant media attention after it won an award in Cannes. This year saw a few major art films being heavily promoted by China’s media: Peacock (form Gu ChangWei), The World (from Jia Changke), and Something Like Happiness (from ZhangYang). Shanghai Dreams joined this rank although box-office-wise it fell short of expectation but still did way better than other art films. Film critics indulged in collectively nostalgia, focusing on the autobiographical side of the story and choosing to ignore the political message due to their own self-censorships. Shanghai Dreams is nevertheless a very depressing film that raised poignant questions on the leadership of not-so-distant past. The very fact that this film actually passed the censorship indicated a loosen grip by Chinese government. One of the few daring details in the film included the father sneakily listening to the Voice of America (the film never mentioned the name of the radio station but anyone from those years can easily recognize that), This plot would be unthinkable just a year ago. Wang obviously did not budge.