| Tema 9 La sisena generació del cinema xinès |
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-Sobre Blind shaft / MANG JING 盲井 SINOPSIS Song y Tang trabajan en una mina de carbón. Las dificulta-des económicas les obligan a buscar dinero de cualquier forma, por lo que traman un plan: ofrecerán a la empresa un falso familiar suyo para que trabaje con ellos, y lo ase-sinarán después dentro de la mina. Luego no tendrán más que provocar un desprendimiento para que todo parezca un accidente laboral, de esta forma podrán así cobrar una gran indemnización. Buscando a una posi-ble víctima para su cruel plan encuentran a Yuan, un joven solitario que les pue-de servir de falso pariente. Éste acepta encantado la oferta de trabajo que le ofrecen sin sospechar en ningun momento el trágico destino que le espera. La condición que le imponen es que se inscriba en la mina como si fuera un so-brino suyo. Sin embargo, las relaciones entre Song y Tang cambiarán de tal forma que en el último momento el plan sufrirá un giro radical. Harsh and compelling, Li Yang's Blind Shaft has the focused intensity of a vintage B movie. This sometimes shockingly direct account of greed and murder in China's illegal coal mines is part neorealist exposé, part noir thriller—a film with no wasted scenes and a steadily increasing tension. Coal Miners' Slaughter by J. Hoberman Underground production: Wang Shuangbao, Wang Baoqiang, Li Yixiang Blind Shaft , which won the Silver Bear last year in Berlin and the Best Narrative Feature award at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens at Film Forum next Wednesday, turns a cold eye on the Chinese economic miracle. It's set in the bleak northwest, where the weary-looking miners are up before dawn and work shifts can last for days. The conditions are horrible enough—then, down in the tunnel, one guy casually kills the co-worker he's been joking with and fakes a collapse. Another guy starts screaming about his trapped brother. It's a scam that the itinerant miners run—murdering comrades whom they've falsely identified as relatives, then collecting the quick payouts that management offers to avoid an official investigation. "What was the name of the guy we killed?" one grifter asks his partner as they take off with a wad of greasy bills. Callous as these killers are, the mine owners are scarcely less so. According to the Chinese government, some 5,000-plus miners die each year—and, since private mine owners are loath to file reports, the actual number is likely much higher. In Blind Shaft , the mine boss considers whacking the bereaved "brother" to save on death benefits, then crunches the numbers and decides that, in view of the money required to take care of the cops, murder would be the more expensive option. Li trained in Germany as a documentary filmmaker, and for all its crime-fiction melodrama and free-floating symbolism, this accomplished first feature—independently produced and adapted from Liu Qingbang's muckraking novel—plays as cinema verité. Li is more narrative-driven and less distanced than Jia Zhangke, but he shows a similar ability to ground his story, enacted largely by nonprofessionals, in flavorsome reportage and the grit of daily life. The frontier town where the killers go to spend their blood money reeks with acrid, chilly atmosphere. The guys pair up with some hostesses in a scuzzy karaoke club; the older one's song, a childhood favorite, is "Long Live Socialism." The girls teach them a new bawdy version—then go into the back room for some suitably unglamorous sex. From a hole in the ground to a hole in the wall: Blind Shaft was shot, sometimes with a hidden camera, in a succession of greasy dives, grungy markets, and storefront brothels. Capitalism is primitive and cheerfully unregulated, with peddlers openly selling fake ID cards on the street. How peculiar that authoritarian regimes like Iran and China would inspire gutsier crime stories than our own democracy (even as the movies themselves are banned). Blind Shaft is openly critical and at least as ferocious as Crimson Gold in its uninflected representation of a dog-eat-dog economy. The pitiless partners pick up a naive kid whom they plan to pass off as a nephew. Then it's back into the barren hills of hell for a scam made even more appalling by the victim's innocent neediness. A lean 92 minutes, Blind Shaft tunnels toward its inevitable tragedy. It won't do to give away the movie's ending—which is surprisingly underplayed yet filled with multiple ironies. The movie doesn't so much illuminate a social problem as conjure the darkness around it. Blind Shaft means to leave the viewer dazed, and it does. Blind Shaft, A film review by Don Willmott - Copyright © 2004 filmcritic.comBlind Shaft shows you the literal underbelly of China. Set in and around shabby little coal mines in the middle of nowhere, it's a shocking and totally gripping tale of murder and flimflammery that will keep you guessing all the way through.Tang (Wang Shuangbao) and Song (Li Yixiang) are two itinerant workers who wander from mine to mine looking for work. In the film's beautifully shot first scene, the camera joins the men as they descend in a mine's elevator and look up to watch a square of bright sky disappear within seconds as they plunge into the depths. Along with them is a third miner, a man they have met in their travels and brought to the mine to work with them. Within a minute, Tang murders the third man with a quick shovel to the head and stages a small mine collapse to make the whole thing look like an accident. It turns out that Tang and Song are running a homicidal scam. They fool the mine owners into thinking the third man is a relative and then haggle over a payoff for his “accidental” death. Just take the money (about $3,000) and go away, say the bosses. We don't want any cops or investigations around here. The two men feign indignation and then go on their way, looking for a new mark and a new mine. They never get far, though, choosing to stick around the mining region and blow their reward on booze and hookers. Wandering through a street market a few days later, they encounter Yuan (Wang Baoqiang), a sweet-natured and shy 16-year-old who's looking for work so he can afford to pay his high school fees. (Writer/director Li Yang takes a not so subtle swing at the government by pointing out how basic education in China comes at a hefty price.) Tang and Song reel in Yuan easily, leaving you feeling sick to your stomach. Take anyone, you think, anyone but this poor kid. The three travel to another mine where Tang and Song try to indoctrinate the nervous Yuan in the ways of wine, women, and gambling. Yuan would rather study his textbooks, and Song admirers the boy's educational aspirations. Tang, however, is the ultimate pragmatist, proposing that they find the boy a prostitute so he doesn't die a virgin but then killing him as planned. The timid Yuan, of course, is mortified by his visit to the brothel, which only makes you care about him even more. The next hour is a spare and spine-tingling exercise in pure Hitchcockian suspense. Every time the threesome heads into the mine you ask yourself if this is it, if this is the day they'll do the deed. There's no musical soundtrack to propel the drama along, and sometimes there's almost no dialogue, but it doesn't matter. The tension just grows and grows toward a wonderfully rewarding climax, the nature of which would be cruel to reveal. With almost no resources at his disposal, Li has created a thriller that's as tightly wound as anything you've seen. It races along, all covered in coal dust and punctuated by Tang and Song's petty grumblings, building and building as it goes, and then it delivers big time. What more can you ask of a film? |
