贾樟柯导演的《天注定》| a touch of sin, directed by jia zhangke

no imago that is a long take

get blunted 2 fuq and enjoy the show imago lad http://i.imgur.com/ED9eRuO.gif

Still Life is amazing

imago, some of jia's films are p cheap to buy in eg fopp, and are available to rent legit from lovefilm

yeah pretty extraordinary

unformed immediate thoughts: moved from a fairly static first half to a crazy, delocated second. it became all about departures, arrivals, jarring cuts between hairstyles & band-members. the Culture Team literally and figuratively sailing away down the river, changing its name, heading even into the desert before turning around and going back. the fetishisation of movement, of trains, as promised early on, becomes a baffling and humbling world of missed connections

some wonderful shots. especially liked one early on as our bespectacled protagonist and his maybe-girlfriend have a conversation obscured by the corner of a building, each disappearing behind it & subsequently emerging in alternation. also loved the front-of-cab shots (arrivals, departures) and the increasingly allegorical style

the most haunting character obviously sanming - his central cameo crucial to the entire movie & practically made me cry as he walked off - although it is also noticeable how the two female leads respond to the pressures of both modernity & established creed - they're extremely sensitive to the double-pull, although it is zhong who follows the path (of what rapidly turns out to be exploitation, both by her buss and her commitment-shy boyfriend) furthest before reaching combustion point and disappearing

sanming of course the victim of china old and new, the servant to all masters

mmmm sounds like some good weed!!

o hush. also what ya got vs rosenbaum

nice
i hope u now go on to become ilx' maven of contemporary chinese cinema
lord knows apart from taiwan i am not that well versed

A MAVEN

LJ PLEASE BECOME A MAVEN

rosenbaum is fine, i just stopped caring

he retired

oh yeah

supreme film critic but i seldom read him now because.......it's on a blog

his reader archive (along with camper and to some degree kehr) was my most important formative influence wrt film as a teenager

he's the only film critic I'd say I trust. had my david thompson phase but now I regard him as more a very talkative fellow fan

my mavenhood is limited to a very few topics, at least within an ILX context. probably only cricket

and pizza

you have a good work ethic
you could be a chinese contemporary cinema maven in maybe a fortnight of reasonably dedicated study

i will be posting a trite opinion about the importance of 'springtime in a small town' on the 21st of october and i fully expect it to be given short shrift

haha it's a thought

really though I have to be maven of my writing. I will however pledge to only watch contemporary Chinese movies for the next 6 months (at home - I want to see Gravity)

good - we could use some contrary challopsing in the gravity thread

oh I plan to like it

oh wait that's clearly a sign that there's alREADY been some *crazy challopsing* well this is ILX ffs of course, I'd be sad if there wasn't

no... i was playing it straight. the only challopsing has been by the croup and he hasn't even seen it yet

sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssspoilerssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

very interesting, schlump!

yeah, the guy in the intro - dahai. i didn't think to reexamine the opening after knowing the denouement of his segment, but: a heavy static of the potential overlays that first scene. a truck of tomato cartons, overturned - he has plucked but one - sitting on his motorcycle, unsure of what to do. meanwhile the other guy arrives, takes measure, wends his way through, is on his way again. i don't want to draw out the obvious symbolism here but, classmates with the coal mine boss, two lives weighted differently, one ascendant, the other...flat. the story portrayed in the first segment rang the most true to me, even if its irruption into violence felt the most fantastical, wish-fulfillment out of the stories. from here i'm just gonna bullet point some stuff that i took note of while watching;

• dahai eating his dinner with cloves of raw garlic. yes, this is how a real Northerner does it.
• dahai jabs himself with a medical device - i think it's probably one that measures his blood sugar. he's probably diabetic. the next scene: he enters the factory, all his chums are eating noodles, he has a bite from a friend.
• the shots of the horse getting whipped. how dahai's avenging angel fantasy moves him to vengeance here. how this is the exact opposite of what nietzsche did.
• all the, uh, paratext? not sure what the lit crit term is here - but the other media that we see throughout the movie. for example, on the busride, the robber - the movie that's playing on the TV is hard boiled, natch, more specifically, the teahouse shootout. in the sauna girl's segment, the snake - the movie on the tv in the breakroom shows a woman with a forked tongue.
• the snake symbolism for the sauna girl's segment. i want to say that there's maybe an association between adulturesses and snakes in chinese culture, but it could just as easily be reference to the legend of the white snake, a popular chinese opera of old.
• the chinese name of the film, 天注定, translates as 'destiny,' and literally translates as 'heaven decides' - the only part of the film, as far as i can tell, where it is said, is by the hawker in the sauna girl segment - the part where he is talking about holy snakes, marriage is destined. or marriage is decided by heaven. tbh, i heard the phrase preceding 天注定 as 阴阳, or yin-yang. but i don't think that's a term for marriage.
• the english name, a touch of sin - i think the closest echo of this in the film is the final scene, where she goes to watch the beijing opera - the actor says "do you know your guilt?" and you could probably tanslate 'guilt' as 'sin.' apparently, according to wikipedia, the english name is a play on the wuxia film 'a touch of zen.'
• i'm not sure how prevalent the wuxia elements are in here, but - when the sauna girl kills the john, the knife movements - those are straight out of a wuxia film.
• similarly, the interplay between the stories and the play-within-a-plays of the beijing opera stage acts that the characteres encounter - dahai encounters one, and iirc it's thematically related to what happens in his segment. at the end - a person accused, wrongly she thinks, of being a murderer... the sense that none of the characters in this had agency in their actions, but were pushed towards it by outside pressures. hamlet....
• the dude who ends up at a brothel - i laughed when the guy tips him in hong kong dollars. lol, 100 hkd is not worth 100 cny. but - the promise of hong kong. how he learns cantonese, how his paramour knows cantonese, and is from his hometown. what a paradise hong kong must seem viewed from his digs in the gutter.
• the shots of the oxen and cow and animals in this movie. the three ox in the truck, shackled, staring. the cattle that the sauna girl walks by, oblivious to her crime.
• the animated background of leaves is taken from the wallpaper of the sauna/brothel.

apparently this movie has been cleared for release in the mainland. i'm surprised, but given the current culture of anti-corruption, maybe the party thinks it's good for people to ruminate on these matters.

Sort've talked about Jia Zhangke yesterday with Han Jie, though more about Hello, Mr. Tree. Still need to see this after missing it at the film festival, bleh.

Just wanted to say, that I'm very much looking forward to seeing this film whenever that will be (probably next spring), that I'll be watching Platform on youtube as well and thanks for the link, and that A Touch of Zen is awesome, especially the final part. That is all.

apparently this movie has been cleared for release in the mainland. i'm surprised, but given the current culture of anti-corruption, maybe the party thinks it's good for people to ruminate on these matters.

― 乒乓, Wednesday, October 9, 2013 8:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

dargis' review reminded me of the scene in the hostess club where all the girls are wearing sexy halloween red army costumes - again, surprised that this is being released domestically!

this is prob my movie of the year

http://25.media.tumblr.com/6fc7d1815d988297321249b7187fc8c8/tumblr_muubfyn7zf1ryzchqo1_r1_500.png

apparently jia loves putting john woo on small screens in his movies!

at first I wasn't sure if the violent conclusions to each story really worked, but thinking back, having this pattern in the back of my head for most of the movie really gave the it this powerful sense of dread and I found the fatalism of it all really moving at times

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/q-a-jia-zhangke-on-his-new-film-a-touch-of-sin/?_r=0

Actually I had been preparing to make a martial arts film since 2007, a real martial arts film. It doesn’t have an English title yet. In Chinese it’s called “In the Qing Dynasty” (在清朝). It deals with the period from 1895 to 1905. The reason I wanted to film this period is because this is when China’s transformation began. And that transformation has continued up to now. It hasn’t stopped.

interesting - WKW covered a time period right after this in the grandmaster. the grandmaster can be seen as a critique of china's creation myth, i think, and it's interesting to see jia explicitly say the same about his movie.

i've been thinking about the scene with dahai at the post office - it's really quite perfect. dahai is exposed as a naïf, who has bought into the party propaganda that justice will be dispensed swiftly and certainly from 中南海 (the equivalent of the capitol building in DC, i think.) so he just tells the postal clerk, send it there! and while it's not surprising that she rebuffs him, i kind of feel that if dahai had been, say, the factory owner, the postal clerk would have known how to send the letter, would have found a way.

will work 4 karag4rg invite

i guess what i want to say is that, with chinese nationalism being what it is, it wouldn't exactly be ludicrous to expect that every postal clerk in the country would know how to send a letter to 中南海. it's a little bit like how every post office in america will accept letters to santa claus, with a wink.

i've been thinking about the scene with dahai at the post office - it's really quite perfect. dahai is exposed as a naïf, who has bought into the party propaganda that justice will be dispensed swiftly and certainly from 中南海 (the equivalent of the capitol building in DC, i think.) so he just tells the postal clerk, send it there! and while it's not surprising that she rebuffs him, i kind of feel that if dahai had been, say, the factory owner, the postal clerk would have known how to send the letter, would have found a way.

― 乒乓, Saturday, October 19, 2013 10:28 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

interesting

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/q-a-jia-zhangke-on-his-new-film-a-touch-of-sin-part-2/?_r=0

Q.
You’ll be at the New York Film Festival at the end of September. Are you looking forward to it?

A.
It has a big Chinatown, and I’m looking forward to going there. The first thing is always to find a Chinatown. Then you can have a great Chinese meal. [laughs]

HEll Yeah

i did a little bit more digging and so yeah, snakes in chinese are a pretty standard trope for seductresses. or at least can be. i'm not familiar enough with wuxia films to know how jia is playing off that symbolism. see also the shot where the camera pans to the cloth w/ the tiger print, and you hear the tiger roar.

Really unexpected move by Jia (though I had been tipped even just skimming reviews) ... still 'documentary' elements aren't *entirely* absent I thought, just in comparison to what he'd been doing.

I knew this was episodic going in, but not sure if they were gonna overlap; so I was glad when we reached the end of Dahai's spree. For a bit.

For several months it has been pegged as being set to receive a (domestic) theatrical release in November, but still a more specific date has still not been set.

Now reports are emerging that the Chinese authorities have banned local media from reporting on the film or reviewing the picture, which claimed the best screenplay award at Cannes, where it played in competition.

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/silence-surrounds-jia-zhangkes-sin-1200853839/

i can see blue valentine 10+ times in manhattan today, and touch of sin once, at 1.40 in the afternoon.

yes and it's the last day, which is why i follow what's exiting theaters with great paranoia.

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/06/taiwan-may-miss-out-on-jia-zhangkes-a-touch-of-sin/?_r=0

Everything seems fishy

what's fishy about the taiwan situation? i think it's, 1) a case of it just not being that big of a movie compared to what else is on the quota list and the quota longlist. there must be some goofy romantic comedies on the list but also drug war,《毒战》 and the grandmaster/《一代宗师》). 2) maybe a little bit about responding to cultural sector grumbling about mainland cultural influence. the last two years that mainland films won golden horse awards, let the bullets fly/《让子弹飞》 in 2011 and beijing blues/《神探亨特张》 in 2012, there was lots of handwringing, if that's the right word, about mainland films winning taiwanese awards and the brutish machinery of the mainland film industry overrunning taiwan.

even if it doesn't screen, i don't think it's a huge deal. on the other hand, it's never ever ever getting a legit mainland release. i feel like xi jinping or someone else near the top had a moment with this film something like deng xiaoping seeing unrequited love/《苦练》 for the first time.

Wasn't talking about the quota, I was referring to the fact that Jia writes that he can't go for "personal, insurmountable reasons" right around the same time that it's looking like the permission to release A Touch of Sin in the mainland is being revoked

Come on man, that stinks

Your points 1) and 2) are diametrically opposed, if Taiwan really was concerned about mainland brute clout cultural hegemony surely they'd shortlist smaller, more independent productions like A Touch of Sin over lamestream trash like American Dreams in China and Back to 1942

But the quota isn't set with regards to concerns about commercial appeal, the whole process is done through a lottery, if it was about commercial appeal films like Lost in Thailand and So Young would have already received widespread Taiwan releases

Drug War and the Grandmaster have already been released in Taiwan this year, bro

right, the fact that he suddenly can't go is strange. is your feeling that jia is a smart operator that plays the game just as much as is necessary to keep making pictures (pulling his documentary from melbourne, for example) or that he's got no choice?

and i see what you're saying about taiwan. i guess i'd like to slim my argument down to just saying that a touch of sin might be on the radar of the nytimes but isn't a huge deal to taiwanese cinemagoers compared to other bigger films coming from the mainland.

http://i.imgur.com/LPcuSwz.jpg

-- seeing wang baoqiang who i can't help but associate with his xu sanduo forrest gump soldier role/going to thailand being in love with fan bingbing and making her scallion cakes role/shilling for instant noodles and cold medication every commercial break on cctv wasting those motherfuckers on the road was a good shock.

Our new poster for Jia Zhangke's SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE. Opens in theaters May 28. Exclusive trailer premiere @hyperallergic. https://t.co/eoheERX6B2 pic.twitter.com/ucK21B0CKq

— Cinema Guild (@CinemaGuild) April 27, 2021

<3

Watched A Touch Of Sin tonight and am stilll thinking about it and trying to articulate something more than "it's a grind house version of Ascension. Liked it, did not love it but am willing to change my mind. Mountains May Depart is still the masterpiece.

Wow, Caught by the Tide is a weird film. Combines footage from the time of Unknown Pleasures and Still Life with stuff filmed during the pandemic, creates the same kind of three-part story as in Mountains May Depart. Except the first especially is a dreamy mix of documentary footage and outtakes with only the slimmest hint of a plot (plus the low-res digital imagery made it seem like Inland Empire to me. Parts of it is really creepy) whereas the two other parts are more plotbased. I don't think I liked everything, especially the second part felt kinda boring, and tried to shoehorn a gangster/political corruption plot into Still Life, which didn't really work. But wow, what a weird and unique film.

Caught By the Tides was very weird but I really enjoyed it. It felt like the concluding chapter of his work up to now, showing the evolution of the different types of film and digital camerawork he has used. And there were elements of the themes of all of his previous films.

He somehow pieced it together so that Zhao Tao never utters a sound in the film, she is communicating everything she is trying to express silently - until the very last second

Good observation! I thought it wasn't quite as good as it aimed to be, but I had just come off a major binge of Jia's work and so some parts were naturally repetitive.

A step below his major work but any film that acknowledges the pandemic gets a boost from moi.

Yeah, no lie. It did make the ending the strongest part of the film.

'ash is purest white' gave me a strong sense of self-biting, so not surprised to see caught by the tides evoking similar reactions. i will not be screening this voluntarily

absolutely loved mountains may depart, thought it was a real high water mark that took a lot of his usual themes and gave them some serious emotional weight. absolutely love that one. ash is… did feel less assured but preferred it to what came after, which all had a whiff diminishing returns to me (caught by the tides, swimming out…, some shorts).

haha guess i really did absolutely love mountains since i wrote that twice!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCKokDa1RlM

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HBQNdnZXAAE-5c9?format=png&name=medium

jia clanke

Dear oh dear

ah Zhangke don't do this to me

Why are you booing, he might be right