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

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.

i think the first chapter with dahai battling the maserati coal boss in shanxi (spending the last two months in shanxi made that chapter hit even harder) was clearly directly riffing on lin chong in 《heroes of the marsh》/《all men are brothers》/《the water margin》/, 《水浒传》-- the part of the opera that dahai catches is the part where lin chong is FORCED to kill gao qiu's two thugs... which is what 《水浒传》 is all about: righteous men forced to resort to violence against those in charge because the rules of brotherhood and 江湖 ----The concept of Jianghu can be traced to the 14th century novel Water Margin, in which a band of noble outlaws, who mounted regular sorties in an attempt to right the wrongs of corrupt officials, retreated to their hideout. These bandits were called the Chivalrous men of the Green Forests or 绿林好汉, the "green forest" (绿林, lǜlín) was the antecedent to Jianghu.---- also the lin chong story and other water margin stories aren't just about fighting injustice but about being humiliated (gao qiu's son is trying to fuck lin chong's wife -- dahai is beaten in front of a crowd and given that nickname etc) and the lin chong story hinges on a weapon too.... and it sort of directs the rest of the film toward that novel in particular where good men are forced into violence

whether justified attacks on corrupt leaders that have violated a sort of cosmic REMEMBER THE WATER MARGIN BOYS CAME OUT OF STARS natural righteousness that's destroying the natural world and humans together
and just chaotic fucked up violence which is also well represented in wuxia literature and the water margin in particular
and even the righteous violence can't be controlled and you have a lot of righteous characters inflicting a lot of collateral damage in their quest for justice.

i took a lot of pleasure in watching wang baoqiang shoot people down

I'm actually shocked to find out that Wang Baoqiang is an accomplished actor who's been involved in many big name projects rather than just a farmer plucked from a village

He looks so weedy

Never read the Water Margin, am really intrigued by yer post now

I've been reading about lots of land disputes in China that follow the same exact pattern of the shanxi story

Rural land, as we know, is collectively owned by the farmers of the village & use-rights can only be created if the villagers vote on it

The village convinces the farmers that allowing the land to be developed will be beneficial to all, profits will be distributed to all the villagers, jobs will be created and given to the villagers

Magically, all the profit that comes in somehow is retained by the village leaders & the farmers maybe get a carton of cigarettes + black lung

omg only just found out that Suikoden is the Japanese translation of "Water Margin", old Playstation RPG makes sense now

wang baoqiang is the star of this i think. best performance in the film: puffing lit the cigarettes in the kitchen and paying obeisance to ghosts... raising his pistol to the sky while the village sets off fireworks... the interactions with his son and wife... the ice cold robbery scene....

having seen this now, it's crazy that it was ever even rumored to have a mainland release. a lot of the chinese lang reviews from mainland viewers seem to see it as a direct attack on the party/govt even if they sometimes use slightly euphemistic terms to refer to that direct criticism.... obv that obsession with china (r.i.p. ct hsia) thing--focusing on any work of art produced by a chinese artist as being totally 100% about china and unrelatable to the greater experience of mankind whatever--is not the most interesting way to look at it.

they note in particular the use of the city wall, the yellow plains, eternal symbols of 5000000 years of history blah blah blah and how chinese history seems to be trapped in a cycle of moral decay->violence.

plus how if you view it as a retelling of the water margin... and more than any of the other 4 classics the water margin figured big in communist party romantic views of itself (mao loved it and it must have made good reading while they were hiding out in the caves yanan imagining they were liangshan heroes revolting against a failing empire and its corrupt bureaucracy) and in, like, actual party policy (discussion of the book and its lessons about fighting capitulationists within the party among other lessons were important during the cultural revolution). ...i think the the water margin parallels are obvious and it has an important history of being used to sort of obliquely attack corrupt leadership and affirm the correctness of revolt.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/dd86b174efac3f893be3ca3cf76be4d4/tumblr_n0rfecSG6F1r6ivyno1_500.jpg

i enjoyed this, but had a hard time reconciling some of the 'genre' elements with jia's more usual 'realistic' mode

i loved that about it.

Yeah, the tension between naturalism (for lack of a better term for how Jia's style is coded) and street-opera theatricality was part of what made it so compelling for me, along with the film's masterful pacing.

yeah... although i never really thought of any of his films as being, like particularly "realistic" or naturalist in any sense

All of Jia’s films are worth watching imo. Ash Is Purest White is the one I love the most, but also A Touch of Sin. Still Life was interesting to me, I didn't really get it at the time and want to see it again. Platform, Unknown Pleasures, The World - all great

I've seen five of his films and heard him speak at a retrospective. My favourite was The World, maybe it had a slightly more hopeful air than the others.

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.