FILM COMMENT HOME
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BUY THE NEW ISSUE!
ART & INDUSTRY BY AMY TAUBIN:
NEW: FATIH AKIN'S HEAD-ON AND DANIEL BURMAN'S LOST EMBRACE
ONLINE EXCLUSIVES
SIGN UP FOR
E-NEWS
READ MARCH E-NEWS
FORUM
ARCHIVE
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
WALTER READE THEATER
FILMLINC.COM HOME
COMING IN March/April 2005:
Dustin Hoffman
Bulle Ogier by Gary Indiana
Hirokazu Kore-eda by Chuck Stephens
Amitabh Bachchan by David Chute
Lucrecia Martel's The Holy Girl by Kent Jones
And much more
ONLINE EXTRA: JIA ZHANGKE WEB INTERVIEW
A Film Comment online exclusive by Michael Berry
above : Xiao Wu
Could you talk about your three student films?
One Day in Beijing was shot on Betacam and it was really the first time that I looked at the world through a lens. The excitement I felt is so difficult to express in words. The shoot only lasted for a day and a half, but that first experience of describing the world through the perspective of the camera to me was simply riveting. It is a relatively naive film, but standing there in the street during the shoot got me to start asking myself about the people I was filming and how to approach these subjects. The film is basically a short documentary portrait of tourists in Tiananmen Square, but what left me with the deepest impression were those people from the countryside that I seemed to naturally gravitate to during the shooting. On an emotional level, there was just something that drew me to them.
Xiao Shan Goes Home is built around the story of these provincial workers who come to Beijing for work. The story takes place just before the Spring Festival when the protagonist wants to go home to visit his family for the New Year, which is a custom in China. But Xiao Shan doesn't want to go alone so he starts looking around Beijing for someone from his hometown to accompany him on his trip. Among these people from his hometown are construction workers, scalpers, prostitutes, and university students-but no one is willing to go with him. Finally he puts up an announcement on the street and the film ends with him at a streetside barber stall having his long hair cut off.
It is a 58-minute work that is quite linear, following his search for people from his hometown as a means of expressing some of the fundamental issues faced by many of the provincial workers who find their way into the big cities in China-illegal workers, the harsh realities faced by construction workers and prostitutes who live between the lines of morality and self-respect. This was without question my most important work previous to the making of my full-length features. It established my direction. The kind of characters that I care about in my work and my stylistic approach are both already becoming clear in Xiao Shan Goes Home. Naturally it is also immature and unpolished, but it nevertheless remains very important to me and truly marks the beginning of my work as a filmmaker.
So today when young aspiring filmmakers ask for advice I always tell them that they must persevere and get through their student film and see it through to the end. Even if halfway through the shoot they are already convinced that it is garbage, they still need to finish it, edit it, and show it to people. Filmmaking is a field that relies heavily on experience. And the only way to acquire a complete experience as a filmmaker is to go through the entire process yourself.
After Xiao Shan I made a third short entitled Du Du about a college student who, on the verge of graduation, is faced with an array of potentially life-changing choices. These decisions involve her career, her family, and pressure to get married. This film represented a new kind of cinematic experiment for me because we worked without a script and with only one actress. It was very spontaneous and we would only work out the plan for each day of shooting the night before. It was an incredibly spontaneous film which helped developed my skills on set. I am not terribly proud of Du Du and rarely show it to anyone, but from the perspective of my growth as a filmmaker, it did the most to hone my directorial instincts while shooting. I would suddenly realize what kind of actor I needed or what kind of angle I needed for a particular shot. The whole thing was completed with us figuring out what we needed as we went, including the narrative continuity and the very structure of the film.
I was wondering if you would mind playing a little game. I would like to describe a handful of key scenes from each of your three features and have you tell me what you what was going through your mind from a filmmaker's perspective as you were filming each respective scene?
Sure.
Starting with the opening scene of Xiao Wu, our first visual introduction to the protagonist. The first thing we see is a close-up of Xiao Wu's hands lighting a cigarette before he boards the bus. The scene climaxes with the juxtaposition of Xiao Wu picking the pocket of the passenger next to him and the mini-portrait of Chairman Mao hanging from the rear view mirror of the bus.
The second half of that scene is a standard montage. Basically I wanted to describe a new phenomena playing itself out under the gaze of traditional hegemony. I decided to open the film with a shot of his hands because he is a pickpocket, a thief and his hands are the tools of his trade. The package of matches in his hand actually has Shanxi written on it. I decided to add this prop in order to provide a spatial reference point to the viewers, which is very important. The whole issue of locale was extremely close to me when I made the film and I wanted to highlight the fact that this was a story about Shanxi. It was really a rarity for a camera crew to come to a place like Shanxi and face the reality there so I wanted to make this clear from the beginning.
There is a scene in Xiao Wu where the protagonist's childhood friend Xiao Yang touches a brick wall. Just a few scenes later Xiao Wu caresses the same wall. What is the symbolism here?
You might not notice it, but there are height marks carved and scraped into the wall. Those markers come from a popular custom in northern China where children who are the same age measure their height by marking a wall, they are a record of their childhood, of growing up. The wall, in this sense, is a symbol of their friendship and their past.
Another moving scene in Xiao Wu is when he visits Mei Mei when she is sick. Mei Mei sings a popular song by Faye Wang (Wang Fei/Wang Jingwen) but when she asks Xiao Wu to sing a number all he can do is open up his singing cigarette lighter.
In my mind Xiao Wu is the kind of character who is not good at expressing his thoughts and feelings. But in that situation he needs to find some way to express his feelings for this girl. I suddenly thought of the cigarette lighter. So he responds to her with music.
What about the conclusion of Xiao Wu where we see Xiao Wu squatting like a dog, handcuffed to a pole on the street, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. It is a scene of incredible power and I was curious what led you to end your film with such a sudden, and in one sense, brutal conclusion?
In the original script the ending was supposed to be of the old police officer leading Xiao Wu through the street, eventually disappearing into a crowd. But as I was shooting, I was never really completely satisfied with this original ending. It is a safe ending, but also rather mediocre. During the 20 days of the shoot I was constantly trying to come up with a better ending. Suddenly one day when we were shooting a crowd started to gather around to watch us filming and I was struck with a kind of inspiration. I decided to shoot a crowd scene of people staring at him. I felt that in some way, this crowd could serve as a kind of bridge with the audience. Like the audience, the crowd is also a spectator, but there is a shift in perspective. As soon as I thought of it I felt a kind of excitement. Naturally, I also thought of Lu Xun's conception of the "crowd."
on to page 2
The first part of this interview can be read in the March/April 2003 print edition of Film Comment.
© 2003 by Michael Berry
