THE IRON MINISTRY B+
USA China (82 mi) 2014 d: J.P. Sniadecki
USA China (82 mi) 2014 d: J.P. Sniadecki
Guest review by Evan Wang
With the perfect Mandarin he speaks, director J.P. Sniadecki
doesn’t leave the audience much indication of his existence in this
documentary, even though he is apparently involved in most of the conversations
with other passengers. His face is never shown, but not deliberately hidden.
Quite brilliantly, he managed to become an undistinguished part of the environment;
an observer, but not more so than anyone else on the trains.
Being a member of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, where
acclaimed documentaries Leviathan and Manakamana were produced,
Sniadecki has obviously added a distinctive touch of his own to the lab’s
elaborately conceived cinema vérité style. As shown in The Iron Ministry, his films might seem less “sensory” or
meditative, but definitely have more to say on the ethnographic part,
benefiting from the higher extent of involvement. After all, it is almost an
impossible task to be a “fly on the wall” at probably the most packed location
in the most populous country of this world.
After an opening that consists of complete darkness and the
noise generated by a departing train, the audience is invited on board to start
an overnight journey across China,
which in fact took the filmmaker 3 years to shoot. Therefore, besides spatial
dimensions, we are also travelling through time. In one of the very first
eye-catching scenes, a blood-dripping liver just hangs there while someone
doing his butcher works in the soiled cart. For me, a train-traveler in China
for about 20 years, this is something I have never seen. According to
Sniadecki, trains like that have already disappeared from the rails by the time
the documentary is finished, and we would find ourselves in the comfy space
inside the newest bullet trains toward the end of this film. Between these two
points, we hear from all kinds of people from different parts of the country,
talking about their stories, political opinions and future plans, including a
“miracle kid” improvising a funny parody of the do’s and don’ts announced
through the loudspeakers. More importantly, we also see them reading, knitting,
dining, and sleeping in every available corner of the carts. Balancing all
those are rather abstract shots of sceneries outside the windows, usually
blurred by speed, and close-ups of curious mechanical parts on the trains,
which reminded me of what I saw earlier this year in an American docudrama, Stand
Clear of the Closing Doors. Also echoing that film, the sometimes
disorganized collage is well unified by the delicate sound design, mixing
together broadcasted music and chaotic tumult to an intriguing effect. At
certain points, it is pretty much hypnotic, but for anyone who shares the same
experience, only in the way that it is supposed to be during such a journey. At
the end of it, the camera lingers on piles of discarded packages from instant
food, and other trash waiting to be cleaned up. Instead of the most awful place
to be trapped in for two days of your time, however, it looks more like the
aftermath of a carnival. It is not just what goes on aboard the trains, a temporary respite before they reach their next destination, it is the life of Chinese people transitioning into the future.
Before going back to darkness, the last identifiable image that appears on
the screen is an eye, probably from the train operator, once again implying
what the film is really about. Theoretically, filming on trains is prohibited
in China, but
for Sniadecki and the people present in his film, what is not allowed to be
documented, is seen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Postscript – guest reviewed earlier, The Iron Ministry, previously unseen by this viewer
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Postscript – guest reviewed earlier, The Iron Ministry, previously unseen by this viewer
THE IRON MINISTRY B+
One of the better ways to learn about a new city or geographical
region is to simply immerse yourself directly into the middle, walk around, and
then pay close attention to what you observe.
This unusual film offers a window into the rapidly changing transition
taking place in modern China. Providing
a snapshot of various journeys on China’s railway system, American filmmaker
and academic J.P. Sniadecki creates an interesting experiment in social
realism, using abstract experimental imagery to explore China’s changing place
in the world. Shot over the course of
three years between 2011 and 2013 on different railway systems throughout contemporary
China, the footage is cleverly edited together to create the impression of a
single trip, what the director calls one “cinema-train,” where the resulting
film takes place entirely inside the cramped space aboard the trains, and where
each train starts and ends remains unclear, but the result is an incredibly
intimate portrait of the Chinese population traveling throughout their own
country. A fascinating slice-of-life
documentary where Sniadecki writes, shoots, directs, produces, edits, and is a
sound recordist in a film that is amazingly ambitious, where the role of the
filmmaker is like an unseen guide who may initiate conversations shown
onscreen, where passengers may be seen talking directly to the filmmaker. Sniadecki is an American born on a goat farm
in Michigan, who grew up in the rustbelt of Northern Indiana, studied
philosophy at Grand Valley State University, flying to Shanghai in May of 1999
to study Chinese philosophy and culture and has lived and worked for several
years in China and has learned to speak fluent Chinese, making several earlier
films in China including YUMEN (2013), about an abandoned oil town in China’s
northwest Gansu Province, and PEOPLE’S PARK (2012), one continuous 78-minute
long tracking shot on a summer afternoon through the crowded spaces of the People’s
Park in Chengdu, Sichuan, where here as well the man with the movie camera is
often stared at out of the corner of people’s eyes, but his identity is never
revealed. Beginning and ending in the
pitch black of the train stations, the audience is introduced by means of sound
alone, aided by the exquisite sound designer Ernst Karel, one of the key
figures of the Sensory Ethnography Lab ::
Harvard University (SEL), the school where the director pursued his
doctorate in media anthropology, creators of an unembellished, starkly realistic
style of documentary, where this film bears a close resemblance to Manakamana
(2013). The abstract nature of the
initial images can be a bit unsettling, a black screen followed by geometric
designs that bear no resemblance whatsoever to a recognizable reality, where it
takes awhile before discovering you are actually on a train. There’s no voiceover to place you where you
are, as you’re never anchored to any specific event. There’s no music track. All you hear is the sound heard within the
train itself. As Sniadecki explains,
from My
Cultural Landscape: Planes, Trains, and Musicals:
To capture as many different
encounters as possible, I took trains throughout China, striving to be thorough
without a need to be exhaustive, compelled more by the desire for movement and
encounter than by any documentary notion of coverage. I hopped on trains in
many different corners of China, as well as through the major arteries of the
railway system. Some rides were 40+ hours, others were 20 minutes. I never had
a clear goal for each journey.
Ernst [Karel] is an amazing sound artist. I have informal training in music as well, so we approached the film’s sound design as a sonic composition. Attention to attack, release, resonant frequencies, atmosphere, dynamic range, and tonality all played a part in the design. We were open to and excited about the musicality of the train itself, whether by including songs actually played and recorded on the train, or by using the train sounds themselves to compose something akin to musique concrete.
Ernst [Karel] is an amazing sound artist. I have informal training in music as well, so we approached the film’s sound design as a sonic composition. Attention to attack, release, resonant frequencies, atmosphere, dynamic range, and tonality all played a part in the design. We were open to and excited about the musicality of the train itself, whether by including songs actually played and recorded on the train, or by using the train sounds themselves to compose something akin to musique concrete.
The West is currently fascinated by China, by just how vast
and huge it is, becoming a symbol of transition, where major cities have
already built skyscrapers and modernized, offering a dream of prospective job
opportunities, while the rural areas have yet to see similar signs of progress,
where this film allows unique insight into an often unknown culture by
providing such closeness into the everyday experience. One of the things the film does best is
provide insightful observations on personal space, where Sniadecki’s camera
moves slowly throughout the economy class sections of overcrowded trains, where
every inch of available space is inhabited by humans and their cargo, packed to
capacity with exhausted riders sleeping on the floors as well as the aisles,
where it’s inconceivable that this meets any safety standard, as should there
be a fire or accident, it would be near impossible for anyone to escape. Nonetheless, this super-confined space on the
train provides the director an opportunity to mix himself into the conversations happening around him, where a whole range of conversations may
discuss culture, politics, ethnicity or religion mixed together with other people
who are just traveling, some are happily engaging in a drinking session, while
others can be seen sleeping, reading, playing cards, or listening to music, where
you’re forced to ignore or pay particularly close attention to those who are
seen nearby. The camera follows closely
behind the train’s official vendor and his food cart as he sidesteps the
stragglers on the floor, slowly navigating his way through the myriad of obstacles
in the car offering packaged snack food, though he’s out of instant noodles,
which is what everyone’s continually asking for. Another view offers just a glimpse of the
floor as someone attempts the futile job of sweeping underneath the seats and
the aisles, creating a mass of garbage that is swept throughout the length of
the train car. Perhaps most surprising
is seeing an elderly butcher smoking using a bamboo cigar-holder while hanging
his freshly cut slabs of meat in an available open space on the train, blood
still dripping on the floor, obviously selling his wares, where there’s no
conceivable refrigeration, and who knows the length of his journey. One of the shots is a view of oscillating
fans attached to the ceiling which are the only means of ventilation. At one stop, people are seen boarding the
trains loaded up from head to toe with fresh farm produce, which they obviously
intend to sell, carrying baskets of vegetables on each end of a pole around
their shoulders, making it extremely difficult to get through the door, but
when they do, they are easily consuming the space of about three individuals. It becomes clear that Sniadecki is enamored
with Chinese life and culture, where his interest becomes our interest, and his
loose narrative allows us to submerge ourselves in his images and eavesdrop on
nearby conversations. By immersing the
viewer so completely into the experience of riding a train, the film itself
becomes part of the journey..
According to a New
York Times interview with Sniadecki, Q.
and A.: J. P. Sniadecki on China, Trains and ‘The Iron Ministry’, the term “Ministry”
in the title refers specifically to “the Ministry of Railways, which was considered
a secretive yet expansive ‘kingdom unto itself’ within a government known for
its opacity. The Chinese Ministry of
Railways once had its own schools, courts, housing, factories, and police
force. The three years that I spent
shooting this film coincided with the last three years of the Ministry’s reign
as a separate world: In March 2013,
after high-level cases of corruption were exposed, the Ministry was officially
dissolved and transformed into the state-owned China Railways Corporation. It is said that control over this corporation
is divided between China’s elites, and ongoing privatization and expansion have
been easy to see.” While the initial
trains seen are so rickety and antiquated that they’ve already been eliminated
by the nation’s new railway system, replaced by faster, more modernized
trains. Sniadecki spends more time in
the chaos of the cheaper sections, barely lingering at all in the more upscale
areas, which are quieter, considerably less populated, where passengers are
seen sitting apart from one another and are usually engaged in solitary
activities with their smartphones. In an
80-minute film, most time is spent observing, while the conversations
themselves comprise only about 20 minutes or so, where two women talk about the
horrible wages and working conditions in factories, continually having to work
longer hours, both yearning for something better. Several articulate young men speak about the
rising costs of housing, making it difficult to buy property, which becomes a
demand by the family of the bride in prospective marriages, making it
exceedingly difficult to marry young.
All seem to agree that subsidized housing is a joke, only given to those
with political connections, a social condition not likely to change anytime
soon as there is no democratic means to vote for a change, instead they can
only idealistically hope that the Party will listen more and pay attention to
those people they are supposed to represent.
If not, they may have to leave the country to seek a better life
elsewhere. This view is not all that
different from American citizens losing faith in their government, where
politicians often feel disconnected to those more ordinary citizens they were
elected to serve. There is an open
discussion on Hui Muslim minorities in China, claiming it’s difficult to find
mosques in China, yet whose mere existence allows one overly optimistic Han Chinese
passenger to conclude that China treats all minorities well. But this is countered by an intense
intellectual discussion between Sniadecki and Tibetan author and activist Tsering
Woeser (unidentified in the film, as she is simply seen as another passenger, who
along with fellow Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei published a book documenting Tibetan
self-immolations entitled Immolations in
Tibet: The Shame of the World, while according to Prominent
Tibetan Activist Tsering Woeser Claims ..., the government is suspected in
deleting her recent post on Facebook referring to the self-immolation of
Tibetan monk Pawo Kalsang Yeshi who was the 142nd monk to set themselves
on fire in protest of Chinese rule in Tibet since 2009), one of the few Tibetan
authors and poets to write in Chinese, yet who eloquently expresses how China
is using trains and their ability to reach hard-to-access regions to literally
rape Tibet economically by flooding the Tibet Autonomous Region with Chinese
citizens into Tibet, with their primary goal being to create a suffocating
economic stranglehold, where their presence is creating an elite, super rich
class of Chinese, while previously the wealth was more evenly spread throughout
the entire region, comparing Tibetans to American Indians, suggesting the role
of the railroad industry in each instance was used for exploitation and genocide. Because of her intimate familiarity with the
subject, she was no ordinary passenger, but felt like a plant in perhaps a
scene staged by the filmmaker in order to get this particular message
across. Easily the most amusing part of the film comes from a mischievous
young boy perched in an upper bunk, seen making sarcastic train announcements
in the beginning that take on a surreal quality, a moment that does not feel
staged, but there’s absolutely no doubt that he was “performing” for the camera. One is left wondering what this imaginative
kid would be up to in another ten years or so:
All passengers, your attention
please. The 3838-438 train from the United States to Afghanistan is about to
depart. We ask that those who are not aboard please take someone else’s
luggage, take someone else’s wife, and hurry aboard. Those who have explosives,
bombs, and other inflammable materials with them please hurry aboard and ignite
them where there are crowds to contribute to our nation’s population control policy.
The train is moving fast, so please extend your hands and head out of the
window as far as possible, making it easier to lose them all at once.
This is a civilized train, so please feel free to piss, shit, and throw trash all over the aisle. Other passengers may spit on your face and you may spit in the mouths of others, which is good for the thorough absorption of protein. As a disposable train, this one has been operating safely for 30 years. If you discover your head over your feet, you’ve arrived at the last stop: Heaven.
This is a civilized train, so please feel free to piss, shit, and throw trash all over the aisle. Other passengers may spit on your face and you may spit in the mouths of others, which is good for the thorough absorption of protein. As a disposable train, this one has been operating safely for 30 years. If you discover your head over your feet, you’ve arrived at the last stop: Heaven.
