An Unfinished Film

 

Director Lou Ye

AN UNFINISHED FILM                 B-                                                                                 China  Singapore  Germany  USA  (107 mi)  2024  d: Lou Ye

A film crew was harshly gobsmacked
When the deadly Wuhan virus attacked
Forced to their rooms
And reliant on Zooms
They sat until they collectively cracked

—An Unfinished Film (一部未完成的电影) - The Steel Frog Blog

Returning to the scene of the crime, the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in China at the beginning of 2020, with masks and social distancing becoming a regular part of our daily life, yet told through an unusual angle, blurring the boundaries between fiction and documentary, as Lou Ye, one of the most uncompromising Sixth Generation voices of China’s film industry, a filmmaker known for his bold and often controversial approach, has made what can be described as a cellphone film, as it normalizes the use of cellphones, a reminder that social media surrounds us everywhere, which some find as commonplace as any other daily ritual, yet a major distraction for others, who aren’t yet ready to call vertical-screen cellphone videos an artform, but this film builds its case.  Initially shown out of competition at the Special Screenings section at Cannes, this is essentially a behind-the-scenes, documentary style glimpse of filmmaking, a movie about making a movie, which extends to the multitude of largely unseen personnel who collaborate in the creative process, as we watch them work collectively, led by director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui, an actual television director), trying to reconstruct a film out of the remnants of a project that started 10 years ago but abruptly stopped for lack of financing, using outtakes or unused footage from what appears to be a sequel to Lou’s own gay-themed film SPRING FEVER (2009), among the first Chinese Mainland films to graphically depict gay sex, which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 2009, but did not endear himself to Chinese authorities, released as a French/Hong Kong production to circumvent his imposed 5-year ban from filmmaking after SUMMER PALACE (2006), which was set against the background of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  Breaking out all the old outdated computer equipment that has been in storage, they rediscover the original files, while Xiaorui has also secured the participation of the same lead actor Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao), who is now an in-demand star, though when he rejoins the cast he explicitly states, “Your film will never pass censorship.”  Nonetheless, defying authorities, he’s eager to work with the director again, though they are all significantly older, carrying with them new life experiences, as some have gotten married and have families, including Jiang whose wife has an expectant baby on the way.  Filming begins in Wuhan only after the baby is born, becoming a poetic ode to the courage and tenacity of independent artists who are willing to buck the government censors, risking their careers and even reputations for so little, as there was no guarantee anyone other than the participants themselves would ever see this film, with Jiang heard uttering at one point, “If nobody can see this film in theaters, then what’s the point?”  Yet they choose to do it anyway.  Written by the director in collaboration with his wife and longtime co-writer Ma Yingli, this project gives them the opportunity to look back at the past, as the director and crew are constantly examining what they filmed a decade ago, which becomes a catalyst for their own introspection, constantly challenging viewers to question what is real and what is staged. It’s never clear what role Jiang has in this production, yet all communication starts from him, where part of the persistent rhythm is devoted to video chats between Jiang and his wife Sang Qi (Qi Xi), where the actress was really at home in Beijing taking care of her one month old baby, so this reality was built into the film, as she is only seen on a cellphone screen, often shown on a split screen to show both of them speaking quietly to each other, in one tender moment even falling asleep together, each holding their cellphones next to their faces.  A commentary on the film process itself, with the actors playing a film version of themselves, what we see is not just a film about interruption, but a film that interrupts itself, as its incompleteness is the central thesis that speaks volumes through time gaps and silences.  

Originally conceived as a film consisting of old footage of Jiang playing various roles, reflecting the changes in China over the past decade or so, but yet another unforeseen circumstance happens while they are shooting in the town of Wuhan, as they’re also grappling with this huge, unprecedented global pandemic unfolding all around them, taking us back to the very earliest stages of the Covid pandemic when it was just beginning, shifting the entire perspective of the film, becoming an hour-by-hour update on the changing focus of containing the outbreak, which suddenly becomes part of what they’re filming.  Despite television news reports of blocked roads alongside a very public military presence, at first no one paid it any mind when a hairdresser from Wuhan is sent home, or a production assistant faints in the corridor, thinking those affected were simply random illnesses, as the production would still move forward, AN UNFINISHED FILM Clip | TIFF 2024 YouTube (1:53).  What they envisioned in making this film never comes to fruition, instead they are continually interrupted with public health updates, which is mirrored by security enforcing a contamination zone, not letting anyone in or out of the hotel, which literally happens overnight and is completely inconceivable for some, who just assumed they would be home by the Lunar New Year to celebrate with their families, as travel plans had already been arranged.  But that comes to an abrupt halt when they are forcibly locked inside their rooms, while people in full-body hamzat suits bring their food or other essentials to their door, yet none of this eruptive chaos ever feels like it is staged, but remains viscerally raw, as cinematographer Zeng Jian’s handheld shots move between observation and confusion, mimicking the anxiety and disorientation people must have felt in the early days of the pandemic, where the emotional power lies in restraint.  The euphoric mood of the opening, hoping to create something entirely new, quickly turns into panic mode, initially met with anger and indignation, forcibly trying to make their way through security, followed by resignation and despair, with the realization that they would be stuck there for quite a while under quarantine, literally cut off from their families and the rest of the world, yet unlike those who voluntarily chose to stay at home and shelter-in-place, these individuals were really forced to lock down, where the entire crew must remain inside their respective hotel rooms, unable to leave until this is over, separated by circumstance and/or arbitrary health rules enforced by the military.  Blending actual footage of those early lockdown days with staged scenes, not everyone viewing this film wants to re-live these experiences again, as it may be too soon, still traumatized by what happened, with astronomical death rates that had never happened before during our lifetimes, yet at the very beginning, no one knew that it would lead to a worldwide pandemic, thinking only about its effect in the immediate vicinity, as the majority of the first reported cases of coronavirus are in China.  What happens at the hotel is a mini-version of what’s happening in the entire city, as the whole population of 14 million people are under a lockdown enforced by authorities, leaving the streets eerily empty, like a post-apocalyptic view of how the world might look after a nuclear war, so in essence the film is a time capsule of a historic period in our lives, and while the film was censored in China, completed only with financing from Singapore and Germany, it has been embraced around the world, largely for its critical thinking.  What this film thoughtfully captures is the fear, the isolation, and that longing for connection, things we can all universally relate to and understand, while also questioning the role of art during times of crisis. 

A film about creative inspiration quickly becomes a Covid documentary, a reflection of the chaos and confusion of the times, and a social and political crisis that played out differently in different places around the world, with cellphones documenting what the cast sees in the hallways, courtyards, or out their windows, where a constant stream of ambulances are seen arriving and departing, with disinfectant being sprayed everywhere, completely changing the fluid pace and hopeful outlook of the beginning, which is reduced to a crawl when the entire crew is left alone in their hotel rooms under lockdown.  With phones and televisions becoming their only window into the outside world, viewers are suddenly privy to personal messaging back and forth, sharing the latest updates while attempting to keep their spirits high, reaching an apex when they all gather together on a group video call and count down the seconds to the Chinese New Year (January 25th in 2020), then exploding in celebration, each alone in their rooms, breaking out into music and dance onscreen, where it’s all captured by cellphones.  Overly rambunctious in their joyous celebration, they spontaneously break out into the hallways and comingle, violating all health protocols, which is immediately shut down by security who orders them all back into their rooms.  It’s a brief moment of elation, lasting only a few minutes, but it captures the essence of what they’re all feeling, just wanting to feel alive again in a world where all the emphasis has shifted to the pandemic.  In just the first few months, a main focus of all the news reports is an inexplicable public health phenomenon that spreads rapidly, with no known cure, becoming more and more contagious, offering a rare glimpse into the Chinese experience of the pandemic, where some of the few surprises includes actual clips of news footage, CCTV surveillance footage, and TikTok-style children’s covers of songs that went viral on the Chinese internet, creating this kaleidoscopic effect, showing how individual experiences are intertwined with surrounding events, bringing us right into the middle of all the chaos and uncertainty.  With little advance warning, authorities completely stifle the population from coming into contact with one another, shutting down the city of Wuhan and the surrounding regions to contain the virus, though six Wuhan hospital doctors died in just the first six months, including infamous whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned his colleagues about the virus before succumbing to it himself, and is remembered on TV clips.  Speeding through a collage of conspicuous events over the next several years, including footage of the riots that followed the 2022 Ürümqi fire that sparked nationwide protests against the government’s Zero-COVID policy, which was irrefutably unpopular and controversial, yet the number of infections spiked drastically when the policy was dropped, leading to a massive amount of infections and a staggering death count, which are conspicuously missing from the film, though the magnitude of the loss is profound, feeling more like an elegiac memoriam by the end.  While mostly contained to just a few months immediately after the outbreak, this is a highly personalized, insular view of what transpired, a calm before the storm, as over 7 million people worldwide eventually died.  The film seems to challenge our collective memories, asking if the world has changed significantly since then, are we any different, did we learn anything, and has this situation changed us?  Personal phone calls between Jiang and his wife give way to random videos posted online (click here to watch the video, 4:35), with an imprinted date stamp indicating how long after the outbreak, all poetically capturing the mood and feel of living under lockdown and slowly coming out of hibernation, as if released from captivity, where the joy of simply walking unimpeded down a city street feels like a precious moment of unleashed freedom.    

Crosscurrent (長江圖, Chang jiang tu)

Writer/director Yang Chao

CROSSCURRENT (長江圖, Chang jiang tu)                       A-                                              China  (116 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Yang Chao

Time, like a river, flows both day and night.

A moody, atmospheric, yet breathtakingly beautiful film shot on 35mm (among the last of the Chinese films shot on celluloid) in ‘Scope by Mark Lee Ping-Bing, who also shot Hou Hsiao-hsien’s utterly enthralling 2015 Top Ten List #9 The Assassin (Nie Yinniang), with Hou developing a lifelong collaboration with the cinematographer which began with A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Tong nien wang shi) (1985), while also recognized for sharing shooting duties with Christopher Doyle on Wong Kar-wai’s IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000).  With little narrative to speak of, the film is largely a meditative tone poem of a lengthy 1200 mile river journey from the mouth of the Yangtze River in Shanghai, the third longest river in the world, and the longest to flow entirely within one country, traveling all the way to Yibin where the river meets the Min River.  A contrast of modernity and tradition, nature and technology, enhanced by spectacular visual poetry, the river is given a mythical context from the outset, interspersed with passages from poems identifiable by the towns where they were written, much like Bi Gan’s 2016 Top Ten List #2 Kaili Blues (Lu bian ye can) (2015), reflecting a Buddhist interchangeability in all things, where Gao Chun (Qin Hao) loses his father, inheriting the captaincy of a rusty river barge, a cargo transport vehicle, yet we are told his father’s soul will never be at peace until a black fish caught in the river by his son is placed in an incense bowl, unfed, and dies a natural death.  While at anchor in Shanghai harbor, Chun spots a beguiling young woman on another boat, An Lu (Xin Zhilei), but departs before he has a chance to speak to her.  While attempting to repair an auxiliary motor, he discovers an old handwritten collection of poems (all written by the director) from an earlier time entitled Map of the Yangtze River, which is the Chinese film title, a diary written by a previous deckhand describing his thoughts about the river and a mysterious young woman, conveying a vague sense of loss.  As he travels further along the river, following the same journey as the author of the poems, he reads passages from the book, growing more obsessed with the young woman that he continually finds waiting for him along the way, developing a sexual rapport, yet she remains elusive, until it is impossible to distinguish fiction from reality, as they all blend into one, using a magical realist style that resembles a dream language of the river.  The sound design is equally remarkable, with a constant sound of motors on the water, where there is a heightened sensory experience, shot in the dead of winter where characters are always wearing heavy coats with scarfs, where you can see their breath in the cold.  Like some kind of River Styx, transporting souls from the living to the underworld, the river seems to possess supernatural powers, with the river captain attempting to navigate his own path, yet the life of the river, given this unfathomable context, becomes vibrant and mysteriously alive, where the ravishing beauty in this enveloping universe is simply indescribable. 

Winner of a Silver Bear at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for the cinematography, the aesthetic superlatives are mind-boggling, as are the multi-layered sound effects, creating an orchestrated cacophony of sounds at sea that become quite sophisticated, allowing viewers an existential view of the river passage, largely wordless with poetic incantations, where you’re able to disappear into someone else’s identity while blending into the majestic landscape, like air, land, and water having a symbiotic relationship with each other.  Much of it shot at night, the use of a searchlight or fire onshore in the mountains brilliantly illuminates a living spirit that feeds the void of emptiness.  At some point they pick up a mysterious cargo, demanding extra payment for the danger incurred, but the contents are never revealed, yet this adds a layer of suspense.  Uncle Xiang (Jiang Hualin), the ship’s mechanic who worked for Chun’s late father, and a younger deckhand Wu Sheng (Wu Lipeng) are the only others onboard, yet they rarely engage one another in conversation, adding to the silent mystery.  Due to a lack of a coherent story, many viewers may be perplexed and baffled by the pervasive emptiness of content, meandering, seemingly going nowhere, where they may find themselves lost in a netherworld with no way out, with many viewers finding it hollow and overly pretentious.  With films like this, the poem translations are a key element, as they may leave many hanging in a world of incoherence, struggling to find meaning or purpose, finding it incomprehensible.  But don’t believe the critics, whose contempt for this film basically killed its chances of international distribution, screening at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2016 where it sold out, but was never shown anywhere else after that except New York and Los Angeles.  This is a film to watch and make up your own mind, as it defies convenient categorization, but it’s challenging, somewhat abstract, yet ultimately a highly rewarding experience.  All films need not be explained, which is actually a refreshing and invigorating touch, allowing viewers themselves to navigate the murky waters of such a languorous, dreamlike journey, open to multiple interpretations, a blank slate filled with symbolism and recurring images, where a life on the water is its own mystical experience, yet it feels as much like an investigation into the mystery of the human soul.  At one point Chun can hear, but not see An Lu speaking to a monk in a Buddhist pagoda, asking spiritual questions, yet he feels trapped on another floor, like being caught in a labyrinth, with sound his only sensory connection.  By the time he finds his way to the monk she has disappeared.  The director continually drops little hints, like pieces of a puzzle, that when strung together reveal a larger whole, yet through most of the film Chun feels distant, melancholy, and lost, disconnected from the whole, in search of the perpetually missing piece.  As they move from town to town, they are identified by name onscreen, like chapter headings, where there is also an indicator of the number of days on the journey, the last being the 98th day.  

An Wei writes musical passages for the film, dark and melancholic, with lonely cello-infused music by David Darling (who just died recently in January 2021) from his Dark Wood album added as well, David Darling - Darkwood - 1995 on Vimeo YouTube (44:36), offering lyrical depth underneath the lush visual palette.  Passing through relocated villages, Chun eventually makes a grueling two-day passage through the Three Gorges Dam, a gigantic hydro-electric project where homes have been meticulously and tirelessly relocated brick by brick to higher locations, each one numbered, as otherwise they will forever be submerged underwater after the dam’s completion, requiring a massive displacement of 1.3 million people to new locations, where a town literally disappears only to reappear elsewhere.  Perhaps the most ominous moment occurs at the Three Gorges Dam, with the barge engulfed in one of the locks that suddenly fills with water, yet the grating mechanical sounds of the large gate opening could just as easily be the gates of Hell, yet suddenly a whole new world opens.  The farther along the journey the more vague and mystifying it becomes, like a Heart of Darkness journey, growing even more contemplative with an interior focus, at one point growing surreal.  An Lu is seen along the way in different incarnations, continually disappearing only to reappear again, always recognizable, like an elusive object of desire, eventually existing only in his own mind, which is where she may have always been, as who or what she is has always remained obscure.  A hint may come early on when she throws herself into the water, an apparent suicide attempt, but afterwards we see a miraculous swimmer who seems unfazed by traveling great distances, where she assumes supernatural powers.  After a heated argument Wu Sheng falls overboard, with no sign or trace of him, but the next morning An Lu suddenly reappears out of the water, possibly capable of disappearing into someone else’s identity, which matches a parable told in one of the poems, a ghost story of a girl who crept into the body of a merchant, again reflecting an interchangeability in spirits.  Uncle Xiang is plagued by the journey’s bad omens, leaving a note that he has left without explanation, jettisoning the illegal cargo.  Arriving in Yibin with no cargo, the shady business partner has sent someone to stab Chun, laying collapsed and bleeding, where he sees An Lu’s face underwater, like a river nymph, smiling, yet remaining submerged in the water.  Surviving the attack, he makes his way into Tibet’s Chumar River, another 1300 miles to the northern headwater of the Yangtze, which flows from the disappearing Jianggendiru Glacier, the southwest side of Geladandong Peak in the Tanggula Mountains.  In this vast Tibetan Plateau, he finds an isolated gravestone of An Lu’s mother, guarded apparently by her religiously devout father who abandoned both of them to follow his own spiritual path, making this feel more like a religious pilgrimage, followed by early archival footage of the Yangtze River, including flimsy vessels attempting to navigate their way through a ferocious current before turning into a major thoroughway for shipping traffic.  In a final image, as religious statues can be seen overlooking the river, An Lu has taken her place among them.