Bitter Money (Ku Qian)

BITTER MONEY (Ku Qian)        C+                       

Hong Kong  France  (152 mi)  2016  d:  Wang Bing

This is what it’s like when you work far from home.

Following 2016 Top Ten List #6 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Feng Ai) (2013), with minimal budget and just a two or three-man crew, this is a rather sprawling work for a documentary, a gloomy portrait of a nationwide search for dead end jobs, yet a film that offers plenty of insights into the horrific working conditions in the Chinese textile business, but provides few answers, becoming a corrosive exposé of capitalism, as a country born in socialist economic equalization where everyone was supposedly equal suddenly comes to grips with the hardships of converting to an open market society, where everyone dreams of becoming rich, as workers are led to believe if they work hard they can make something of themselves.  Using only a camera to observe their efforts, what they discover is a demoralizing bleak reality where work is dull, hours are long, and pay is meager, as there aren’t enough hours in the day to actually make any money, feeling as though they’re caught in a pyramid scheme where only those at the top become rich, while all the rest are forced to fight for the remaining few scraps, subject to working 12 or 13 hours a day under grueling sweatshop working conditions with few breaks and no safety regulations in place, with foremen constantly asking them to work faster, getting fired if they don’t.  What this amounts to is every man or woman for themselves, as each is pitted against economically strapped bosses whose only interest is making money, where workers are little more than replaceable parts.  Few work regular hours, as they’re forced to work beyond a breaking point, so people work a few days and then quit, endlessly wandering in search of something better, but the same pattern repeats itself, making them mercenary workers for troubled times leading a solitary and nomadic existence.  Focusing on a few individuals who disappear as quickly as they appear, the migration pattern forces people from rural countryside areas into the cities seeking work opportunities, forced to live in dilapidated housing conditions, often provided by the employer, which resemble dormitory rooms with no doors, with no concept of privacy.  With barely any time to sleep, the pattern is the same, work, eat, and sleep, until you get fired or you can’t take it anymore.  It’s a demanding process, as Wang provides no narration, but expects viewers to sift through the raw footage, which comes across like authoritative reference material, with viewers coming away with a better understanding than they had before.  

Allowing scenes to play out at length, mostly what viewers pick up is from the incessant back and forth conversations among the workers during down time.  Occasionally it continues while working, with pop songs loudly playing over the whirr of sewing machines, where there’s no dress code, as men are seen working shirtless, likely under oppressively hot temperatures, repeating the same motions over and over again, accumulating piles at their work stations, growing weary from the monotony.  With a camera focusing its attention on just a few individuals, featuring smaller workshops rather than larger factories, a collective portrait emerges offering a fairly comprehensive view of those at the lower rungs of the ladder in Chinese society, where it would be difficult to place ourselves in their position.  The concept of unions doesn’t exist there, so there is no one looking out for the worker’s interests, no expectations for improvements, suggesting child labor is routine, where there’s little hope for the future.  Shot over a period of two years in Huzhou, a budding urban metropolis just two hours west of Shanghai, where most of the part-time jobs are, considered the center of Chinese economic development, where most employers are small bosses who are themselves frequently in trouble, as the people they do business with often shortchange them, causing cash flow problems where many are routinely owed money.  Since this is built into the system, cheating, underpaying, or exploiting those at the lowest end is typical, forced to lead marginal lives where they can barely survive.  This becomes evident not just to viewers, but to the workers themselves, who grow easily frustrated, often giving up and returning home to a more normal, less anxious-ridden life.  At least with family, everyone’s in it together, but out on their own, this solitary existence is a pathetic and meaningless struggle, not at all what they envisioned at the outset, thinking hard work would pay off.  While there are volcanic changes taking place in China, this film offers a merciless view of a pitiless existence for the poor, where lonely downtime on everpresent smartphones offer their only connection to an outside world that remains outside their grasp, doomed to a life of futility. 

What’s surprisingly missing is any discussion of education, as the poor remain the most uneducated.  At least in the West, there is a belief that the more education you receive, the better your prospects become in the job market.  This concept is altogether missing in Wang’s film, which only makes the continuing cycle of poverty more distressing, as what hope do they have that things will improve?  At the outset of the film we see families lying about the age of their children so they can receive government issued ID cards for work, despite being under-aged, thinking this is the best option for the family, who then sends them on a long and arduous train journey into the cities looking for work.  If they realized ahead of time that this was a sweatshop job opportunity, with little to be gained, perhaps these teenage kids would be better served by staying in school.  What we don’t see is the economic deprivation in the heartland where there are no economic opportunities anywhere, where the cities, by contrast, are bursting with opportunities, just none that pay well for the uneducated, who will remain exploited until they receive a better education.  Therein lies the real problem, as rural families are in such desperate straits.  Sending their under-aged kids with a misguided hint of hope is a sign of that desperation.  That may actually be a larger story than the one documented in this film, but remains unexplored.  Some of this may simply be the style of the filmmaker, who is not an essayist offering various points of view, but limits his films to the world that exists, with his camera capturing the people living in it, allowing viewers to project their own thoughts about what it means.  Surprisingly, the film won the Best Screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival, which is unusual for a film with no written screenplay whatsoever.  There is a single scene that stands out in this film, a heated argument in an open air shop between a husband and wife that goes on for about fifteen minutes, shot with no breaks, where the husband’s intensity reaches life-threatening proportions, grabbing her by the throat, threatening to kill her several times.  This all spills out onto the streets, where a dozen or so bystanders observe, but none intervene.  Instead there is a family friend that attempts unsuccessfully to mediate the crisis.  Viewers never learn what specifically caused this episode, though apparently she asked him for some money (suggesting money is the root of all evil), with the husband flying off the handle, boasting how many times in a week they fight, as if this takes the place of sex in their relationship, without which their lives would have no meaning, introducing domestic violence as yet another form of exploitation, with the abusive husband hoarding all the money.  There’s a curious moment when she turns to the cameraman (Wang Bing) and speaks directly to him, “Come on, let’s go to my sister’s.  Follow me.”  It’s a rare moment of stark honesty, an apparent break in the movie, where a glimpse of real-life seeps in, but there’s no hint of rescue from this dire portrait of forgotten lives and broken spirits.    

2016 Top Ten List #6 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Feng Ai)

Director Wang Bing

‘TIL MADNESS DO US PART (Feng Ai)              A-               
Hong Kong  France  Japan  (228 mi)  2013  d:  Wang Bing

I wasn’t sick until you locked me in here and made me sick.

Truly one of the saddest, most bleak experiences one could possibly imagine, as often documentary films may be evaluated based on the unfamiliarity with the territory, where here Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing takes us inside a locked Chinese mental institution in rural Zhaotong, located in China’s southwest Yunnan province, offering no commentary whatsoever, where in this film there’s little need for explanations.  Instead, he allows viewers from all over the world exclusive inside access to one of the world’s most troubling aspects, what to do with a country’s undesirables, where a nation may often be judged on how it treats its lowliest citizens.  Is there such a thing as auteurism in documentary film?  If there is, this kind of grim look at the raw edge of humanity is a rare human endeavor, as few would walk this same path.  What elevates this film is the uncompromising nature of the artist who made it, much like American documentarian Frederick Wiseman, as he continually holds himself to the highest standards, refusing to allow even a hint of artifice, creating a challenging and thoroughly demanding experience, which makes the film all the more relevant.  Admittedly the film is not for everyone, but it’s a beacon of light in the commercial wasteland of slight entertainment films that aren’t really worth a damn.  The degree of difficulty encountered is what sets this film apart, as it starts out with major obstacles to overcome.  Except for one brief sequence, the entire film takes place inside the cramped, claustrophobic confines of a locked institution, where few if any of the inmates would be considered certifiably crazy, but instead they remain locked up due to the difficulty they pose to their families or to the state, where it’s simply easier to remove them from conventional society and place them out of harm’s way.  It’s a frightening prospect, where few if any of these individuals feel they actually belong here, as all feel victimized by a terrible injustice to be involuntarily placed inside a locked facility that resembles a prison compound.  What crime did any of them commit to get there?  There are no lawyers or judges seen arguing their cases, or even therapists or counselors found anywhere on the premises.  For that matter, there are frightfully few doctors.  Instead the inmates are medicated daily by a medical team so that they are not a burden to the staff, where they are drugged to intentionally make them more compliant, spending much of their time sleeping, day and night, where there’s absolutely nothing to look forward to or feel good about, as these are the throwaways of Chinese society.

Some 200 men and women are housed in this enclosed facility that resembles a concrete prison block, men and women on separate floors, with open space in the middle, with inmates kept behind giant iron bars staring off into the distance, where the men house the top 3rd floor where there are sometimes 5 and 6 to a room, a chamber pot placed beneath each bed, where they are free to roam aimlessly through all hours of the day and night, circling the narrow grounds over and over again with no real place to go, as they are confined to one floor where they are largely ignored unless they’re found causing a disturbance, at which time they may be temporarily removed from the floor.  While other inmates suggest beatings take place off camera, one man is returned in handcuffs placed behind his back which clearly limits his ability to sleep it off or even go to the bathroom, contending his arms grow numb after awhile, but he is left to stew in his own discomfort well beyond the appeasement point despite his incessant pleas with authorities, signs of a sadistic, old-fashioned practice that remains thoroughly barbaric.  Indifference is the state of mind one constantly confronts, as inmates calling out for doctors are routinely ignored, while those sitting in a common TV room show a similar state of apathy and personal detachment, perhaps the most common affliction on the premises.  Another receives a potent shot that leaves him dazed and zombie-like afterwards, where at one point he remains fixed to the floor, barely able to move, despite constant ribbing from other inmates who tease him on his passivity, claiming he can’t handle the medicine.   What we see are men in soiled clothes, sleeping under heavy comforters in wool caps and heavy jackets, never once seen changing their clothes, where there’s no concept of personal hygiene, no one seen washing their hair or brushing their teeth, where we never once see any evidence of soap.  On the floor there is a common spigot of water for the entire floor to use, where at one point we see a naked man stroll past others to fill his chamber pot with water and splash it over himself, leaving a giant puddle on the floor, which is the closest thing we ever see to a shower. 

Mostly we see men huddled under heavy blankets, which is where they spend most of their time, where heads pop up from time to time to see what the commotion is all about, as the presence of a filmmaker on the floor does generate attention, where some in the TV room just stare straight at the camera, where there isn’t an ounce of emotion expressed on their faces, instead they are simply blank, expressionless faces.  The men hardly seem human much of the time, as the length of time spent with these inmates feels like an eternity, where the duration of their endless purgatory is an indicator of how their lives are spent, literally wasting away in this hellhole, where the facility is seen as a way station for ghosts passing in the night with no outlet or release.  The only director comment is the written identification of the name and length of time various inmates have spent in this facility, which are occasionally seen alongside certain individuals, where some have been there for as long as ten or twenty years.  Perhaps the ones that have it the hardest are the newest inmates, as they can’t believe how they ended up here, utterly stupefied by what lies in store for them, where one man stands alone looking out over the empty space whimpering in tears all night long.  One man is heard to confess that most men end up here due to fighting, where the police or a family member may have them permanently sent away.  One never sees any assessment of their sentences, instead they seem to be forgotten souls who are locked up and forgotten about, languishing alone for years or even decades.  One woman is seen regularly visiting her husband, but he’s so outraged that she would do this to him that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her, remaining belligerent throughout each visit, though clearly he’s aware of his thought process.  The man simply can’t forgive her for what she’s done.  She’s immune to the plight of his dehumanization, claiming he’s better off here, bringing him fresh fruit, then making him share with other hangers on, even some that he obviously despises, but what can he do?  In this facility, each inmate uniformly has no possessions.  When a package arrives from home, others hover around these lucky few like vultures, just waiting for their opportunity to take what they can, where the men are forced to guard and consume nearly everything all at once for fear it will be taken away from them.  There is simply no concept of privacy, instead what’s yours is also mine.

What remains off camera are the sexual practices of the men, where one would expect a great deal of forced homosexual sex, especially taking advantage of the weakest and most vulnerable among them.  One can only imagine the extent of this practice, which is likely identical to a prison population, as adult men of all ages are seen on the grounds.  One inmate has a regular conversation with a female inmate on the floor below, where they discuss sex regularly, often initiated by the woman, where he is able to walk down a stairway to a locked entranceway where she is housed, and they can kiss and touch each other through the iron gates, presumably even have sex.  The tip-off that this is happening is he removes the light bulb in that corner, where they can fondle each other under cover of darkness.  Throughout this lengthy film, lights are seen turning on and off in distant corridors, seemingly at random times, where one wonders how much of this is related to similar behavior.  No one ever seems to sleep in the dark, as lights remain on even at night while everyone’s sleeping, though one might expect lights are a necessity for filming, revealing the filth and constant grime, where part of the brutality is the stark ugliness, including the graffiti written on the walls.  Occasionally men cohabitate under the covers, where it appears some are regular partners, which are among the only moments of tenderness or affection seen throughout the film, while at other times men wishing to climb under the covers are soundly rejected.  In a rare inexplicable moment, one man goes home for the New Years holiday, which feels so out of place as inmates are routinely seen talking about family visits, but this feels like wish fulfillment, as no one ever actually leaves.  It’s the only moment where the viewer is spared having to share confined space with the inmates, feeling like a breath of fresh air, but once home with his wife, living in what looks like an open aired, abandoned building, they have absolutely nothing to say to one another.  Instead he’s forced to take long walks, where it’s apparent the camera is expanding the existing space, opening up to a world outside, but one that has little to offer, as his wife nags him that it might be time for him to return to the asylum.  Instead he walks away, obviously with no place to go, but he walks anyway, seen walking down a desolate highway late at night, where even in freedom, his only destination is to lose himself in utter oblivion.  Returning back to the facility afterwards, we briefly follow what appears to be a couple, showing an awkward, unorthodox nature, but also a unique closeness, where even in this dumping grounds, friendships develop.  In scrolling intertitles at the end, we learn that some of the men confined were caught murdering friends or family, yet they co-exist with alcoholics, men brought in by the police, or those with physical or mental impairments, including one who is obviously a mute, yet they are all treated with the same indifference and disdain, as the state doesn’t recognize a difference in their criminal history other than they are all considered undesirables, unfit to mix with society.