Only the River Flows (He bian de cuo wu)

 

Director Wei Shujun

Author Yu Hua

ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS (He bian de cuo wu)              B+                                                  China  (101 mi)  2023  d:  Wei Shujun

There’s no understanding fate; therefore I choose to play the part of fate.  I wear the foolish, unintelligible, face of a professional god.                                                                                        —Albert Camus, opening film quote from his play Caligula, 1944, part of his Cycle of the Absurd

Premiering in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival before becoming an arthouse box office hit in China, this heavily stylish, neo-noir murder mystery was shot on 16mm in the Zhejiang and Jiangxi Provinces, apparently the first mainland Chinese movie to be shot on film in years, where the film stock had to be scanned and printed in Taiwan, given a beautifully dark and murky look with desaturated colors by cinematographer Chengma Zhiyuan.  Reminiscent of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s neo-noir horror film CURE (1997), and the psychological crime thrillers of Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder (Salinui chueok) (2003) and Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai ri yan huo) (2014), this was adapted by Wei and Kang Chunlei, who also has a prominent role as a suspected murderer in the film, from Yu Hua’s morally ambiguous short story in his 1988 compilation Mistakes by the River.  A rapper turned filmmaker, having majored in sound recording from the Communication University of China in Beijing, Wei is the only post-90’s Chinese director to have been selected three times for the Cannes Film Festival, working with different combinations of screenwriters on every project, but his earlier film Striding Into the Wind (Ye Ma Fen Zong) (2020), ironically about a sound recordist, left something to be desired, an aimless and empty slacker comedy that was admittedly offbeat and quirky, not something you typically see from China.  Yet here what immediately grabs one’s attention is Emil Gilels coolly playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 27 No ... YouTube (6:10), the same pensive piece used in Edward Yang’s Yi Yi: A One and a Two... (2000), while the everpresent flashlight was also prominently featured in Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day (Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian) (1991).  Opening in December 1995, the film takes place in a small rural town with only 50 homes, where a murder has been committed along the shoreline of a nearby river, with a woman known locally as Granny No. 4 (Yang Cao) emerging as the victim.  By setting the film in this time period, occurring between the events of Tiananmen Square and the more recent economic boom, it evokes a period just before technology brought changes to forensic science, evidenced by boxed desktop computers, cassette tapes, transistor radios, Polaroid photographs, and incessant indoor smoking, a time when citizens led a repressed and silent life, when adherence to social norms was the most important thing, often pushing people to shame and secrecy, yet it was also a time when everyone did everything together, like eat, work, play, where socialization was done face to face, as opposed to now when everybody is isolated on their phones.  The police chief (Hou Tianlai) has given his squad a vast new headquarters in a broken down movie theater that has fallen into disuse (audience attendance in China was at an all-time low in the mid 90’s, so the government decided to allow screenings of Hollywood films), providing an office in what was the projection booth, surrounded by broken projectors and abandoned reels, symbolic, perhaps, that what we’re watching is not always reality, urging his lead detective, Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) to wrap things up quickly, as all eyes of the Party bosses are on this case, determined to prevent another serial killer like Andrei Chikatilo, who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated at least fifty-two women and children between 1978 and 1990.  More concerned with appearances and the incarceration of the presumed murderer than any motives that may have driven the crime, the Party assumes the role of the protector of society.  What really stands out, however, is the self-reflective quality of the film, a poignant character study of a man who’s finding it increasingly difficult to ascertain truth and justice, as the conventions of a detective movie start breaking down, placing us directly into the mindset of Ma Zhe, perhaps as much to do with existential angst as the solving of a murder, with offbeat flashes of wry humor and no traces of any graphic violence, while the investigation team is busily stabbing pig carcasses to see which blade may be the most similar to the murder weapon.  The camera revisits the scene of the crime from multiple perspectives, actually assuming the position of the murderer, with the victim showing no fear or apprehension by his presence.

Opening with a sequence in which a young boy dressed as a policeman and carrying a toy gun chases his friends around an upper floor through a maze of corridors of an abandoned building, opening and closing doors without finding anyone, until he reaches a door which dangerously opens into the emptiness of free-falling space, where there is a precipitous drop down to the rubble of a construction site below, with the child seen staring out into the abyss, a premonition, perhaps, of the detective coming up blank in his search for answers, yet otherwise having no relation to the story, and the boy is never seen again, with the unfinished construction reflective of a time when the rapid development across small villages had come to a sudden halt.  All the director’s titles invoke spatial metaphors, not really the point in making the film, but somehow the people in the story connect to that physical space, becoming a thematic point of emphasis that viewers are drawn into.  Essentially a police procedural movie, like a puzzle piece, with Ma Zhe examining the murder site, interrogating witnesses, always accompanied by his more excitable second in command, Xie (Tong Linkai), while meticulously exploring the clues, with the film playing out as a work in progress.  Of peculiar interest is the overly descriptive name of one of the potential suspects, known only as the “madman” (Kang Chunlei), who has suddenly disappeared, someone the victim adopted after becoming a widow, something of the village idiot, instantly becoming a person of interest, but it’s rare for a name to connote such an ominous nature.  When he’s found, Ma Zhe’s interrogation techniques are not what we suspect, as the “madman” never utters a word, described by others as harmless, so the detective attempts a non-threatening approach, silently hanging around, observing from a distance, gathering what information he can, while still pursuing the evidence.  His arrest somewhere around the midway point seems to suggest the case has been solved, with Ma Zhe’s seemingly satisfied superior pondering “Why haven’t you wrapped up your report yet?”  Indicating he still needs to sort things out, this opens the eyes of viewers, who suspect more is lurking in the darkness.  A woman’s purse is discovered near the crime scene, containing cassettes of familiar pop songs, but at some point a woman’s voice breaks in, where she is clearly speaking to a secret lover, as the town’s buried secrets emerge, exposing a couple in a secret relationship and a gay hairdresser who tries to hide his identity, yet seemingly wants to be arrested, already having a criminal record for public indecency, described here as “violations of morality.”  Running down these leads proves to be difficult, and may not have anything to do with the case, but they are part of the process of moving from suspect to suspect, where the stress takes its toll on Ma Zhe’s professional and private life, as his wife Bai, Chloe Maayan from Lou Ye’s SUMMER PALACE (2006), Bi Gan’s 2019 Top Ten List #6 Long Day's Journey Into Night (Di qiu zui hou de ye wan) (2018), and Diao Yinan’s The Wild Goose Lake (Nan Fang Che Zhan De Ju Hui) (2019), is a primary school teacher who is expecting a baby, with the ultra sound informing them that this child may be suffering from an incurable congenital defect and might have cognitive development problems.  Coming against the background of a mentally challenged suspect and possible murderer, also strained by the effects of China’s one-child policy, Ma Zhe suggests she have an abortion, but his wife thinks otherwise, turning into a debate about the value of life, becoming an aggravating source of tension between them, as he’s completely invested in the murder case, but she is seen calmly attempting to put together a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of a mother and child, yet in a fit of rage, he flushes a few of the remaining pieces down the toilet.  Moments later, however, we see the entire puzzle framed on the wall with no pieces missing, completely at odds with reality.  In more mundane moments of domestic tranquility, watching them slurp noodles with chopsticks is a thing to behold, taking us back to filmmakers Wong Kar-wai and Hou Hsiao-hsien, where it was a signature trademark with both. 

Essentially a crime drama, what’s unique is the contemplative, existential aspect of the protagonist, where the root of his discomfort is never established, but is apparent throughout.  While his trustworthy dedication and loyalty to the job are never questioned, it’s his intelligence and adherence to rational thought that stands out, as Ma Zhe has a moral outlook that rises above his coworkers, as he is capable of seeing things they don’t, with lingering questions that dig deep into his soul, creating a personal conflict, yet the film is completely invested in his character, with all the moral ambiguities, taking us on a journey that continually feels overly understated and discreet, delving into unexplored territory, as facts and evidence become interlinked with subjective memory, pure conjecture, and even guesswork.  After the prisoner escapes and more murders occur, including a student poet and a young boy, the “madman” again becomes the focal point, but something interesting happens, as the psychological mindset of the criminal and the lead detective somehow merge, with Ma Zhe so obsessed with the case that he begins seeing the suspect everywhere, contaminating his mind, burrowing deep into his subconscious, undermining his police instincts, creating an impressionistic, off-kilter montage that seemingly takes place entirely in his imagination.  A turning point occurs when he falls asleep in an empty movie theater and experiences a surrealistic, David Lynch Twin Peaks style dream sequence, with each of the murder victims speaking to him, concocting an entirely different conclusion to the case, driven by a projector that bursts into flames, becoming a metaphor for the fallibility of truth.  This unexpected aspect of the film is quite surprising, taking us where few films are willing to go, essentially five minutes of an homage to cinema like few contemporary directors still dare to do, with a lead protagonist unraveling into a descent of madness, obsession, and personal isolation, as it defies all rationality and deductive reasoning typically associated with police work, instead creating a muddled netherworld that feels more symbolic than real, yet all the evidence is re-evaluated in this new light, filtered through an altered mindset, where it’s hard to distinguish between what’s real and what’s imagined.  This only heightens the mystery, drawing viewers into a mystifying unknown, yet the film inscrutably builds Ma Zhe’s character throughout, rarely seen without a cigarette, becoming familiar to us, where we appreciate what we know about him, as his integrity and ardent professionalism continually stand out, becoming the driving force of the film, dominating all that we see, yet there’s something else happening here, an undercurrent of doubt, with no cut and dry answers, which elevates this into unexplored territory, expressing a disarming honesty, becoming an unfinished and incomplete portrait of moral authority, which is rare in a police procedural.  This plays into Yu Hua’s literary vision, an author known for his abstract writing style, whose stories portray disturbing personal realities of modern China, accentuating the interplay of diverse meanings, particularly between imagination and reality, innocence and guilt, blurring the lines between postmodernism and tradition, often venturing into the absurd, examining the dark side of human psychology and society in a non-traditional way, with subjective storylines that investigate and illustrate the challenges of cultural disintegration and identity loss.  Defiantly ambiguous, this absorbing yet completely atmospheric crime drama is heavily punctuated by images of abandoned and neglected houses, narrow streets, and torrents of rain, apparently washing the sins away, generating a suffocating atmosphere that blurs the lines between good and evil, but the film’s exploration of complex social and moral themes, such as fetishes, identity, and the intricacies of human emotions, play a significant role in allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions.  This is a uniquely innovative film built upon a classical film noir structure, which looks to the past as a way of trying to understand the present, becoming an impressionistic mosaic on the ephemeral nature of truth, which is one of the more dangerously perplexing problems of modernity.  

Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d'une chute)

 

Director Justine Triet

Triet accepting the Palme d'Or at Cannes

Triet with her cast at Cannes

Triet with actress Sandra Hüller

ANATOMY OF A FALL (Anatomie d'une chute)               B+                                                       France  (152 mi)  2023  d: Justine Triet

Sometimes a couple is kind of a chaos.           —Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller)

Courtroom dramas are their own entity, where it’s hard to sustain the tension throughout, though several films that come to mind are Carl Theodor Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), Sidney Lumet’s 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), Billy Wilder’s WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957), Otto Preminger’s ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959), which this title references, Robert Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d'Arc) (1961), Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and more recently Alice Diop’s Saint Omer (2022).  When a husband is found dead after a fall from a third story window, the French court charges the wife with murder, though the crime of passion is purely based on speculation, having no evidence actually tying her into a crime.  What’s perhaps most surprising about this film is it never answers the central question, where the entire film is something of a distracting Hitchcock MacGuffin, offering extraneous theories and clues that are besides the point, but there is a website set up at didshedoit.com (ANATOMY OF A FALL), which is uniquely shown onscreen before the story even begins asking viewers to vote on that very question.  Clearly no definitive answer is ever given.  Apparently actress Sandra Hüller, playing the wife, was unsure as well during the filming, according to a Q&A during the New York Film Festival, repeatedly asking the director if she was guilty, but no answer was forthcoming.  So instead of innocence or guilt, what dominates the film is the intelligence of the storytelling, subtly weaving together various strands of possibilities, becoming more of a character study revealing underlying motives, moving back in time for one powerful flashback sequence, with the camera strategically zooming in during key revelations, where the courtroom dissection of a marriage becomes a commentary on how news is disseminated through social media outlets, routinely delving into private lives, where lies become facts after repeated airings, with viewers unable to distinguish between the haze of prejudice and emotions that intentionally cloud our judgment, ultimately becoming an exposé on the fallibility of perception, where who and what’s to be believed remains an open question, even in a courtroom.  The French courtroom is nothing like what we see in America, where lawyers run the show with legal objections, as it’s more conversational, where the accused is allowed to speak directly to the judge, prosecutor, and stream of witnesses, feeling more like a democratic process.  The film won the coveted Palme d’Or 1st Place prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where Justine Triet is the third female director to win the prize, though to be honest, the festival has had more than a decade of controversial choices, many of which are highly questionable, in particular the last two years, where the distinction of such a prestigious award doesn’t often translate to box office success, as the theater was nearly empty when recently seen, yet in France it had the best opening of any Palme d’Or film since Laurent Cantet’s The Class (Entre Les Murs) (2008).  This is the kind of film where you may wonder what all the fuss is about, but the set-up is unusual, to say the least, as it’s a French court with a German suspect who speaks English, where it meanders for an inordinately long time in ludicrous speculation, as the police investigation offers no clear picture, so the courtroom drama is a whirlwind of theatrical suppositions, all intended to sway public opinion, yet what it actually reveals is how difficult it is to get at the philosophical question of what is truth.  For instance, the prosecution spends plenty of time on an argument the married couple had the day prior to the death, which gets into heated emotions, none of which shed any light on any potential murder, but does get inside the head of the characters, where it must be said that far less than 1% of these kinds of escalated marital tensions actually lead to murder, so how much weight can anyone give to such an operatic theory, yet it becomes a central thread of a courtroom drama that delves into excruciatingly uncomfortable personal moments that could just as easily have been called Anatomy of a Marriage.  It’s unlikely anyone will be swayed by these courtroom arguments, which may actually be the point, becoming a metaphor for all the biased rhetoric that fills the airwaves, mirroring the media frenzy that surrounds the case, where at some point you just want to shut it off, as it can get pretty disgusting, creating visceral anger when even the most reputable news outlets resort to this kind of subterfuge.   

The setting is an isolated mountain chalet in the Grenoble region of the French Alps heavily submerged in snow, as we see successful German author Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) being interviewed at home by graduate student Zoé (Camille Rutherford), yet despite the relaxed conversation, it is disrupted and eventually stopped by the unusually loud music coming from the upstairs loft where the unseen husband Samuel is busily working on repairs, yet this wildly exotic Caribbean steel drum music playing on a loop cranked up to high volume becomes a dominant theme of the film, a 2008 remix, which is an instrumental cover of rapper 50 Cent’s 2003 hit Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band - PIMP - YouTube (3:14), which couldn’t be more out of place in the snow covered Alpine region, yet literally swirls around in your head for days afterwards.  While it’s not immediately evident, Sandra has a blind son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), who goes out on a sunny mountain walk with his guide dog Snoop (who figures prominently in this movie), yet when they return they discover the dead body lying in the snow, which sets the story in motion.  An autopsy reveals his head wound was inflicted before his body hit the ground, putting Sandra under suspicion, as we see her conferring with her attorney Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud) before any charges are filed, with thoughts of arguing it was a self-inflicted suicide, as that is their best courtroom defense.  Because her son is blind, there’s not really a witness that can shed light on what led up to this event, other than what he heard, so police call in experts to summarize their best case scenarios.  This is a film that the less you know ahead of time works to its advantage, as the film is chalk full of revelations that are completely surprising and in some cases utterly transfixing, becoming more of a puzzle piece, with a lot of missing pieces.  To start with, let’s mention the way the director utilizes the camera, shot mostly in a cinéma vérité aesthetic by Simon Beaufils, especially in the beginning when they’re investigating the crime scene, as the characters seem intrinsically linked together by the framing and staging, offering little hints and clues that leave viewers questioning the findings.  Yet most importantly, this is a disturbing yet compelling study that values character over plot, where it’s that personalized viewpoint that makes this film so resonant, with powerful performances that are off the charts.  We’ve seen Sandra Hüller before in Thomas Stuber’s German film In the Aisles (In den Gängen) (2018), but most especially in Marin Ade’s hilariously unorthodox and thoroughly confounding 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann (2016), also appearing in Triet’s earlier film Sibyl (2019) and Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023), where she exudes strength and vulnerability, yet it’s her intelligence and literary sense of self-awareness that elevates this into something more than it appears, yet there’s also an inescapable feeling that we can never fully trust her.  By allowing us to get a glimpse of her history, we realize just how complex a person she is, and that aspect alone really makes this film shine.  It’s a captivating mystery where you never really know what’s going to happen next, as a lengthy introductory sequence familiarizes us with the situation, and it comes as no surprise that she’s charged with a murder, but it’s the courtroom scenes that lure viewers into the heart of the matter.  While there’s legal banter that goes back and forth, as each side attempts to undercut the other side’s credibility, it gets decidedly different when the flamboyant prosecution resorts to a personalized smear campaign targeting the accused, which seems morally unethical, particularly when there is no criminal evidence associated with this line of attack, so this character assassination takes us into unprecedented territory for courtroom dramas.  Triet introduces a role reversal, as women have always been at home, while men have been free to explore the world through their careers and share ideas with others.  Women simply didn’t have that time, as they were too busy taking care of domestic tasks.  To find a female character who writes books, who is in the position to take the time to write, means that it’s the man who sacrifices in order to meet her needs, and he’s none too happy about it.  The prosecutor drives this point home, becoming a focal point of male resentment, which leads him into outlandish accusations suggesting it’s all her fault, contending she drove him to his death, but Sandra is having none of it.  Ironically, in death, Samuel finally gets the attention he never received during his lifetime.  

While some believe there are pacing issues, that the film drags in places due to its length, yet what happens in that courtroom is riveting, where the intensity level leaves no avenue of escape, as you’re stuck there, literally at the mercy of the filmmaker, where a relentless assault takes place before our eyes, which is not just distasteful, especially when the sexist prosecutor, Antoine Reinartz from Robin Campillo’s 2017 Top Ten List #8 BPM (Beats Per Minute (120 battements par minute), mocks the accused for suggesting any scenario other than his own, which, of course, is pure conjecture, so there’s this morally superior, omniscient voice of God offering judgement and condemnation, joined by well-rehearsed witness testimony to support his contention, with the accused a bit beffudled by it all, as it makes little sense to her, Anatomy Of A Fall - Justine TRIET Clip [Cannes] YouTube (57 seconds).  Viewers may feel the same way until a pivotal scene alters our perception, not only about what’s taking place in the courtroom but about the film as well, as there’s an extended flashback argument between the husband and wife that is wrought with tension, as both are writers, so the creative process is cleverly introduced into the film through a contentious relationship, where creative frustration, artistic ambition, and jealousy have a way of tearing them apart, feeling like something out of Bergman’s exhaustingly detailed television drama Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973), which sheds light on a decades worth of emotional upheavals that are shown in excruciating detail.  This film takes an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Samuel (Samuel Theis) and Sandra’s conflicted relationship, as she reveals secrets about her past life and her turbulent relationship with her husband, where sexual and artistic insecurity play a large part, planting obstacles as an excuse for failure, which are only magnified in this trial and put in the spotlight, as Sandra exhibits both a sense of inner calm, while also going full throttle in moments of explosive rage.  She is right, however, that none of these singular moments alone define a person, as an entire life and marriage constitute a string of moments, where the sum of the parts provide a more accurate portrait.  Nonetheless, the prosecutor bases much of his argument on the underlying motivation behind Sandra’s written works, singling out specific texts where a character despises her weak husband and fantasizes about killing him, suggesting it draws from her own life and amounts to an autobiographical confession, though she exclusively writes works of fiction.  This exact same thing happens in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s LA VÉRITÉ (1960), as she is being judged not on the evidence but on her morality, for which she remains thoroughly unapologetic, as she is attacked for being promiscuous and bisexual, something that would be unthinkable for male writers, exposing inherently misogynistic prejudices in the legal system.  The extensive time in the claustrophobic courtroom allows viewers to get the full impact of this extraordinary scene, where the range of emotion continually escalates while the marital arguments and counterarguments resemble that of the trial.  Daniel sits through this courtroom drama and is exposed to these same revelations that the audience hears, but this is his family, so hearing some of the ugly secrets for the very first time has a strange effect on him, and his unexpected response says so much about this film, as he has perhaps the most superlative moment in the film, which evokes a dramatic silence of profound implications, yet he’s just an 11-year old kid, played with admirable fragility, where his witness testimony sends shivers through the spine for its utter clarity and innocence of spirit.  He’s at the heart of the film as well, becoming associated with a familiar Spanish theme that he furiously plays on the piano, Leyenda by Albeniz in HD - Andres Segovia YouTube (7:00), but is sidelined for a good part of it as a passive spectator, where the crux of the film may be seen through his eyes, so when he speaks up the results are staggering.  Written by the director with her partner Arthur Harari, having two children together, while also sharing writing credits on her previous film Sibyl (2019), Triet is a member of the French gender equality group Collectif 50/50, which also includes Jacques Audiard, Bertrand Bonello, Alice Diop, Céline Sciamma, Léa Seydoux, and Rebecca Zlotowski, and in her controversial awards speech at Cannes, she criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s highly unpopular change to the country’s retirement age and his suppression of the mass protests from the pension reform protest movement, as France has one of the lowest retirement ages of any industrialized country, while also having one of the lowest pension rates of any European country.  Perhaps because of this, Triet’s film was passed over as the French selection for Best International Film, instead choosing Vietnamese-born director Tran Anh Hung’s culinary romance THE TASTE OF THINGS starring French favorites Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel.