2016 Top Ten List #2 Kaili Blues (Lu bian ye can)

the past is displayed by graffiti on the walls

 

director Bi Gan

 

KAILI BLUES (Lu bian ye can)                    A                    

China  (113 mi)  2015  d:  Bi Gan

佛告须菩提：尔所国土中，所有众生，若干种心，如来悉知。何以故？

如来说：诸心皆为非心，是名为心。所以者何？

须菩提！过去心不可得，现在心不可得，未来心不可得。

The Buddha said the living beings in all these world systems have many different minds which are all known to the Tathagata. Why?

Because the minds the Tathagata speaks of are not minds, but are (expediently) called minds. And why?

Because, Subhuti, neither the past, the present nor the future mind can be found.

—opening quote from the Chinese Diamond Sūtra, a central text of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and the oldest dated printed book in the world, dated May 11, 868 

Best film of the year so far, literally an enthralling experience, one of the few outstanding films that doesn’t really feature a developed central character, or impressive acting skills, yet demonstrates a unique ability to capture the viewer’s imagination through the sheer verve and originality of the film style.  Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and Best New Director at the 2015 Taipei Golden Horse Festival, the youngest recipient of that honor at the age of 26, also the Best First Feature and Best Emerging Director at the Locarno Festival, this intensely poetic film could be described as an existential journey into the subconscious that passes through a spiritual netherworld of the past, the present, and the future, seamlessly merged into an impressionistic mosaic that may exist in an altogether mystical realm.  Completely unpretentious and profoundly meditative, though some may find it slow arthouse cinema, as there’s no action to speak of, with much of it existing only in the head, where the entire film could just as easily be imagined, the director uses several members of his own family as feature characters, using exclusively nonprofessional actors except two characters that appear late in the film, Yu Shixue (the older Weiwei) and Guo Yue (Yangyang).  What’s particularly intriguing is the film style resembles gritty social realism, for the most part, yet is also a ghost story, where there is a recognizable storyline throughout, yet the film moves in and out of dream and memory, darkness and light, and various modes of travel while encountering misty mountain roads, passing through extreme fog banks, where it’s easy to get lost along the way.  Passages of obscure poetry are read by a narrator, written by the writer and director himself who is from the town of Kaili, yet these poems are somewhat obtuse and ungraspable, not necessarily offering insight or commentary on the images onscreen, yet remain highly atmospheric, offering suggestions of an almost omniscient state of mind that exists outside our knowledge.  Like Homer’s Odyssey, there are extended travels, mostly by motorbike, often broken into mini-sections, where the handheld camera has its own inclinations, seemingly with a mind of its own, actually becoming the most prominent character, as the perspective follows the camera’s roving and constantly inquisitive eyes, where the film is not so much about the journey as the detours taken along the way.   

Little effort is exerted to distinguish one character from another, where the director is not going for character development, as only the barest outline of a story exists, with details only sporadically released, if at all, often quite randomly through casual conversation, instead establishing the mood is paramount, very similar to the lush tropical eroticism depicted in Wong Kar-wai’s DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990), yet without the sexual overtones.  Set in the Guizhou province, we are introduced to Chen Sheng (Chen Yongzhong, the director’s uncle, who was associated with the gang triads, managed a gambling house in Myanmar, and gone to prison, but now works in a factory leading an ordinary life), a doctor in a small rural clinic nestled under the mountains in the rain-drenched town of Kaili that he shares with another elderly female physician, Guanglin, (Zhao Daqing, his grandmother’s hospital roommate), who declares at the outset, “It’s just another normal day.”  Stringing together a series of ordinary moments, the opening credits are read aloud by Chen Sheng while simultaneously matching Chinese script is shown on an old black and white television screen showing street scenes from Kaili in the background, acknowledging the poems in the film come from his anthology called Roadside Picnic, the identical title of a Russian science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky used in Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979).  Much like Chen has flashbacks of his dead wife Zhang Xi, the old physician dreams of a former lover from the Cultural Revolution, but hasn’t kept in contact, encouraging Chen to visit him as she’s heard he is severely ill, providing him with a shirt, an old photograph, and a musical cassette tape to offer him.  Chen’s brother is something of a criminal layabout known as Crazy Face (Xie Lixun, a pigfeed salesman in real life), usually found in gambling dens or pool halls, leaving his young son Weiwei (Luo Feiyang, the director’s stepbrother) alone to fend for himself, where there’s nothing in the refrigerator and the television only has a single channel.  As a result, Chen looks in on him from time to time, taking an interest that is altogether missing from his own father, even offering to adopt him, but Crazy Face warns Chen to butt out of his personal business.  Mysteriously, Weiwei disappears, with Chen thinking his brother may have sold him for money.  Instead, the child was sent to Dangmai to visit one of Crazy Face’s criminal friends, Monk (Yang Zhuohua), who is also a watchmaker and a collector of hundreds of watches, viewed in a remarkable, mindboggling scene with an upside-down train passing just outside their window, KAILI BLUES - Clip #1: “The Upside-Down Train” on Vimeo (1:59).  Since he promised his mother on her deathbed that he would look after Weiwei, he sets out to find him, hopping on a motorbike that we see twisting through the mountain curves with the lush green foliage in the background, also riding old trains, like those seen here, The Iron Ministry (update) (2014), reminiscent of the brilliant railway scenes from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Dust in the Wind (Lian lian feng chen) (1986), reflecting a timeless, stream-of-conscious imagery where it’s evident a journey has begun, KAILI BLUES TRAILER (with english subtitles) on Vimeo(1:52). 

As if on cue, the title sequence appears more than 30-minutes after the film begins.  Accompanied by the extraordinary music of Lim Giong, who’s been composing the music for Hou Hsiao-hsien ever since GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE (1996), which happens to be a big influence on this film, especially the punk sensibility of the gangsters, also the films of Jia Zhang-ke since THE WORLD (2004), the two artists brilliantly collaborate on producing a dreamy, intoxicating mood that features lusheng pipes, a traditional music instrument of the Miao culture, an ethnic minority (including the director) in China that happen to inhabit the town of Kaili, producing a sound Chen associates with his dead mother.  While this may well be what Gaspar Noé had in mind by entering the spiritual realm of The Tibetan Book of the Dead in ENTER THE VOID (2009), or Alexander Sokurov’s ORIENTAL ELEGY (1996), this is more of a shared communion between the living and the dead, where thoughts, feelings, and memories intersect in a void of timelessness, where all happen to occur simultaneously in one’s head.  On the train ride to Dangmai, Chen is the only passenger, getting lost in a dreamlike reverie where he is continually haunted by ghosts of the past, where nine years earlier he ran with the triad gangs and was imprisoned for avenging a particularly gruesome murder of triad boss Monk’s son, forced to suffer his own indignities, none greater than being locked up at the time his mother and wife died, unable to regain what time was lost.  Up until this point, characters often speak of dreams, mirror reflections are seen in motorcycle rear view mirrors, storage areas resemble cavernous caves, alcohol is carried in plastic jugs, waterfalls are just off a back porch, trains flow through walls, there are constant rumors of a wild man sighting in the vicinity, repeated references to a character named Pisshead, poolhalls, hanging laundry, foggy roadways, recurring images of a disco ball, while mechanical equipment always seems to break down.  Suddenly the film turns and focuses on two entirely different characters, Yangyang, an attractive girl who works as a seamstress with aspirations to be a Kaili travel guide, followed incessantly by an older Weiwei on his motorbike (constantly breaking down), who obviously has a major crush on her, and seems to be a more grown up version of the child previously seen.  Yet there is Chen not showing any familiar recognition riding on the back of his bike searching for Miao musicians who can play the lusheng.  This is the beginning of a miraculous  41-minute unbroken shot that is the centerpiece of the film, incredibly shot by cinematographer Wang Tianxing, including 360-degree pans, following winding roads, multi-leveled streets and pathways, moving down alleyways, where the past is displayed by graffiti on the walls, climbing stairs, peeking into the open space of tiny shops, listening in on conversations, crossing rivers and walkways, moving back and forth between characters before finally discovering musicians playing a street concert, a virtuoso existential experience completely altering the viewer’s perspective.      

The hand lit up by fate

Erects forty-two windmills for me

The steady flow of nature

The universe stems from balance

The nearby planets stem from echoes

Swamps stem from the sleeplessness of the land

Wrinkles stem from the sea

Ice stems from wine.

The emergency light on the staircase of time

Seeps into the gaps in the stones where I write my poems.

There is bound to be one who will return

To fill an empty bamboo basket with love.

There is bound to be a crumbling of clay

As the valley unfolds like an opening fist. 

Easily the most startling juxtaposition of the entire film comes when Chen hitches a ride into the town of Zhenyuan on the back of a pick-up truck of young Miao musicians who only play pop music.  Passing through a narrow road of pedestrians on roadways and buildings under construction, it’s clear at this point that something startling is happening with the single shot, yet the intense social realism expressed throughout is completely broken by the playing of a children’s song called “Little Jasmine,” a popular Taiwanese song of the late 1970’s, aka Xiao Moli ( 小 茉莉 ), or Small Jasmine, Une des chansons de Kaili Blues (merci Panda Ly) - Facebook (2:42), reminiscent of the train sequence over water in Miyazaki’s SPIRITED AWAY (2001), especially in its ability to transport viewers into a uniquely different dimension, like a parallel universe or an alternate spiritual plane.  Incredibly, while waiting for Yangyang to mend a shirt that had lost buttons on route, Chen discovers a hairdresser named Zhang Xi who looks exactly like his dead wife.  Unable to wait, he grabs the shirt Guanglin offered for her long-lost friend, chasing after Zhang Xi, getting a haircut, telling her the sad story of his life, while Yangyang teasingly ignores her admirer, takes a boat across the river, practicing her tour guide speech along the way, with Weiwei offscreen helping her with forgotten lines, as he has it memorized, always following her from a distance, crossing a suspension bridge and down several pathways until she finally agrees to walk with him, all heading for the street concert of the young musicians seen earlier, who can be heard, but just barely audible throughout much of this extended journey, growing louder as they move closer.  Yangyang, Weiwei, Zhang Xi, and Chen all find themselves together on the street listening to the band.  Perhaps out of sorrow for what he’s lost, Chen sings a horribly out of key version of “Little Jasmine,” which he learned in prison to sing to Zhang Xi, discovering this one is already married, offering her the musical cassette he’s been carrying.  Driving Chen to a river ferry that will take him to the Zhenyuan Hotel, Weiwei offers a mystical story about wild men and altering time, with Chen only then learning his name is Weiwei, a moment where Chen appears to have aged considerably, concluding the lengthy shot with the remark, “It’s like being in a dream.”  Finally meeting up with Monk the watchmaker, Chen intends to collect Weiwei, but the old gangster has grown fond of him, wishing to keep him for just a few more days, as the child has blended in complete harmony with the rest of the kids in the countryside, exhibiting a playful spirit, where Chen can only stare at him across a distance, realizing that perhaps his nephew is completely happy.  Featuring an extraordinary sound design and exceptional music, where in the second half, perhaps turning the clock backwards or ahead, character names become mirror images of previous characters, not so much a futuristic shift in time as an example of how minds merge memory from the past into the present with little distinguishing difference, where both may appear in the same thought, capable of evoking powerful emotions.  By the time that Chen reaches his partner’s friend, all he has left to offer is the old photograph, discovering too late that he has already died.  Part of the strongest feeling throughout is that of regret, where the film recreates a multitude of inexpressible sorrows, perhaps best expressed near the end by a funeral procession of aging and nearly forgotten Miao musicians paying tribute to the man in the photograph, their honored teacher.    

All twists and turns are concealed in dense flocks of birds

The sky and seas cannot see them

But with dreams they become visible

Moments where all has gone topsy-turvy.

All memories are concealed in similar days

The spiders of my heart try to emulate the way humans decorate their homes

Even nomads with instruments cannot express

How close such gazes are to those of our ancestors

How close they are to the starlit sky.

Another 70’s Taiwanese pop song, “Farewell,” composed by Li Tai-hsiang, an indigenous member of the Amis Taiwanese aboriginal community, is sung over the closing credits, 唐曉詩 & 李泰祥 - 告別 / Farewell (by Hsiao-Shih Tang & Tai-Hsiang Lee) YouTube (5:27), suggesting, among other things, that despite all the artistic accolades, the film is making a very visible and concerted effort to support Chinese ethnic minorities.  Considering the history of social justice in China, or lack thereof, all one can say is Bravo, as this is truly conscious-raising material.     

The film may be seen in its entirety here:  路边野餐Kaili Blues HD720p 完整版高清完美音轨- YouTube  (1:49:57).

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin)

WINGS OF DESIRE (Der Himmel über Berlin)                   A-                   

Germany  France  (127 mi)  1987  d:  Wim Wenders

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1929

When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions. Why am I me and not you? Why am I here and not there? When did time begin and where does space end? Isn’t life under the sun just a dream? Isn’t what I see, hear, and smell only the illusion of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn’t before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?

–—Damiel (Bruno Ganz)

One of the remarkable aspects of this film is that it was made “prior to” the fall of the Berlin Wall, which came two years after the film’s release, yet it also feels so relevant to the aftermath of 9/11, a time when turmoil, authoritarianism, and terrorism had such a significant impact in our lives and we were trying to “see” the world in a different light.  For the Düsseldorf-born Wenders, a specialist in existential road movies like Kings of the Road (Im Lauf der Zeit) Road Trilogy Pt. 3 (1976), this highly acclaimed fantasy love story was a sort of homecoming after eight years in the United States.  Winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, enter Wim Wenders and this film offering the aerial vantage point of two angels hovering over the city of West Berlin, Bruno Ganz as Damiel and Otto Sander as Cassiel, who existed before Berlin was even a city, before the presence of humans, men in dark overcoats and pony tails with no visible wings, yet they’re perched atop cathedrals, sitting on statues or on the ledges of skyscrapers high above the city, like gargoyles observing the citizenry below.  Invisible to the naked eye, seen only through the innocence and naïveté of children, their presence sensed by the blind, they freely move about the city at will, eavesdropping on the inner thoughts of humans, but excluded from matters of the flesh or mortality, offering comfort, like a light touch on the shoulder or putting their arms around someone in need, though whatever grace they can offer is only momentary, as they can’t prevent fate from happening, as evidenced by a man intent on jumping off a roof to his death.  Witness to the most tragic human events since the beginning of time, there is a meditative somberness and pervasive melancholy felt throughout, as death and misery is their constant companion, where they see and hear everything, perhaps the answer to silent prayers, as the angels lend a glimmer of hope where before there was only darkness, Motorcycle Accident--"Wings of Desire"-HQ with English subtitles YouTube (2:58). As they meet periodically and recall the events of the day, pointing out particularly elevated moments that stand out, according to Cassiel their job is to “observe, collect, testify, preserve,” where they are God’s witness to the events that transpire below. 

As evidenced by the documentary style cinematography of Henri Alekan, who much earlier shot Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND HE BEAST (1946), this is an abstract travelogue of Berlin, a near plotless, highly stylized, avant-garde film that seems to meander through the voices of the living, as random thoughts race across the screen, from strangers populating an airplane to residents inside apartment buildings, even those sitting inside the same room, or passengers in cars or busses to passing trains, including pedestrians on the street, all given a collective stream-of-conscious voice that provides the internal poetry of the film.  The movement of the camera seems to signify the constant movement of the two angels, from aerial shots on high, to the tops of tenement buildings, with a view of children playing in the courtyards below, where vast industrial landscapes reveal a wasteland of emptiness and unused space, traversed by the bearers and collectors of lost souls, a mentally anguishing job that has no beginning and no end, though as we see in their repeated visits to public libraries, there appear to be many more just like them, as there are others that show signs of recognition, while also hanging around after hours when only the cleaning crew is present.  The ambitious scope of this film is highly unusual, where the length plays into a kind of testament of time, where the filmmaker establishes a unique rhythm that moves throughout the infinite scope of history, including images of bombs dropping in World War II as we watch the city burning while Nazi officers talk back and forth among themselves, where we also see Jews identified by the emblematic star, as Damiel reveals some of them stole food from the dogs in the camps.  While expressed in a visually impressionistic mosaic, the film itself becomes an experiment in perception, more like a dreamlike reverie, given an equally eclectic musical design from Jürgen Knieper (some of which can be heard here:  wings of desire soundtrack), the two angels meet every day to compare notes, where the largesse of history stands in stark contrast to the smaller more intimate moments of ordinary life, where they’ll pick out distinguishing fragments of humanity. 

The Films of Wim Wenders: Cinema as Vision and Desire  Robert Phillip Kolker and Peter Beicken, 1993

Perhaps it is a sign of Wenders’ discomfort with the class-determined particularities of everyday life that leads him to fantasize a heavenly perspective in Wings of Desire. Providing the angelic point of view, the camera descends; it does not observe its subjects as they see themselves, but rather as they are themselves subject to an extraterrestrial force. Wenders’ “symphony of a great city” is conducted from on high. His angels are caring but inescapably condescending. When he plies the angels’ perspective, he creates a well-imagined, even moving trope of a city battered by history, torn by politics, and guarded by fantastic figures, who see and hear everyone’s distress. In these sequences, his camera is more supple and sinuous than it has been, swooping from great heights, entering apartment rooms, wandering and drifting through the city, making divine cinema. But in the end, neither the city nor its inhabitants remain the central object of his gaze. The film is diverted by a quasi-mystical meditation on romantic love, constructed through the conceit of a male angel who desires to slip out of eternity, into time, sexuality, and domestic love.   

As Damiel and Cassiel traverse the city, the ease of their friendship is apparent as they discuss being there for the creation of the earth, describing ancient events like they just happened yesterday, where they have literally seen and heard it all, where one might think they’d remain detached and aloof, yet they’re like spiritually advanced monks, sentient creatures themselves, perhaps best expressed by extraordinary feelings of empathy, where they are grief-stricken by a man haunted by the atrocious things witnessed during the war, or emotionally devastated when the man ultimately throws himself off a roof.  To this end, Damiel has second thoughts about living an eternal existence, “Sometimes I get fed up with my spiritual existence.  Instead of forever hovering above, I’d like to feel some weight to me, to end my eternity, and bind me to earth.”  Their perception is expressed in black-and-white, but as they are constantly making intimate contact with the living, the screen quickly moves to color to identify their world, which distinguishes the angel’s reality from the human point of view, a change that occurs throughout the film, reminiscent of a similar tactic used in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1946).  However, as angels are privy to human thoughts, this leads to an additional shifting perception that occurs when their thoughts merge, as Damiel becomes fascinated with the dreams of a trapeze artist named Marion, none other than Solveig Dommartin, the film’s real discovery, a unique presence who happened to be the director’s girlfriend at the time, who seamlessly moves from French to English to German in the film, literally diminishing any need for established boundaries, becoming a living personification of a European ideal of merging cultures.  While she soars above the ground as he does, even wearing a pair of feathery wings, she expresses her fears and desires, including a palpable fear of falling, while also lamenting her continued isolation, easily befriending or socializing with others, yet remaining uniquely alone.  Damiel’s fascination with her can be seen at an underground dance club, Wings of Desire - Crime & The City Solution - Six Bells Chime YouTube (4:21), where her existential anguish is a key to understanding the film, confessing “I waited an eternity to hear a loving word.”  Interspersed throughout the entire film is a recurring poem from co-writer Peter Handke that opens with the familiar refrain, “When the child was a child” from “Song of Childhood,” each time representing the exuberant curiosity of a young mind, introducing a theme on becoming, offering clever variations on that theme that runs throughout the picture.     

Equally curious is the use of American actor Peter Falk, playing himself, famous at the time for his role as a deviously persistent detective in the long-running television show Columbo (1971 – 2003), where he’s humorously identified on several occasions, even by Marion, where Wenders uses the comedy to alter the seriousness of tone, adding levity to what amounts to a metaphysical experience.  Falk is in rare form as an actor brought to Berlin for a historical return to the concentration camps of World War II, with extras standing around wearing Nazi uniforms and actors playing Jewish prisoners, adding old newsreel footage, resurrecting the ghosts of forgotten memories, showing a vivid connection with the present and the past, but also the clever use of a film within a film.  Falk is mostly seen standing around waiting for his scenes, where he’s prone to taking long walks through a graffiti-laden industrial wasteland, where off to the side is food hut selling coffee.  Falk surprises Damiel by being able to sense his presence, offering his hand in friendship, even though there’s no one there, yet assuredly adding, “I’m a friend.  Compañero.”  It’s the plain-speaking, folksy style of Falk that eventually compels Damiel to trade in his wings for mortality, describing how great it is to smoke a cigarette, drink a cup of coffee, or slap your hands together when they are cold.  Once descended to earth, there’s no guarantee he’ll ever find his ethereal aerialist, especially after the circus disbands and moves on for the season, leaving each of them as disconnected souls in the heart of a thriving city.  With the tug of romanticism in the air, and the suddenly upbeat spirits of Damiel who’s experiencing the joys of being alive, seeing colors for the first time, he initially runs into Falk on the set, sharing a revelatory moment, sending Damiel off on his own to discover his own adventures.  Of all places, the two (Damiel and Marion) finally meet in the Berlin underground, listening to the music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, an Australian artist who lived in Berlin during the 80’s, both drifting to the bar, literally sensing the presence of one another as if they’ve known each other all their lives.  At the time a divided city, the film is a meditation on Berlin’s past, present, and future, a dream of unification, made with a minimalist script, where it’s ultimately an atmospheric mood piece about experiencing a yearning for a deep-seeded connection with life and love, where the world takes on a magical and hypnotic allure, where life is literally an awakening.  Marion has an exhilarating soliloquy at the end that feels like a mad rush of a dream just before one awakes.

Now it’s serious. At last it’s becoming serious. So I’ve grown older. Was I the only one who wasn’t serious? Is it our times that are not serious? I was never lonely neither when I was alone, nor with others. But I would have liked to be alone at last. Loneliness means I’m finally whole. Now I can say it as tonight, I’m at last alone. I must put an end to coincidence. The new moon of decision. I don’t know if there’s destiny but there’s a decision. Decide! We are now the times. Not only the whole town—the whole world is taking part in our decision. We two are now more than us two. We incarnate something. We’re representing the people now. And the whole place is full of those who are dreaming the same dream. We are deciding everyone’s game. I am ready. Now it’s your turn. You hold the game in your hand. Now or never. You need me. You will need me. There’s no greater story than ours, that of man and woman. It will be a story of giants... invisible... transposable... a story of new ancestors. Look. My eyes. They are the picture of necessity, of the future of everyone in the place. Last night I dreamt of a stranger... of my man. Only with him could I be alone, open up to him, wholly open, wholly for him. Welcome him wholly into me. Surround him with the labyrinth of shared happiness. I know... it’s you.

  

With Claire Denis working for the final time as Wenders’ assistant director, the closing title reads, “Dedicated to all the former angels, but especially to Yasujirō, François, and Andrei.”  That would be Ozu, Truffaut, and Tarkovsky.