Review(s): DVD Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstr
Rub on the Schmaltz and Enjoy
This is a beautiful and well-crafted film, mostly warm and enjoyable but with an overlying tinge of sadness. It focuses on two tragedies of post-war China -- the Cultural Revolution (in particular the policy of sending educated children from the city for "re-education" in the country) and the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river, equally rapacious in its destruction of China's past, rich historical and archaeological sites, as well as environmental and social upheaval. Inevitably present as background, the focus is not politics, but rather the story of two young men in difficult times and how they cope, even thrive; and of the beautiful young woman they meet.
It is 1971, and Ma and Luo are eighteen, modern children of the city elite, sent to a remote and mountainous village for re-education as sons of disgraced parents (Luo's father had filled one of Chiang Kai-shek's teeth!). The peasants, at least a hard-core radical chief, don't much like these soft parasites they have been stuck with, and they are given with the hardest and dirtiest jobs such as hauling "nightsoil" to the fields for fertilizer and dragging carts in a cramped mine.
But Ma and Luo don't seem much affected by this unaccustomed labor and are also both raconteurs, story tellers quick on their feet. At their introductory meeting with the villagers, Luo reads from a cookbook he brought -- a classic Chinese banquet dish using the rare and costly walnuts (at least that's how it was explained to me when I learned to cook the same dish); the chief denounces this as a bourguosie holdover, tears the book in half and throws it in the fire. When the chief's suspicion turns to Ma's violin, he plays a tune "Mozart wrote for Chairman Mao", and the violin becomes a regular evening entertainment, doctrinally blessed. Later, they are asked to see propaganda films in a local town and retell the story for the villagers.
One day the elderly tailor from another village, comes to town with his lovely granddaughter, known only as Little Seamstress. She starts hanging out with Ma and Luo, the exciting newcomers, and in turn they both fall in love with her, though it's never clear how deeply she returns the personal feeling, as opposed to the excitement and power of romance. When they acquire a cache of Western books, largely French with Balzac a favorite, they read to the illiterate Seamstress in a hidden cave, and also incorporate the plots into the stories they tell by the village fire. The exotic literature of Europe becomes a central fact of, an escape from, their lives and those around them.
The film is rich with detail and incident, charismatic acting and magnificent scenery (the region filmed has been celebrated in China for centuries). Watching the plot and relationships unfold is an enjoyable trip, even though the interlude of flirtation, both with the Seamstress and the literature, is far more idyllic and relaxed (and the characters far cleaner) than it could have been in real life.
After an enigmatic climax, we flash forward to the present century, when a news report on the completion of the Three Gorges Dam brings Luo and Ma together for bittersweet reminiscence and a return to the flooding village. This long, anticlimactic segment seems tacked on, though it is perhaps convenient cinematically to tie up the loose ends from the first segment without dragging out the re-education process.
This is an enjoyable and beautiful film, emotionally satisfying on first viewing. Go see it and enjoy. But I do have a number of caveats which prevent my giving it a 5* rating, some of which are:
-- why the focus on Western literature, instead of China's own rich heritage which was under attack as much or more than outside lit?
-- several characters, after reading or listening to "Bal'zaki", declaim "I feel like the world [or my life] has changed," but it's never clear in what respect or how, what thoughts or ideas brought about this change, and what real effect it has. [OK, there's one case where I think we're supposed to think a person's actions were based on this change, but it could as well have been Mao as Balzaki, or just restless ambition.]
-- how do Luo and Ma rate what seems a pretty nice house, isolated from the others? I'd like to fit that one out as a B&B!
-- why is the tailor so seemingly impervious to the cultural revolution, maintaining status and freedom?
-- though the village characters in the final segment seem appropriately aged, Ma and Luo seem more like ten than thirty years older.
-- our lead boys seem admirably well kempt, clean and coiffed, for kids presumably exhausted and begrimed by hauling (and being sloshed by) raw sewage and grubbing in the mines. Little Seamstress, likewise, is a bit too perfect.
[This review is based on the theatrical release.]
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