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Movies Forum Index » International Movies Forum » _Summer Palace_...
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 Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:44 pm |
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Perhaps the greatest film I've ever seen out of the People's
Republic of China, and certainly the most important and courageous
of the last 19 years. It dares to portray the June 4 massacre in
Tiananmen Square -- the watershed political event for a generation
and the number one taboo topic in China. Yet it is less political
sermon than personal remembrance. (The film even begins with an
excerpt of the fictional heroine's diary.) Director Lou Ye and his
cowriter Mei Feng are banned from filmmaking for 5 years for their
trouble. But as Feng professes, it is the responsibility of artists
to memorialize the experience and aspirations of their generation.
_Summer Palace_ is the ode to freedom and passionate engagement
that a generation of Chinese students so richly deserve.
There isn't much of a story. A young woman (Yu Hong, using the
ast/first name convention) from a Northestern small town is
accepted into the prestigious Beijing University. Her air of
solitude elicits gossip even as it bonds her to aspiring artist
Li Ti and needy harpist Dong dong. The lead actress Lei Hou is a
revelation of naturalism and haunting futillity. Daughter
of a grocer, Hong Yu makes up for her poverty in resources with
rich fantasies and love life. She think of classmate Zhou Wei
as her soulmate, someone whose sensitivity (Li Ti compares
him to a little girl) can elevate her above mediocrity.
They practice free love, bond over music and books, then
betray each other with their lovers. (The dorm room love scenes
are shocking by any standard, especially those of Chinese art
films, but are bracingly natural.) They innocently rush to
join the Tianenman demonstrations, distributing food and blankets.
After the massacre most flee to Germany. Hong Yu, with the least
finanical resources, migrate to Central and Southern cities,
working low wage jobs, has soulness affairs, marry a man she
doesn't love, all the time dreaming of Zhou Wei. There is a
suicide in Germany, Zhou Wei returns, has a chance meeting with
Hong Yu. In the last scene he speeds by her on a deserted highway,
on his road to more material and artistic success but leaving
his romantic heart and soul far behind.
What elevates the film, apart from Lei's acting, is the marvelous
sense of freedom and its unapologetic embrace of the experience
of youth. Director Lou Ye has proven himself an impressionistic
stylist with _Suzhou River_ and _Purple Butterfly_, but those films
are anchored to film noir conventions. _Summer Palace_ is the
free verse breakthrough that his style deserves. Despite its brisk
pace, the first half is filled with languid poetic sequences. Two
tender outdoor love-making scenes take place under a speck of a
full moon; Hong Yu lay in drifting snow at the bottom of
an empty swimming pool, drowned in her airy self-obsession.
A riverboat scene reminds me of _Days of Heaven_'s lovers on the run;
a scene in post-Berlin Wall, Germany where the Chinese exiles and
a progression of spiked haired locals stare at each other in
amazement,
may be taken right out of Malick's _The New World_. Disembodied,
time-fractured voice-over accentuates the student's ennui. Sudden,
Godardesque bursts of cello accentuates emotional scenes; the three
leads running care free on empty streets during the Tiananmen stand-
off
recalls the Lourve dash in _Band of Outsiders_. After the massacre,
two youngsters trying to get together but keep getting separated
by running students clearly recall _Hiroshima, Mon Amour_.
Local pop songs and American disco numbers fill the soundtrack,
and Sylvester Stallone and Maggie Cheung posters decorate the tiny
dorm rooms. The heady mix of Eastern and Western cultures stir
nostalgia about those elusory months when global political/cultural
barriers are crumbling, when the world really seems to be coming
together at last. After all, _Summer Palace_ marks a time when
student leaders rallied under the banner of the "Goddess of
Demoncracy,"
rendered after New York's landmark statue (hard to believe now, in
a new China seized with jingoism.) *This* is the Chinese film that
truly deserves the title "The World."
The Tiananmen square massacre takes place in the exact middle of
the film, splitting it and the lives it touches in half. What is
is most shocking is the renactment, even documentary footage,
depicting the rush to Tiananmen as what it is -- a chaotic,
romantic adventure. The students are no doubt unnecessarily
confrontational and brash; they are kids after all, many of them
still spending most of their time obsessing with boyfriends/
girlfriends
when they are not poring over big character posters or distributing
supplies to the strike leaders. As the protagonists flee waves
of political repression, the film takes on a head-long, breath-taking
pace. Enormous amount of exposition is dispensed with using
subtitles faster than native speakers can read (be thankful for
DVD's). The camera roams through six cities in rapid successful,
seemingly too jaded to focus , linger on any one spot. The exiled
Chinese artists mingle with Germans and Poles in (presumably)
East Berlin and have many affairs, but the emotional intensity has
left them. Back in China, Hong Yu sleeps with many more man, but the
moon no longer shines. The entire post-Tiananmen segment is one long
disillusionment, a massive hangover. _Summer Palace_, by design or
otherwise, becomes the monument of a time of promise and hope --
a generational promised betrayed, unhealed to this day.
It is almost shocking that, when movies commemorating the 40th
anniversary of the 1968 Paris riots are all the rage, images of
Tiananmen-bound students jumping on flat-bed trucks hardly elicit
a batted eyebrow from professional critics. For June 4, 1989 may turn
out to be the single most important event in the late 20th century,
for its interruption of the waves of freedom that will soon sweep
through Europe. For this reason and much more -- when the formalist
craze of current cinematic fashion has at last subsided and sanity
returns -- _Summer Palace_ is destined to be recognized as the most
important and artistically accomplished Chinese film of its time. |
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