Youth Film Zeitgeist
By TANG YUANKAI
CHINESE actor and director Jiang Wen appeared once more at the Venice International Film Festival in August this year, this time as a juror. This annual event has marked milestones in his career: in 1994 Venice conferred their Best Actor award on Xia Yu, then aged 17, for his role in Jiang’s directorial debut – In the Heat of the Sun. Time magazine rated it one of the 10 best films of the year, applauding its original theme, and its cinematic narrative heralding a new era in China’s film industry. Adapted from the Wang Shuo novel Ferocious Animals, In the Heat of the Sun recounts the growing pains, losses and decadence of a group of Beijing youth during the chaotic “cultural revolution” (1966-1976). The film rolls out in a discursive fashion, with every shot selected seemingly randomly, yet in fact richly loaded. Images, ranging from loudspeakers blaring revolutionary lyrics to streetside walls plastered with revolutionary posters, add up to rebuild lively scenarios from that segment of history.
Such striking realism, as evocative as sepia-toned photographs in family albums, awakens many Chinese viewers’ memories of their own experiences in a time of chaotic social and cultural geography, which the film aptly conjures.
Tiny Times, Big Money
On June 27, 2013, the day Tiny Times opened, in Kaifeng, Henan Province, 17-year-old Wang Jiaqi bought 12 tickets – to watch it with friends. Many other young people were part of this craze. On that day alone, 2.3 million Chinese watched 36,000 screenings of the movie across the country, generating RMB 72 million – the highest opening day ticket sales for any 2-D Chinese-language production. TT soon soared beyond Man of Steel to box-office No. 1, having brought in RMB 468 million.
Two months later Tiny Times 2 was released, and the sizzle continued. The first two days of screening had ticket sales hitting RMB 97 million, running rings around two other films competing at the same time.
The two Times are, however, wildly contentious. There are those who love the films dearly and others who sneer at them as trash. Both sides expressed strong opinions, their disputes almost boiling over on the Internet.
Tiny Times was the directorial debut of post-1980s writer Guo Jingming, who has a strong fan base among Chinese youth. Set in Shanghai, China’s economic and fashion showcase, the movie follows the loves, friendships and family ties of four girls holding disparate values and attitudes towards life. Fitting its plot and youth genre, the film is glutted with sassy sexy girls and boys clad in luxury brands head to toe. A heroine, supposedly of the working class, owns several handbags all priced over RMB 10,000, and one cup shown in the film, as spotted by some viewers, was price-tagged at about RMB 4,800. One critic exclaimed: “Guo Jingming’s blatant promoting of consumerism is awful.”
Guo, however, denies the charge, insisting his film rebukes money worship, in what is just an honest depiction of this phenomenon among youth. His defense is rather weak, as what viewers first and foremost discern on the screen is an outrageous extravagance, and a gleeful indulgence in it – no matter what the director might have intended. The excuse “for the sake of cinematic aesthetics” barely holds water. Many trash Tiny Times as a flashy naive mirage that could poison a young audience’s view of life.
A survey by Datatopia of Weibo (social network) users found viewers of Tiny Times to be on average 20.3 years old. Predominantly female – above 80 percent – they are active on social networks, and mostly live in second- and third-tier cities. China’s leading newspaper People’s Daily published a commentary warning that Tiny Times may reduce youth’s vision of the bigger picture of life and the world by misleading them to embrace material comforts and consumerism as the norm.
Every stage in China’s modern history, from revolution to national reconstruction, has targeted the younger generations with film. Some films have changed lives. Medical scientist Xiu Ruijuan once told actress Qin Yi: “You are why I’ve become who I am.” At the age of 12, Xiu watched a movie where Qin plays the part of a woman soldier fighting Japanese invaders, which made her resolve to become a heroine herself someday.
As the times change, the world of the young evolves along with it. Yet youth remains a favorite theme of filmmakers who fondly look back on such earlier years etched by passion and innocence, qualities which often wear thin in the process of growing up. This nostalgia is usually well received by audiences.
Salute to a Bygone Age
The 2011 Taiwan film You Are the Apple of My Eye turned out to be a whopping success among mainland viewers, ushering a spate of youth films in the years following. The top three this year are So Young, American Dreams in China and Tiny Times, with box-office revenues of RMB 709, RMB 534 and RMB 468 million, respectively.
So Young is directed by actress Zhao Wei, during her final year of a master’s degree in film directing. A retrospective on her own generation, themed on campus life of 1990s university students, it mourns their imperfect but flamboyant love affairs that finally drown in real world concerns and calculations. The film represents the director’s meditation and dissection of a slice of a past she was a part of.
So Young in one way or another is relevant to those generations before or after hers, spanning those born post-1950 to post-1990. The IC-card phone booth outside the dormitory building, the pop-star posters on the walls of cramped dorm rooms, the bunk beds, John Gray’s bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, the churning and squeaking electric fans, and the beeping of pagers in class under a teacher’s angry glare... all hold keys to many a viewer’s subconscious.
Zhao Wei, born in 1976, is one of the post-1970s, a transitional generation in the shadow of the nationalistic 1960s and the individualistic ’80s. Despite palpable candor and star power, she still fails to produce a movie as innocent and unadulterated as she had desired. Several brands from later years anachronistically feature in the film, apparently as forms of product placement. The work was threatened by a funding crisis halfway through its production. Few filmmakers can do whatever or however they desire to, free of the external pressures of today’s world where commercial interests reign. One comment on the Internet went: “As we feel the solid ground of the 21st century under our feet, we should know there’s no way we can relive our youth. Commercialism will scuttle our efforts to relive it even for a moment.”
Peter Chan from Hong Kong had no money worries for his American Dreams in China, and no personal bond with the story that unfolds. The movie is about three aspiring university friends from different backgrounds. Like many young Chinese in the 1980s, when the country swung open its doors to the West after decades of isolation, they voluntarily or passively nourished an “American Dream,” and put all they had into getting to the States. Yet all ended up building their careers in China – which is where they eventually found success. The film spans 30 years. The sense of changing times is artistically and sharply conveyed in the nuances of hairdo, attire and other details, with the songs of rock singer Cui Jian serving as potent and relevant interludes, conveying viewers back through time.
The movie has been highly applauded for its powerful rendition of the crises the protagonists live through, including betrayal by girlfriends, and their rosy American Dreams going bust in the face of cruel realities. Based on the true story of the founders of New Oriental, a pioneer in China’s English-language-training business, American Dreams in China is without doubt thoroughly inspiring. But this plot has its inherent drawbacks, its story breadth is narrow, and allows for little suspense.
Some viewers also dispute the film’s definition and depiction of success, deeming it narrow and biased without deeper insights into commercialized society. “The toughest aspect of life is not to win, but to make choices,” argued Tang Ying, a 30-year-old foreign company manager, after seeing the film.
