Movie Review: The Aesthetic of the Fifth Generation Filmmakers
Introduction
China has experienced drastic growth in its field of cinema and up to this point, three ancient threads in the Chinese cinema remain distinct; Hong Kong Cinema, China Cinema and Taiwan Cinema. Up to date and since 1949, the Cinema of the mainland china operated under the constraints obligatory to the Communist Party of China and still, some of the movies with implications on politics still remain suppressed or fully prohibited in the whole of the Chinese republic while they acquired permits for overseas theatres and film fairs. In this essay, the discussion is focused on the Fifth generation of film-makers and films: “Yellow Earth”, and “Together”.
First, the paper summarizes these two films by Kaige Chen, discusses the designation “Fifth Generation” as used to denote the Current Chinese movie directors and the difference between them and the fourth, as well as the future of Chinese movie directors. In addition, the paper explores the factors that have influenced Chinese films especially the two key Chinese movies directors namely Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. The highly discussed themes of love and liberation impress me most especially in these two films.
Discussion: The Aesthetic of the Fifth Generation Filmmakers
“Yellow Earth”, is a Chinese movie which was written and directed by the Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou in 1984 (Ziesing 2007). The movie is more or less on the issues of forced marriages imposed on the teen-age peasant women in the era prior to the incumbent communist regime in china. This movie reflects the 1939 when a solder that was communist went to Shaanxi to gather folk songs for adapting by the Communist China army. Luckily enough he settles in with a poor family whose members taciturn father, a ten-year old son and a more specifically, the pretty 14 year old daughter, named Cuiqiao, with the best voices in all Shaanxi, but who is living in terror of an arranged marriage she is about to enter into.
The sympathy in the solders eyes demonstrates the difficulty in the family and villages’ life. This girl falls in love with the solder who, due to love as well, assists the girl in her chores fetching water from the river three miles away (Ziesing 2007). In addition, Gun Qing inspires the girl by narrating to her stories about army fighting.
After his mission is over and done with, Gu Qing has to return to the Eighth Route army Base and the girl, young as she is, begs him to leave with her to Yanan in vain. By the time the solder comes back for the girl, who waits for her for sometime and later sold off to marriage, the she has sailed away solemnly in search of liberty through the People’s Liberation Army camping on the other side of the Yellow River. “Yellow Earth” is one of China’s most celebrated films by the Fifth Generation of directors. Such filmmakers present in this movie include the director Chen Kaige, Photography by Zhang Yimou, screenplay in Mandarin and English subtitles by Zhang Ziliang the story line is from a short story named “Sanwen” written by Ke Lan (Ziesing 2007).
The aesthetics of fifth generation films depicted in this movie brought a sensation of in the Hong Kong film Festival in 1985 and in the consecutive years, Chinese movies dominated the international festivals with directors like Chen and Zhang in the forefront of international Cinema, hence superseding the Japanese ones and occupying the position of the well-liked movies in Asia.
The Yellow Earth is therefore a movie set in the land of the Yellow River and unswervingly deals with the triangular association between the land, the peasant farmers of the land and the Communist Party which Cuiqiao like most of the villagers believe was meant to liberate the people as she says, “Here to save the people are the communists”. Politically, such a statement is correct but since it is an implication that after embracing the party, things were meant to change in the next days of the party’s ruling while in the movie, the statement is misplaced since in the yellow land, power is great and unpredictable and no political party turns out effective (Stafford 2007). The lives of the peasant farmers are denoted to be filled with struggles and hardships throughout their entire lives.
The name “Yellow Earth” is drawn from the fact that the movie is shot from the Loess Plateau, Northern China, a region characterized by yellow soil as a result of water and wind erosion on the landscape making it sculpted and with deep gorges. Despite the yellow earth, the land is traversed by a Yellow river which is one of china’s water systems (Stafford 2007).
The movie by the name of “Together” is a story about a widowed cook, Liu Cheng, and his thirteen year old son named Liu Xiaochun-a violin prodigy, who moves to a small town in Beijing in the hope that Cheng would find a good teacher who would assist in driving his son to stardom as a violinist (Yuankai 2004). Their traveling is for the young violinist to participate in the Children’s Palace a festival held for school children where he emerges fifth and loses the permit to the conservatory due to his Beijing’s residency (Yuankai 2004).
His father begs professor Jiang to privately train his son but due to his stubborn and eccentric nature, the professor refuses and the father seeks for help from Lili an attractive and young lady living next door. She assists him for sometime and later sells his violin to console Lili on discovering his boyfriend’s unfaithfulness (Yuankai 2004).
Lili becomes Xiaochun’s first love and real friend while his father continues with his quest to get his son a good violin tutor, after he gets one, the teacher destroys his son’s dreams by favoring his other student, Lin on the eve of the day before his performance in front of a jury by disclosing a secret to him about his birth and that Cheng wasn’t his real father but instead, the son loves his father more and goes back to him in success and fame (Yuankai 2004).
This movie is a critique of materialistic social tendency and alienated family relations and this is a declaration of guilt of Chen’s own youthful contravention at the age of 14 during the cultural revolution of 1966 to 1976 when he pressed his father Chen a well-known film director then, to the ground in public and betrayed him (Together, 2011). This is clearly seen as haunting him since then as well as a source of pain and great regret. Contrary to this action by Chen, the boy, Xiaochun gives up his only opportunity to fame and went back to his father (Together, 2011).
From this movie, Chen changed considerably and has turned down several invites from prestigious international film festivals in favor of the lesser known Toronto Film Festivals as he considers film making not more for the money but for the contribution it has in the film market (Together 2011). In addition, Chen’s interest in films is no longer to win awards but to investigate the market.
The Yellow Earth is a pioneer of Chinese fifth generation movies and movie directors. Mao was a period from 1966 to 1976 when the art was used as a political instrument of propaganda (Richard 2011). Consequently, filmatology was a tool for the communist party under the four decades of its rule in china as it was used to by communist leaders to influence, or educate the masses-which in itself were ironical (Richard 2011).
Compared to the Stalin’s of Russia, this Mao rule was stricter and nearly all genres and actions of films were suppressed with the exception of the Perking Opera the favorite artwork for Mao’s Wife called Jing Qing (Richard 2011). In the internationally arena, the movie hit in the European Market in 1986 and it was recognized as one movie leaving a mark in the film industry with a genuine attempt. Some of the qualities used for such classification included the composition and framing as well as the use of sound to evoke an unknown place and time.
Chen graduated in a class of 100 film makers in the year 1982 when Chinese Film was recovering from the Cultural Revolution effects of the Mao from the BeijingFilmAcademy. According to an interview with Chen Kaige by Richard James in December 2003, this class was the first, together with other future luminaries like Zhang Yimou and Tian Zhuangzhuan, to revolutionize the face of Cinema in China, as well as formation of an impossible to remove intuition internationally in the film scenery. This group formed what is currently known as the fifth generation of film makers in china, since Chinese love numbers so it became fifth after the fourth generation, who due to the bad shape of the Chinese cinema then thought of a new way to break into the film market.
At first, this new way was not clear what to do or what could be done. It was then that cinema was used to express the directors’ feelings about the ongoing in the society’s politics, culture and social life. One factor that contributed most then was the society’s political nature in the entire of China republic. In addition, Chen and his fellow film makers discovered that, in that generation there was need to create and ultramodern form of cinema language since the fourth generation like its predecessors, had films composed in the Chinese language which relied heavily on dialog. At this point in time, something new was highly welcome and would be greatly embraced just to leave a mark in the industry. The group therefore adopted a form of Chinese film that was visible as depicted by color, light, and other visible properties in addition to dialog.
In this new form of film, there was a period of influence on the works of Chinese movies by the western culture especially those in the Beijing Film Archive together with classic Chinese literature and film (Richard 2011). Most film makers began taking after different directors of western movies like Scorsese Truffaut and Goddard with the favorite director for Chen being David lean and he based most of his movies like “My Concubine” and “Farewell” on chronological classic to the largest extent a trait borrowed from the works by David Lean.
One of Chen’s favorite works from David, despite lack of political knowledge in china, include “Lawrence of Arabia” which is filled with battle scenes, common in the ancient times, in the British empire (Richard 2011). Despite such visible impacts of the Western Films, the Communist Party in China forced Chen and other film makers then to deny having had such influence and that all work in the Chinese films was originally made in china by Chinese people (Stafford 2007).
Several factors contributed to the information in Chen’s storylines. One of the major factors was the fact that he was born by Chen Huaikai, a film director, and Li Yanchi both of who worked in the script department of Beijing Film Studio (Stafford 2007). In addition, the Cultural Evolution contributed a lot to the movie content, especially that of Yellow Earth” since at one time he had to leave school and go to the countryside to cut down trees after the Beijing Film Academy was first closed down and reopened in 1978, and so was the case for all other academies.
Later, Chen joined the army where he spent five years before joining BeijingLiteratureUniversity where he failed and decided to try life in cinema (Stafford 2007). During his work in the forest, Chen’s relationship with his father’s was shattered and so was his spiritual life that he indulged in cigarettes until one day when nature met head-on him and he felt as part of life in the jungle only that something inside him needed expression and that is what he is today.
A common element of the fifth generation film makers was the fact that, despite the influence from the Western and European cultures, their films was on nothing outside their traditional cultures, which where stories filled with aesthetic in the realization of the vision. Much credit was given to Zhang Yimou the photographer, Chen Kaige the film director and He Qun the production designer for the movie (Stafford 2007).
Another outstanding features of the fifth generation films was the much attention on the Chinese painting and folksongs an aesthetic that displayed the difference in the concerns of the story as compared to the fourth generation of films. This film was mainly based on a range of features specific to Guangxi from where the movie was shot.
Zhang was born from the Shanbei in Shaanxi province and he great represented the region in many ways. First, shooting at particular moments of the day captured the range of yellow soils, ochre’s and brown in the soil with red becoming the trademark for the Zhang Yimou (Stafford 2007). To display the framings in the movie, Zhang made use of the horizon to comment on the significance of characters to the surroundings with Zhang pushing the central part of the third image to the top and bottom of the frame.
As of composition, the movie is drawn upon the ancient Chinese forms of painting and more particularly those of the Shanbei region where single humans, trees or objects are set next to those an empty terrain (Stafford 2007). In the “Yellow Earth” traditional aesthetic forms, like an ox, a cave home, PLA soldiers which represent the Maoist images of the fourth generation, are critiqued against those of social realism derived from soviet cinema like earth, sky, water, tree, mountain and boats which represent the classical landscape paintings.
Songs in the “Yellow Earth” has been dramatically used to develop the narrative since it is through songs or singing that principle dialogue of establishing the new or communist philosophy to the old or customary life of the peasants is expressed. One major concern for the communist party was the re-writing of the ancient songs in to new songs that represented the party a move they called putting “novel wine in aged bottles” and this is with an oversight of the female voices depicted in the song (Stafford 2007).
In comparison to the fourth generation film makers, the fifth generation film makers have a touch of exploring Chinese culture and the structure of national psychology. In addition, these film makers are fully ground-breaking in the manner by which they choose appropriate themes, display figures, handle movie frames, use cameras, and employ narrative ways among others. This group is filled with talented people whose impact on the film industry demonstrates outstanding gifts in distinct works (Jeff 2011). They include the likes of Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Huang Jianxin, and Wu Ziniu, Ning Ying among others.
Majority of their works are subjective, symbolic, individualistic, and symbolic (Jeff 2011). This group also comprised of female novelties that portrayed the modern women with the most common theme in their movies being female vindication a clear indication of the current tribulations of the nation to fight oppression (Koivula 2007). Such films escaped government censorship with a blink of the eye and it is this platform that women directors used to explore the society’s place for women though many were censored. In addition, most of the female film makers are regarded as not fully established and in 1996 during the cerebration of 90 years for china’s film, not much interest arouse to invite them for the same (Koivula 2007).
In the commencement of the fifth generation of film directors, there was a bond which gradually diminished despite the fact that most of them still remain active in film making. Currently, fifth generation films have lost popularity both in china and across the board and Zhang Yimou is currently renowned for his films in Kung Fu like the Heroes. In addition, the Chinese government has continued to cut off the funding of nations film studios and this is major contributor for the current trend focused on box office hits (Koivula 2007). Furthermore, the decline in social issues and china’s recent history among the Chinese and as a result, most of the young Chinese cinema goers are interested more on Hollywood best-sellers at the cost of the home films.
Against all odds, such trends have contributed to the success of the fifth generation film makers with the likes of Zhang Yimou who directed the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics (Koivula 2007). In addition, Chen has recently been named the jury president of the annual Sydney Film Festival which runs from June 9 to June 19 (Bulbeck 2011). The extension for the position was due to his outstanding visual style and epic story telling in his fifth generation films as well as the prestige and prominence associated with his presence in such an event. This fifth generation film production has greatly influenced both international and Chinese movie production at large.
Reference
Bulbeck, Pip. Sacrifice. The Hollywood reporter. 2011. Retrieved from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chinese-director-chen-kaige-named-185378.
Jeff. Fifth Generation directors of china. Chinese films. 2011. Retrieved from http://www.chinaculture.org/library/2008-01/18/content_68045.htm.
Koivula, Anniina. The Dragon Awakes. ICIUM. 2007. Retrieved from http://en.radio86.com/chinese-culture/dragon-awakes-chinas-fifth-generation-film-directors-part-2.
Richard, J. Yellow Earth.New York, NY: StateUniversity of New York. 2011. Retrieved on 23-05-2011 fromhttp://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf05n9.html
Stafford, Roy. Yellow Earth: china 1984. Global film.2007. Retrieved on 23-05-2011 from https://itpworld.wordpress.com/2007/05/03/195/.
Yuankai, Tang. Chinese Film. 2004. Retrieved from http://np.china-embassy.org/eng/Culture/Feature/t167638.htm.
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