**** THE BLUE KITE
(Masterpiece) Directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang Written by Xiao Mao With Zhang Wenyao, Chen Xiaoman, Lu Liping, Pu Quanxin, Li Xuejian, Guo Baochang, Zhong Ping, and Chu Quanzhong.
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When the Beijing Film Academy reopened after the Cultural Revolution in 1978, Tian was admitted to the directors’ class, becoming a member of the famous “Fifth Generation,” which also included Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Huang Jianxin (The Black Cannon Incident), Li Shaohong (Family Portrait), Zhang Junzhao (The One and Eight), and Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern). Tian first attracted notice with a 1980 film called Our Corner, about a young girl and a group of handicapped men, and first attracted notoriety–as well as some international exposure–five years later with two stylistically bold features dealing with oppressed minority cultures within China, On the Hunting Ground (Mongolians) and The Horse Thief (Tibetans), both of which got only limited play within China despite their strong impact in other countries. Then came The Traveling Players (1987), a film about actors that had limited screenings outside China (where it had been cut substantially by censors), followed by two relatively commercial and impersonal assignments, Rock Kids (1988), about Chinese break dancing, and Li Lianying, the Imperial Eunuch (1991), which is available in this country on laser disc and has received some favorable notices. Tian also made a feature in 1990 about illegal immigrants, Illegal Lives, that has never been released.
The Blue Kite encountered major problems with Chinese censors before it was even finished. A coproduction of the Beijing Film Studio and Hong Kong’s Longwick, it began shooting in late 1991 after the first draft of the script–written by Xiao Mao in close consultation with Tian–had been rejected by the Beijing studio and duly revised. Principal photography was completed in three months (the whole film was shot in Beijing), but then mainland film officials previewed the rough cut and ordered all work halted. The film was not allowed to be shipped to Japan, where postproduction had been scheduled, and local labs were directed not to process the film. Unlike the censoring agencies in most other countries, Chinese government officials are not required or even expected to give reasons for their decisions, though word circulated that the preview cut wasn’t the same as the approved script.
Perhaps the most relevant of these interests to The Blue Kite is the 1978 The Tree of Wooden Clogs (which Tian has seen three times), particularly if one thinks of the multiple uses of courtyards in both films–places the characters repeatedly pass through and relate to in countless ways and that evolve over time so that they ultimately take on some of the properties of three-dimensional characters. Ozu, Antonioni, and Yang all have the capacity to give locations a mysterious aura of lingering human presence (Yang bestows this quality on objects as well), but Olmi’s film–which deals with a peasant community in northern Italy over the stretch of a year just before the turn of the century–gives the central location an even more crucial role, particularly in relation to the passage of time.
Like the other greatest Asian films of recent years–Hou’s The Puppet Master, Akira Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August, Stanley Kwan’s Actress, Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day, Zhang’s Raise the Red Lantern, and a few other shining candidates–The Blue Kite derives most of its richness from a capacity to rethink history and its relation to individual lives, seeing it as if for the very first time. What emerges is a genuine sense of discovery and renewal, something the tired West seems to have left behind in its insatiable hunger for immediate gratification (which invariably entails stylistic pastiche instead of genuine memory, postmodernist punch instead of achieved vision or reverie). The pacing of these films may be slower, the camera’s vantage point more detached, the techniques apparently simpler, and the emotional rewards more delayed, yet their lucid, unflinching looks into this century’s past ultimately lead to infinite depths. Look long enough at these movies and the world looks back at you.
