BLIND SHAFT (Mang Jing)
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound format: Dolby Digital
Yang Li's indictment of rural poverty and safety issues in the Chinese mining industry features Qiang Li and Wang Shuangbo as a couple of itinerant laborers who make a 'living' by befriending poor, unemployed travelers and taking work together in unsafe coal mines where they murder their newfound 'friends' and make it look like an accident, forcing unscrupulous mine owners to ensure their silence with a series of generous pay-offs. Their downfall is precipitated by the arrival of young, innocent Wang Baoqiang, with whom the two men form a paternal alliance and whose impending death fills Qiang with dreadful foreboding.
Either you like this kind of defiantly 'arthouse' stuff or you don't, and this one gets off to an unpromising start by asking us to empathize with a couple of heartless monsters who not only murder a man in cold blood, but use his death to line their own pockets before flushing his ashes down the toilet! But the movie picks up with the arrival of virginal Wang, a genuinely charming kid whose naivety and innocence stirs feelings of compassion within the two protagonists, leading to an ironic twist in the tale. Professionally assembled and shot on location in the heart of China's rural landscape, this is much more naturalistic than the clinically beautiful films we're used to seeing from Chinese filmmakers. Not for all tastes, but rewarding for those willing to stay the distance.
(Mandarin dialogue)
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound format: Dolby Digital
Yang Li's indictment of rural poverty and safety issues in the Chinese mining industry features Qiang Li and Wang Shuangbo as a couple of itinerant laborers who make a 'living' by befriending poor, unemployed travelers and taking work together in unsafe coal mines where they murder their newfound 'friends' and make it look like an accident, forcing unscrupulous mine owners to ensure their silence with a series of generous pay-offs. Their downfall is precipitated by the arrival of young, innocent Wang Baoqiang, with whom the two men form a paternal alliance and whose impending death fills Qiang with dreadful foreboding.
Either you like this kind of defiantly 'arthouse' stuff or you don't, and this one gets off to an unpromising start by asking us to empathize with a couple of heartless monsters who not only murder a man in cold blood, but use his death to line their own pockets before flushing his ashes down the toilet! But the movie picks up with the arrival of virginal Wang, a genuinely charming kid whose naivety and innocence stirs feelings of compassion within the two protagonists, leading to an ironic twist in the tale. Professionally assembled and shot on location in the heart of China's rural landscape, this is much more naturalistic than the clinically beautiful films we're used to seeing from Chinese filmmakers. Not for all tastes, but rewarding for those willing to stay the distance.
(Mandarin dialogue)