Kaili Blues 2016 by Bi Gan. Communications & Media Essay

Kaili Blues 2016 by Bi Gan E&iSlrft Lu bianye can Roadside Picnic,/
https: / / criticsroundup.com / film / kaili-blues /
Locations in North West Guizhou Provence — 1. Kaili 2. Dangmai 3. Zhenyuan
Chen Sheng - main character
Crazy Face — Chen’s brother
Wei Wei - Chen’s nephew (Crazy Face’s son)
Guanglin — Chen’s coworker/friend at the clinic
Lin Airen — Guanglin’s long lost love who is a master musician of the Miao minority.
Zhangxi — Chen’s ex-wife who died
Yang Yang — young girl in Dangmai who wants to be a tour guide in Kaili Monk — Chen’s gang boss
Part I: explore links on Blackboard in the folder Film Terms and Study Guides — be sure to refer one or two of them for your response .
Part II. Respond to one of the following questions or reviewer comments:
1. How does our sense of locale and place shift as you view the film?
2. Look for reoccurring motifs in the film — how are they used?
3. Discuss some effects of specific camera moments.
4. Does the film ask questions or provide answers or both?
5. How does the long take impact you as a viewer?
6. Discuss some filmic techniques that play with time and/or plot?
7. How does the film suggest the everyday along with the mystical or a sense of mystery (particularly in in the first half)?
8. What particularly appealed to you or stuck you as innovative in the cinematic presentation of the film, such as the way in which particular scenes, images, colors, or sounds were presented?
9. Discuss a scene that plays on a sense of time, which escapes that of chronological ‘clock’ time. How does the director accomplish this?
10. Discuss framing—what is included and equally important —what is excluded?
11. Analyze the camera’s point of view in one scene—the angle of view, which lenses are used, the visual "distortions" which are chosen.
12. What are the chief images of the film? Is there anything interesting about the lighting, the camera angles, the sound, the timing that would reinforce a particular theme? Are there significant symbols?
13. Closely examine an intriguing sequence in a film. Consider the structure and editing, timing, sound, silence, narration, pacing.
14. Select a scene and consider what emotions the characters in the scene are feeling, and then list the techniques the director uses to convey these emotions.
15. Film is a composition of pictures rather than words, as one would find in a novel. Which specifically framed shots reveal something important to the story line? Describe the shot and explain its contribution to the story.
Discuss one of the following comments from Reviewers
Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli argues that while Bi Gan sees film as a way to ‘Sculpt time” he does so with a “gende, handcrafted, and playful approach.” “It’s impressive and it’s bold, but it’s also delightfully skeptical of the concept of auteurist perfection.”
Brooklyn Magazine: Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli May 17, 2016 http;//ww.bkmag.com/2016/05/17/kaili-blucs/
The long tracking shot does not permit us to locate ourselves in a stable temporal zone with respect to the film. That's because the forward propulsion of a POV shot strongly implies presentness, a consumption and master)' of this space now. On the other hand, the sidelong tracking shot emphasizes our place as spectators, and underscores the inevitable pastness of all cinematic communication.
Letterboxd: Michael Sicinski January 21, 2017 https://letterboxd.com/msicism/film/kaili-blues/
[The 40-minute tracking shot] is onto something; that something so impressive should feel regrettable, like a great risk that doesn’t quite pay off or that doesn’t do the film’s worthy ideas justice, is proof of what Bi has accomplished, by and large. Kaili Blues is good enough that this lapse almost doesn’t register, so dreamy that you wonder whether it even happened, just as you wonder whether Kaili is a place that actually exists. It does, of course. It exists in the image.
Reverse Shot. K. Austin Collins May 23, 2016 | http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/2210/kaili blues
Punctuated by a voice over reciting a few poems (from the filmmaker's own book Lubian yecan) where solitude and sadness prevail, Bi Gan's film shows a remarkable capacity to make its viewer wish for simple but striking revelations and to bring close to all an intricate and delicate network of memories, regrets, dreams and affects.MUBI's Notebook: Marie-Pierre Duhamel August 16, 2015 | Locarno https;//mubi.com/notebook/posts/locarno-2Ql 5-impressions
Mixing the mundane and the mystical (unexplained recurring motifs, reports of “wild men” living in the forest, etc.) against a backdrop of mountainsides and crumbled concrete, Kaili Blues plays freely with reality and time, bringing to mind the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
The A.V. Clulr. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky May 19, 2016
Even if viewers don’t know *exactly* what’s going on, we can intuit the emotions, connections, routes, and channels of feelings that course through the film. This isn’t standard art-cinema-approved social realism: it’s a realer sort of realism, bringing us through sounds and images into direct contact with a vividly imagined dream world, but one that’s quite specifically grounded in details of place, biography, and community.
Cinema Scope-. Shelly Kraicer
December 21,2015 | hup;//tingma-scope.<;om/spotlight/kaili-blugs-bi-gan-china/
In Kaili Blues, memory is visceral, a near hallucination.
Slant Ela Bittencourt March 15, 2016 hups;//www,slantmagazing,com/film/review/kaili-blugs
what makes the one-shot-sequence so exciting is not its continuity, but its découpage into a series of discrete scenes, that are, says Bi Gan, as many “planets” with “their climate, their water, their gravity,
CV TBA Assorted Clips Introduction Lecture Homework
Documentary - See Blackboard for details
S O/ O >ue (Blackboard Thread)
1 te - W 3/25
V: BEYOND A GENERATION
Week 7 - 3/12
CV - Bi Gan Kaili Blues % 2016
Homework read all P3/BL - Study Guide (2-7)
P3/BL - Lim, Dennis. “Moving through Time.” (8-12)
Study Questions Due 3/19 Kaili Blues
VI: Martial Arts Heroes: Masculinity and Nationalism Week 8 - 3/19
CV - Wei Lo, [Staring Bruce Lee] Chinese Connection/Fist of Futy/Jing Wu Men, 1972
Homework
OV - Home Viewing Martial Arts Film Fist of Fury or other selection P2 - Study Guide Fist of Fury (1-8)
W - Web Clip on Blackboard in homework section “Introduction to Martial Arts”
Select at least one from the following list:
P2 - Tasker, “Fists of Fury: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Martial Arts Cinema.” (15-26)
P2- Louie, “Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat: Internationalizing wu Masculinity.”(27-39)
P2- Bordwell, “Aesthetics in Action: Kungfu, Gunplay and Cinematic Expressivity." (40-61) P2 - Hunt, “Dragons Forever: Chinese Martial Arts Stars” (62-70)
P2 -Vick. Asian Cinema Field Guide: Hong Kong Cinema Excerpts Part I (71-93)
Study Questions Due 3/26 Fist of Fug
VII: Global Wu Xia: Epic Martial Arts Film Week 9 - 3/26
CV - Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, jj§£ tl 2000 U.S.A/Taiwan/Hong Kong [starring Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun-fat] Cinematographer Peter Pau Homework
Select at least one of the following:
P2 - Louie & Edwards, “Chinese Masculinity: Theorizing Wen and Wu.” (94-107)
P2 - Louie, “Hero: The return of a traditional masculine ideal in China." (132-138)
P2 - Chan, “The Contemporary Wuxia Revival” (108-115)
P2 - Yip, “The Difficulty of Difference: Rethinking the Woman Warrior Figure in Hong Kong Martial Arts Cinema” (116-121)
Optional Readings
BL Cai, "Gender Imaginations in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Wuxia World."
BL - Lau, "Hero: China’s response to Hollywood globalization."
Study Questions Due 4/2 Global Wu Xia
VIII: Contemporary Hong Kong: juxtaposed Urban Spaces, Bodies & desires Week 10-4/2
CV - Wong Kar-wai, TBA
Homework read all
P3- Ma, “Chance Encounters and Compulsive Returns” (36-59)
P3 - Assayas, “Memory’s Memory” (60-63)
P3 - Siegel, “The Intimate Spaces of Wong Kar-wai” (18-35)
doctor on a journey to find a nephew who has been sold off to a watchmaker.The missing-person narrative is a pretext for a mesmerizing search for lost time.
Film Comment By Andrew Chan in the May/June 2016 Issue https://www.filmcomment.com/article/review-kaili-blues-bi-gan/
Kaili Blues (Bi Gan) Review Cinema Scope By Shelly Kraicer
IN CS65, FALL FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS, FROM THE MAGAZINE, SPOTLIGHT http://cinema-scope.com/spotlight/kaili-blues-bi-gan-china/
The protagonist of Kaili Blues, Chen Sheng, is a small-town medical practitioner and ex-con. He bought his practice in Kaili, in southwestern China’s Guizhou province, with a small inheritance after his mother died while he was in jail. He’s not exacdy a doctor; he’s more of a dreamer, a poet, and a traveller. In Bi Gan’s remarkable debut, winner of Best New Director prizes at Locarno and the Golden Horse Awards, it seems that only dreamers like Chen can see what’s real. He often falls asleep, when we hear examples of his surrealist poetry read in his flady expressive voice—which, like his face, seems stiff but barely conceals emotional tensions roiling under the surface. The poems are in fact Bi Gan’s, from a collection titled Roadside Picnic (Lubian yecan), which is the Chinese tide of Kaili Blues, after Bi’s original tide (Huang ran lu, the Chinese name of Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet) was rejected by censors as too downbeat.
These poems lead him, and us, into cinematic dream spaces where Bi’s camera animates a free, curious, and observant subjectivity—maybe a person’s, maybe a poem’s. Even if viewers don’t know exacdy what’s going on, we can intuit the emotions, connections, routes, and channels of feelings that course through the film. This isn’t standard art-cinema approved social realism: it’s a realer sort of realism, bringing us through sounds and images into direct contact with a vividly imagined dream world, but one that’s quite specifically grounded in details of place, biography, and community. Rather than setting out plot in a somewhat artificially schematic manner, the film builds intricate skeins of narrative that connect all the main characters in complicated ways, with loops and paths that seem spontaneously but organically generated. Still, some clarity can be provided to aid the viewer. Nine years before the story proper begins, a rival gangster buries alive the son of Chen Sheng’s gang boss Monk, and also cuts off the son’s hand. The latter act being intolerable, Chen attacks and perhaps kills the rival, and then goes to jail. When he’s released, he finds that he has lost his wife Zhang Xi to illness. He also assumes responsibility for ensuring the safety of his half-brother Crazy Face’s son Weiwei. Crazy Face is a piece of work, and sells Weiwei (who is fascinated with timepieces) to a watchmaker, who takes him away to Zhenyuan. Chen’s senior medical colleague Guanglin had a lover or close friend named Aire from that town. When she learns that Chen is heading there to find Weiwei, she entrusts him with a mission: to find Airen and give him a cassette tape and a long-ago-purchased shirt.
Chen’s departure splits the film in two. From Kaili we head to Dangmai, a riverside town on the way to Zhenyuan, where Chen is also searching for a group of Miao minority traditional lusheng pipe players, who could lead him to Airen. Bi Gan himself is from the Miao minority. In the film, we see and hear traces of Miao culture: the architecture of old houses in Dangmai; a Miao woman listening to the roadside pop concert; the lusheng pipe music occasionally audible, and the instruments themselves depicted on Miao batik fabric, which itself plays a role in yet another subplot connecting Chen, Guanglin, her dead son, and a fabled “wildman” haunting the film’s margins. In Dangmai, Chen encounters characters from his past and his future. Chen hitches a ride with a band whose teacher studied under Airen, a fact he only finds out later. He encounters a young man, also called Weiwei, with a bucket on his head, having been bullied by rival motorcycle drivers. Weiwei, who is about ten years older than Chen’s nephew, then takes Chen on a long motorcycle ride to meet a young woman, Yangyang, who is planning to be a tour guide back in Kaili. Yangyang mends Chen’s shirt, and leads him to a hairdresser, Zhang Xi, who looks exactly like Chen’s long-dead wife. All four—Yangyang, Weiwei, Zhang Xi, and Chen—find themselves at the band’s streetside concert where Chen, overcome with sadness for the people he has lost and perhaps found, sings, badly, a children’s song. Later, he heads to Zhenyuan where further plot nodes solidify, the watchmaker reappears, and time starts rolling backwards. Untangling the narrative endoskeleton isn’t easy, but it is also far from what Bi Gan’s film is “about.” What is it about, then? Such a densely worked and intensively designed film has many entry points, throughlines, and endpoints.
Bi offers one right at the top: he quotes a Buddhist text from the Diamond Sutra, whose lovely apposite parallelism in Chinese is not reflected in the English subtitles, but it is important: guoqu xin bu ke de xianzai xin bu ke de weilai xin bu ke de which translates roughly as: the past mind cannot be attained the present mind cannot be attained the future mind cannot be attained The dilemma is existential and moral. A complete understanding of our minds, feelings, and our world is unavailable. This dilemma has a specifically temporal dimension. That we experience mind, feeling, and the world through time—exactly as cinema can only record and present these through time—is what perhaps makes it unattainable. That narrative cinema is forced to present reality through time is also what limits it.
Bi Gan proposes a kind of way around this problem (I’m not sure we can call it a solution). And it happens during an astonishing tour de force of mise en scène in Dangmai: a 41-minute-long handheld take that starts with Weiwei waiting with his motorcycle for Yangyang and Chen, progresses through rides on bike, pickup truck, and boat, and strolls up, down, and across stairways and into and out of at least two buildings, a river crossing by ferry and return by bridge, walks up and down stairs, through a wine shop, tailor’s, and hairdresser’s (where Zhang Xi washes Chen’s hair), encompassing Chen meeting the older Weiwei, Weiwei courting Yangyang, and Chen encountering his dead wife Zhang Xi, the four of them listening to the concert. This is a long take that feels long, in a viscerally exciting way. Its pressure grows and intensifies, as we realize that Bi Gan is not going to cut, and that he has the technical skill and audacity to take us through a novel’s worth of interlocking incidents and characters without stopping his camera (well, there is one slight bit of post-production legerdemain, but I’m not going to ruin it for you). It’s exhilarating, it’s tension-filled, and it feels impossible.
In narrative terms, of course that’s precisely the point. How can Chen, who has come to Zhenyuan to look for an eight-year-old nephew, find an 18-year-old future version instead? How can his wife return from the dead? We see it happen; Chen feels it happen. In the mind, the past is attained, the present is attained, and the future is attained. In Bi’s poetic vision, the real—symbol-suffused and visible—is something interior, much more “real” than something “out there” in physical reality. Throughout the film, his camera registers this surreality so much more vividly than merely recording the existing light-reflecting world. The intense blues and greens, the saturated, tangibly thick light and shade of the settings, the impossible visions of twirling, ever-present disco mirror balls, of trains and waterfalls that seem to rush through Chen’s home,
defying space, are conjured into light and sound, and, via poetry, into cinema.
Recent Chinese independent fiction cinema has often bome the traces of a social burden, one that is processed via its commitment to a kind of “social realism.” Chinese artists for millennia have assumed the role of socially engaged actors, moral commentators, or guardians of certain autonomous systems of values, and find themselves set against the various oppressive ruling ideologies that have burdened Chinese society. But there are an unlimited number of modes of engagement. Too many direct, cookie-cutter resistance narratives pop out like readymade art-politics products and, sometimes, all too easily find resonance in non-Chinese markets and societies. Bi Gan’s art is something completely different. While it is clearly deeply embedded in contemporary culture, its poetry— not its politics—makes meaning. There is something uncanny, something quietly, modestly rapturous about Bi’s world: it’s seemingly grounded in a specific location, circumstance, and personality, while at the same time freely roaming, and not delimited by space, time, and character. We’re in one place—an obscure little corner of small-town China today—and we’re everywhere, unbounded, set free to wander in a single shot, in a dream without limits.