An Analysis of 'Blind Shaft' (2003)

(Essay written Spring, 2018)

(Blind Shaft)

Chinese cinema’s ‘Sixth-Generation’, also known as ‘the Urban Generation’, has become China’s most prominent film movement internationally since the early 1990s. The young filmmakers associated with this movement “emerged in the shadow of both the international fame of the ‘Fifth Generation’ directors, and of the supressed democracy movement in 1989” (Zhen, 2007, p. 1). These filmmakers were predominantly concerned with marginal urban subjects that were often explored through a “combination of humanist and modernist concerns and in an aesthetic both documentary and hyperreal” (p. 6). Produced independently outside the state’s influence, the economic restrictions imposed upon these artists became an aesthetic advantage. This raw, realistic style gave the movement an aesthetic idiosyncrasy supplemented by challenging subjects. This unique style was supported by using handheld cameras, natural lighting, and the use of mostly non-professional actors. This unembellished approach to cinema aligns the sixth-generation with a realist tradition that branches across national cinemas outside of Asia such as the French new wave or Italian neorealism. Furthermore, like neorealism these films revolve around contemporary urban life but within a context of rapid economic growth that was undermined by an increased gap between rich and poor. Blind Shaft (Yang) unflinchingly reflects the social depravation and economic inequality of the post-Mao years, and is a prime example of the documentary-realist style associated with this generation.

Blind Shaft generated controversy in China for its brutal depiction of the dehumanising existence of migrant workers in illegal coal mines, and was subsequently banned by the state for domestic distribution. However, its subversive label gave the film an international appeal as an ‘underground’ film which boosted the amount of attention it received on the festival circuit. A critical success outside of China, Yang’s film transcends borders with universal themes of moral corruption, decadence, and social decay in a modern society where money becomes the individual’s most treasured and desired virtue. Through its documentary aesthetic it also appears to present a truthful window into everyday life, offering an almost dystopian vision of a post-socialist society. For my analysis I shall examine the themes, style, and genre fluidity that defines Blind Shaft.

In contemporary China, Song Jinming (Li Yixiang) and Tang Zhaoyang (Wang Shaongbao) are two miners turned con artists who profit from the ‘accidental deaths’ of workers, posing as family members and collecting compensation from their murders. Floating from scam to scam, Tang picks up Yuan Fengming (Wang Baoqiang) as their next victim, a sixteen-year-old boy looking for a job to pay for his education. Song becomes morally conflicted when Yang reminds him of his son, and this human attachment foils their inhumane scam.

Yang’s documentary-like approach to this story aims to reflect everyday life for migrant workers and the dehumanising conditions of their work, presenting through its realist framework a window into contemporary Chinese society. A perfect example of this is in the film’s opening scenes. As another day of work begins, men appear from their homes that visually give the impression of holes in the ground, a metaphor for their lower form of existence living underground like rodents. The grey and brown natural colour tones add a miserable gleam, and the long takes of men walking but not talking creates a solemn funeral-like atmosphere, as if they were a procession mourning one death and marching towards the inevitability of another. The use of this colour pallet, long takes, and a sound design that favours the sound of machinery over dialogue, pervades the film with a melancholic atmosphere that equates to the depressing reality these ordinary people face daily. Throughout the film we are presented with appalling realities that reinforce this atmosphere. The living quarters are presented to us as cramped, rat infested, and lacking in insulation as the covering up of walls with newspapers signify. The fact that Yang shot on location in Hebei and Shanxi provinces gives these images a raw, ugly authenticity to the inhumane conditions faced by poor workers in modern China.

(Blind Shaft)

Furthermore, mass unemployment is another social issue presented by Yang. In the city, the unemployed gather in the hope of finding a job and in one take we see a plethora of desperate, vulnerable people. As a job officer calls out many eagerly flock to him in a scene reminiscent of the opening of Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948) where men gather like cattle, but there is only one job and Yuan misses it. Tang spots Yuan as vulnerable prey, and a prostitute approaches Tang but he bats her off seamlessly and moves on. All are ready to do almost anything in the desperate pursuit of money. This situation is presented as a normality that reveals the absurdity of their collective social reality. Yang communicates that the dire socio-economic conditions of these people breeds criminality as desperate people are pushed to the boundaries of humanity, forced to sacrifice dignity and morality for survival. As common in the social realist tradition, Yang presents a complex social reality and documents its effects on the individual.

The story of the two con artists is a study of how socio-economic realities can contaminate the human soul, with money particularly being the main corrupting aspect. Here, Yang infuses elements of noir into a social realist film by lining it with a shared nihilistic world view by the two men and telling a tale of moral corruption in the form of a life-insurance scam. Eating in a city café, Song and Tang are served “longevity lamb stew” to which the two mock. Tang remarks that “Now only a mum’s feelings for her kids are real”, Song depressingly adds that “maybe not even those” to which Tang concludes that “now, only money fucking matters”. Here the false promises of an ideal, in this case Chinese socialism, have destroyed faith in ideological systems and highlights the dystopian, meaningless existence these men experience. Money fills the void of empty meaning and becomes God, and their terrible deeds are all done in the name of it. This possible critique of socialism links to the historical condition of post-socialism, “a structure of feelings that remained repressed in the Mao years…with alienation and disillusion as its two thematic foci” (Zhang, p. 51). Yang may not commit himself to an entirely implicit critique of socialism overall but there is a prevailing sense of negativity about contemporary Chinese society which is inextricably tied to over half a century of socialism.

However, Yang is equally focused on the human elements of this story. Despite Song and Tang’s callous brutality, highlighted in the hotel scene as they easily, jokingly discard a victim’s identity, Yang also presents them as human beings with ordinary, relatable lives. Song sends money earned from murder to his family back home to pay for his son’s education and saves Yuan in the climax. The film’s moral ambiguity, now a common theme in modern cinema, aids its realism and further ties it to the noir tradition.

The film’s ending is also ambiguous as Yuan’s future is unknown, and we are not left with answers but a strong sense of consequence. In the final shots, he looks up at the smoke of their cremated bodies polluting the sky. By taking their compensation he has become complicit in their scam and corrupted by money, also his silence indirectly killed them both as the mine collapsed. Here the vicious cycle of economic survival and modern values are evidently criticised, the innocent being inevitably corrupted by their social reality.

Blind Shaft’s identity is not just tied to China’s sixth-generation, but Yang also manages to consciously absorb influences from Western cinematic traditions such as neorealism and noir. It is this hybridity that is solidified by the timeless and universal nature of its themes. The corruptive power of money upon the human soul and socio-economic inequality are ills that effect all modern societies. Ultimately it is a compelling work of realism that documents the struggle of the individual in modern china.

Bibliography

Books Zhang, Y & Zhen, Z (2007) The Urban Generation: Chines Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. United States: Duke University Press.

Films

De Sica, V (1948) Bicycle Thieves. Italy: Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche

Yang, L (2003) Blind Shaft. China: Kino International.