whose camera doesn't lie?

On occasion of the Berlinale International Film Festival of 2004 I happened to see a very insightful first-time directors' documentary about the current state of affairs in contemporary independent Chinese film making by the title “My Camera Doesn't Lie”. Conspicuous enough as this title is in itself even for a documentary, it nevertheless provided some revelatory hints at to what it takes to make a film without any kind of institutional, of state backing in present-day China, to realize some piece of work dedicated to the essence of film, to making a valid, if personal statement about life instead of money foremost on your mind, to capture above all else means and methods, ways of getting-by and through the day, taking in and chronicling the variety of looks our shared condition, predicament to some, of being alive may come to take on, and shooting it raw as much as it is real.
This also marked my first taking note of director Zhang-Ke Jia and his works, which I have come to love ever since.

By such masterful films like “Xiao Wu”, “Platform” or most recently “Still Life”, which I yet haven't had the luck to see, he has made a name for himself as a particularly “honest” director, someone who points an incorruptible camera at the margins, which in Chinese society as much as in any other, like a crumpled blanket's numerous folds and crevices, make up a quite considerable part of the entire width of its span in plain actuality.
The issue of objectivity incorporated through and into any one film thus raised, I would still very much like to hold fast to my doubts about precisely how much truth can possibly be found in such a claim - one, which as far as I know, the director himself has never made.
There are some fundamental implications to such a reading of the term “reality”, which I personally do not want to buy into, or expand upon here.

But it is totally legitimate nonetheless to attribute a very clearly defined quality of a life-as-it-is approach to Zhang-Ke's spellbinding films.
For one, there is the grimness of his settings, his films' locations and protagonists' environs which offer a striking and welcomed contrast to your average polished and prettified production. It is there, where most of the imagery strength in “Xiao Wu” or “Unknown Pleasures” comes from. And these are no sets in any studio meaning of that word, but found and carefully chosen conditions, real places - or documents if you will, of a world in transition and all the dilemma this implies.

Zhang Yimou sure was very good; and now he will stage the 2008 Summer Olympics' opening ceremony in Beijing. But speaking of Zhang-Ke Jia's films, they are genre films in a way, of the “hapless guy falls for ambitious girl” type, your provincial drama with its inevitable in-for disappointment, heart grinding, bottom-line rationale. And with his films all of this sure comes along with a refreshing graininess applied, lacking any all-out pathetic climaxes, but rather like water, always, reliably so, flowing towards the lowest point, it just couldn't be otherwise. Or is there in the end some way out of the mire, some way of withstanding the forces of nature, which when it comes to young folk's emotional inconsistency would amount to something like building the house of your dreams on quicksand, with gravity forever prevailing? In his own, very eloquent way Zhang-Ke shows just that. And for this one reason alone it is that he doesn't need any kind of sophisticated resolution to his narratives: that he didn't really make them up in the first place, but let them evolve in the most minor key of stylization thinkable, expressly performed instead of well-scripted – or so it seems. Of course they are set up and written, but a film like “Xiao Wu” for example at no point betrays its original theme as the plot is never allowed any lofty flight of the director's imagination but the cinematograph tightness stays focused throughout.

What distinguishes his films from most of contemporary Asian productions, is the unpretentious simplicity, or clarity of his pictures, each frame challenging its own composition exactly because it is so self-effacing, you'll hardly notice there is any of it in them at all. And what makes his films so dear to me, is that this special quality (I wouldn't want to call it “style”) fittingly corresponds with the portrayed fragility of the human encounter, the bas-relief his story-telling presents, the charm and raw spell of carving, like he does, reality hardships and harshness into the astonishingly soft surface of the neediness and vanity that always have been, and forever will be, main components in man's struggle to survive - and with dignity.

Certainly Zhang-Ke Jia confronts present-day China, already half-believing in the glossiness of its own, self-projected image, with the reality of a hinterland pretty much unchanged.
But any political comment he offers in doing so, as much as it certainly figures strongly in his films, to me takes the backseat to the unique insights he provides into our basic human psyche and its many strange, yet simple twists. Zhang-Ke in “Unknown Pleasures” convincingly brings impotence to the screen, real or felt, maybe learned the hard way and close to impossible to extricate oneself from, for abandoning it, if one did so, would equal the letting go of all one's last defences against an unfavorable, even hostile surrounding. After all, resignation as a last resort still bears some hallmarks of an act of free will, does it not? That's why it seems so appealing at certain times, a real lure. Thus we come to read hope as a spell, poisonous alright, but for better or worse, who could tell?

I think you could call this a second, or higher truth or “reality” which is embodied in his works, a reality that it would be virtually impossible to achieve, if it wasn't for the director's principal and unrelenting love and sympathy for his characters. And believe it or not, most of them are in fact: real...

And finally, this for anyone who might have gotten interested in this brilliant Chinese director's films, here is additional news as to what he is up to in the near future:
Shooting is currently underway of his next full-length feature film, “Ciqing shidai” (“The Age of Tattoo”), scheduled for release within the first half of 2007. Allegedly this drama centers on a band of street kids during the final years of the so-called “Cultural Revolution” and, most intriguing to me, is based on a novel by no other than Su Tong (“Raise the Red Lantern”, “Rice”)!
So, there seems every reason to expect some precious blend of down-to-earth credibility and grand story-telling – sounds miraculous to me. (source: IMDb)

(pic©Office Kitano, Lumen Films, E-Pictures)