Hong Kong, China, France, 2021
Directed by Qiu Jiongjiong
With Yi Sicheng (Qiu Fu), Haoyu Chen (Qiu Fu as a child), Qiu Zhimin (Pocky), Guan Nan (Tong Huafeng)
The rickshaw looks worryingly flimsy, weirdly decorated with those strings where colored bulbs are fixed usually associated with Christmas trees. The characters also look bizarre and barely competent to drive such a vehicle and to carry out any mission. But they do have an assignment they are keen to accomplish: to get in touch with an old actor and to hand him an invitation from the kingdom of Hell to perform there.
Time is up for Qiu Fu: he can walk as briskly as he can and take whatever detour he can find, he can also protest or fudge, Horse-face and Ox-head are here to snatch him from the kingdom of the living and carry him into the kingdom of the dead. Reluctantly, Qiu Fu follows those funny messengers from Hell but as they meet folks he used to know and who have oddly not been settled in any hereafter realm, the voyage gets more time to be made and the old actor can evoke at length what his life has been.
The editing switches between an in-between world wrapped in a light fog where Qiu Fu’s soul wanders and the more colored world where he grew up and lived, trying to make the ends meet and to enjoy the art he struggled so badly to master, the Sichuan opera, and to stay happy with his family and especially his beloved wife, even as he was, like countless other Chinese, tossed around mercilessly and ceaselessly by the epic political events their nation underwent, most of the time harrowingly, in the course of the 20th century.
He started his career not only in the midst of the endless and brutal clashes between warlords that followed the collapse of the Empire and of the first Republican government: it is the civil war that delivered him the tools to be trained and the stages to shine, as he caught the attention of a powerful warlord who was so fan of the Sichuan opera that he set up his own troupe with fellow soldiers. The film gives little details actually about Qiu Fu as a child: the first part rather focuses on the eccentric character of Pocky, a raucous chronicle of a weird warlord more preoccupied with plays than with fronts and how his New-New Theater and Opera School works more or less smoothly (less than more arguably).
The Qiu Fu he meets is known to him as the son of a famous actor who spoiled his talent by drinking as a fish; he instantly realizes the kid is also quite a cheeky and confident character eager to make it. But learning to be a Sichuan opera singer remains a challenging task even for someone so resolute and born into the trade to boot. Exploring the childhood of Qiu Fu means detailing the harsh, punishing methods used to train the would-be performers, though the film handles the topic with humor and zest, the small motley group of people working under Pocky’s fussy, and a bit messy, leadership standing out as delightfully eccentric and light-hearted characters.
The big moment in Qiu Fu’s life does not come so much from the stage, where his skills are duly noticed, but from the end of the long period of wars that have ravaged China and killed so many – first, the warlords’ conflicts, then the battle between the triumphant group of nationalist warlords and Communist activists, then the vicious war between the Chinese people and the Japanese invaders, and eventually the conquest of power by the Chinese Communist Party. Pocky can no longer rely on war to fund his passion while the Communist Party is eager to take control of the arts. And it is also the time Pocky pushes his star performer to marry a woman: the end of the 1940s mean for Qiu Fu starting to change his way of acting and feeling, working in a new environment (even if some players of Pocky’s operatic company are still around holding the same positions), and enjoying a tender life with Tong Huafeng (whose first steps are delicately captured in warm, graceful, vibrant shots).
But Qiu Fu’s new life would miserably fails to live up to the promises made by the triumphant ideology and any personal expectation for happiness. The new style of opera Communism demands is barely inspiring and barely feeding the artists. More crucially, they are caught in the bloody mess key policies of the ruling party causes, the sweeping revolutionary changes eagerly sought leading to poverty and repression, the artists becoming rather like starving slaves forced to manual work and doomed to be persecuted, whether during the so-called Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s or, even more tragically and lastingly, the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s. Political score-settling and fanaticism even splinter the family Qiu Fu set up in the most bitterest and grimmer ways. China would start to move back from the brink of total collapse and right towards a more peaceful and modernizing path at the end of the 1970s, but Qiu Fu, wearied by years of national and personal tragedies, despite his rather upbeat nature and quiet resilience would not witness bigger transformation as it is during the early 1980s that he gets his invitation from the kingdom of Hell.
If the narrative broaches many issues and facets of the Chinese culture and history and has a truly sweeping approach, the twists and turns spanning the entire 20th century (in the historical sense, from World War I to the end of the 1980s) while swinging between the real world and the netherworld, the narration is boldly monotonous. There is no rush to juggle colorful and compelling sequences of an ambitious and traditional period piece: instead, the film is built as visual variations of the same kind of stage, painted often in brown and gray hues. It is more a collection of tableaux sharing basic features but displaying each time a striking peculiarity nicely reflecting the mood and the events seizing the characters than a hectic but carefully timed and crafted movement treading different territories one after the other. The story may have a thoroughly epic quality but the shooting self-consciously avoids spectacle and splendor. The singularly dull colors and the striking attitude, even poses, of the cast lend a uniformity and a singularity that can puzzle even as they are uncanny. The camera barely moves, favoring long takes, lateral tracking shots slowly revealing the lively world of the thespians, and creative motifs making witty connections.
Cinema is turned into theatricality, perhaps, but one that is suffused with poetry and expresses pointedly the poignancy of Qiu Fu’s life, wonderfully matching the flow of his memory, the experience of acting, the complexity of his feelings tinged with smiling wistfulness and vivid nostalgia. At one point Qiu Fu is told his life was like the stage: it seems that director Qiu Jiongjiong has made every effort to design a language that genuinely pays tribute to Sichuan opera and the traditions and ways of life politics have so bluntly upset and even endangered in the course of the past century. The visual artist, who is delivering here a debut fictional feature, is also paying tribute to his grandfather – the relative was a genuine Sichuan opera actor and had the same name as his fictional counterpart. This makes the film even more moving even as it remains from beginning to end a delightful comic and sarcastic take on the homeland. Of course, “Jiao ma tang hui – A New Old Play” brings to mind the 1993 film of Chen Kaige, “Ba wang bie ji – Farewell My Concubine” but if there are many things that they share, the 2021 feature is also the polar opposite in terms of creativity and an exciting cinematic offer on its own right.