This powerful film just took top honors at the Tribeca Film Festival, winning in the category of best narrative feature. All the competitors were first-time feature directors, so don't expect Bertollucci here, but this is a view of working-class Chinese characters that will grip you from start to finish.
Thankfully, the programmers at this festival are daring enough to support this film in spite of the Chinese government's ban on it. Let's hope it finds
distribution soon.
Why do we love movie gangsters? What is it about the good-badman that
draws us in to Cagney at his selfish best, or a zillion noir protagonists? All of that is here, and more in the writing, and the low-key acting never threatens to spoil the bleak mood, either. This is DETOUR, PATHS OF GLORY, SWEET
SIXTEEN (Ken Loach's latest) territory. The scene where the two miners sing
karaoke, wasted with two sex workers in a cheap brothel is enough to make a
government blacklist and everyone's else's must-see list at the same time.
These men have spent their lives being exploited by crooked mine owners and
are fighting back in a crude and _extremely_ callous way, and the reserve with which the scene plays out conveys so much more than even the best socialist
realism of Sayles' MATEWAN ever did. (A great film in its' own right, don't get me wrong. But the situations for coal miners depicted in BLIND SHAFT are all
the more sobering since it is contemporary.)
Don't sweat the ending of a tale like this. First-time directors should always get a pass on wrapping a film up. If they get the characters across convincingly (and here they do) then what comes in the last reel hardly matters. Gangsters back in the day knew enough to leave a theater before the moral was delivered. The real message is in the body of a film, where the mirror is held up to real life.
