Catch these 5th Generation Chinese cinema classics

A few weeks ago, this column focused on the cinema of Iran in the light of the recent protests there. This week, for no particular reason other than that several of the exceptional films that were part of it are easily available, we turn to the cinema of China in the heady creative period of the late 1980s and 1990s.

This was when the filmmakers known as the 5th Generation were so called because its members were all graduates of the country’s only film school, The Beijing Film Academy, in 1982, the first year of the school’s reopening in the wake of the repression of the Cultural Revolution.

Over the course of the next two decades, films made by this group of graduates, many of them using historical tales to comment on China’s recent history, swept festival awards and obtained praise around the world for their directors, some of whom have since disappointingly become mouthpieces for a propagandist cinema that harks backwards to the era of the Cultural Revolution they were so inspired to overcome.

Whatever their politics now, these three films by three of the most well-known and acclaimed directors of that not-so-long-ago remarkable period in Chinese cinema continue to stand the test of time as beautiful, elegant and powerful films, that still inspire awe and wonder in the heart of cinema lovers everywhere.

The art house essential:

Raise the Red Lantern — YouTube

Zhang Yimou’s third film in a trilogy that began with 1987’s Red Sorghum and working with the enigmatic beauty, actress Gong Li, earned a best foreign film Oscar nomination in 1992. Like its predecessors, Raise the Red Lantern is a period piece that deals with the injustices of forced marital relations in Chinese society, this time adapted from a novella by Su Tong and set in the 1920s Republican era.

Li plays 19-year-old Songlian, an educated women who is forced, after the death of her father, by her stepmother to become the fourth concubine to the patriarch of the wealthy Chen family. When she arrives there she’s at first treated like royalty and is impressed by the wealth and luxury on display. However, she soon discovers that the realities of life as a concubine are far more cut-throat and designed to pit the women against each other as they battle for the attention of their master, and the coveted red lanterns that will be lit in front of the house of the concubine he chooses to spend the night with.

The film is sumptuously photographed by cinematographers Zhao Fei and Yang Lun and anchored by Li’s fiery performance as a woman who refuses to allow herself to be beaten down by the oppressions of outdated tradition. It injects some old-school film noir-era Hollywood sass into a thoughtfully executed period piece with plenty of resonance for women still trapped in similar patriarchal traps everywhere.

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The stone-cold classic:

Life on a String — YouTube

Chen Kaige’s epic 1991 fable is a ravishingly beautiful and poetic tale about the divides between age and youth and the importance of discipline to the creative process. A blind master musician and his blind young apprentice travel from village to village in northern China, entertaining peasants with their performances of traditional songs. The master is determined in his not-always-rewarded purpose because as a child he was once told by his own mentor that when he broke his thousandth string, he would regain his eyesight. His apprentice is sceptical and decides to ditch the inglorious life of a poor musician on the road in the boondocks and make his own fortune.

The resulting drama that arises from the clash between tradition and freedom and the disavowal of faith and hope gently power the story towards its sweeping and moving conclusion.

Kaige’s use of music is innovative and unforgettable and will offer plenty of spine-tingling chills, while his capturing of the wonders of the landscape is almost unmatched in cinema history.  

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The diamond in the rough:

The Blue Kite — YouTube

Tuan Zhuangzhuang’s politically trenchant family saga is an understated, hard-hitting examination of the effect of the policies of the Maoist regime on ordinary Chinese citizens. Following the depressing fortunes of one Beijing family through the eyes of its youngest son, Tietou, the film offers a sobering and often dark portrait of the everyday struggles and uncertainties that made life so difficult for so many in the tumultuous period between 1953 and 1967.

The film centres on three key periods in communist China’s history: The Hundred Flowers Campaign, when citizens were urged to express their opinions of the party under the assurance that criticism was welcome but only to find that Mao used the campaign to crack down on detractors; the Great Leap Forward, which sought to transform the country’s economy from agrarian to communist, and lead to the death of millions from starvation; and the infamous Cultural Revolution, which was instituted to purge China of all remnants of capitalist and traditional society and led to “10 years of chaos”.

Unlike the era and leaders that it so deftly exposes, Zhungzhuang’s film is a quietly devastating, human drama that never slips into the easy trap of hitting its audience over the head with angry outbursts or swooshing sentimentality. It was, unsurprisingly, promptly banned by the Chinese government and its director earned himself a 10-year ban from filmmaking in the country for his efforts. However, it soon found a wide and receptive audience on the international festival circuit and continues to be held up as classic of the 5th generation era.

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