Filmmaker Qiu Jiongjiong’s grandfather achieved fame as a clown actor performing with a traditional Sichuan opera troupe, and in A New Old Play, the director’s first narrative feature, his grandfather’s life inspires a picaresque series of stories that traverse the tumultuous 20th century. Often entertaining, occasionally mesmerizing, but too often unnecessarily drawn out and ennui-inducing, the stories trace the violent course of Chinese history from the 1920s to Chiang Kai-shek’s reunification of China, followed by the ascent to power of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party. For aficionados and festivals, it remains a uniquely refined first film that shows the clash of political and social change with immutable traditions. But its 3-hour running time, theatrical stylization and leisurely pace will make it hard going for many viewers.
Bowing in Locarno’s main competition, the tales are loosely stitched together around the imminent death of the main character. In a recurrent scene, Qiu Fu (Yi Sicheng) appears as an old man whose time has come to go to the City of Ghosts. Two minions appear to accompany him on his last journey, where the King of Hell awaits him. His clever efforts to slip away are useless, and he stops in a country inn where he will drink the soup of oblivion and forget the life he has just led. In this intriguing space between life and death, he relives his long and difficult career.
His father was an actor who died on stage; his poverty-stricken mother took his little brother and abandoned Qiu Fu. A scrappy young boy, he is reluctantly taken in by the New-New Theater Troupe, which is run with army-like discipline and beatings by former general Pocky Liu. Among the colorful characters is old Master Crooky, who tenderly carries around the Holy Bodhisattva, a life-sized statue glowing with peace and wisdom (most unsettlingly, the statue is played by a person.)
After passing his fleas to everybody in the troupe, the boy embarks on his predestined acting career. But rather than the usual star-is-born saga, Qiu Jiongjiong chooses to craft an atmospheric mood piece around the entire troupe, who initially appear like ghosts on mainly white sets, designed and painted in expressly built Sichuan studios by the director himself. The results are original and often amazing, like the silhouettes of soldiers against the painted gates of a walled city, which will shortly by destroyed in a fury of bombardments, smoke and war.
The theme of war and death is omnipresent. In the 1930s, Pocky fought in the long war against the Japanese, until Japan was defeated in 1945. He was on the side of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, but retired when the communist Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China.
At this point the New-New troupe disbands. Qiu Fu and his young wife, an actress, spend their days getting stoned on opium. Many of the actors sail to Taiwan on a boat that could have come out of Fellini’s And the Ship Sails On. But when Qiu, his wife and small daughter get to Taiwan, they discover no one is interested in Chinese arias or clown comedy, and they become beggars.
As the red flag is unfurled over northern China introducing a new society and a new era, Pocky brings his actors home. The troupe is optimistically re-dubbed “Joyful Theater” and “People’s Theater”; but it’s a pretense. Soon they will be reviled as counter-revolutionaries and made to wear dunce caps and signs around their necks. Though the great traditions of Chinese opera seem to have been buried forever, there is still old Crooky carrying around the Holy Bodhisattva, hiding his glowing light under a burlap sack.
The grueling poverty of those days is brought home in some of the film’s most unforgettable scenes, involving a newborn baby that Qiu Fu brings home to his wife (Guan Nan) shortly after their own daughter has died of starvation. First the wife resists “another mouth to feed”, but when the baby is near death, the couple steals into a fog-shrouded area to pick maggots (“an excellent source of protein”) out of human excrement, only to be told that both the excrement and maggots belong to the state.
The fictional backdrop is beautifully served by Robbin Fen’s evocative cinematography, which seems inspired by cloudy opium dreams of a past time that can be vaguely remembered but never recovered. In many ways, the film is a reimagining of Qiu Jiongjiong’s feature documentary Mr. Zhang Believes (Locarno 2015), which also tapped theater and autobiography to recount 20th century Chinese history in a highly personal authorial voice.
Director, screenwriter, production design, editing: Qiu Jiongjiong
Cast: Yi Sicheng, Guan Nan, Qiu Zhimin, Xue Xuchun, Gu Tao
Producers: Ding Ding, Yang Jin
Executive producers: L. Sophie, Han Yi, Huang Yue, Bao Vivian, Tang Xastle, Su Qiqi
Director of photography: Robbin Feng
Costume design: Bai Yun
Music: Diao Lili
Sound: Wang Ran
Production companies: Uluka Productions (Hong Kong), Hippocampe Productions (France) in association with Midnight Blur (China)
World sales: Parallax Films
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (international competition)
179 minutes
