As elegies go, Living the Land (Sheng xi zhi di) can rightly lay claim to being a Chinese landmark of unhurried intimacy as it chronicles a season – from springtime to harvest time in 1991 and a few years beyond – in the lives of rural villagers who span generations. Writer-director Huo Meng has chosen this time to describe how these wheat farmers’ timeless lifestyle, characterized by poverty and endless hard work, is on the cusp of radical change. Its elevation to Berlin competition should ensure much more festival play, though its fluid low-key narrative is not the dramatic stuff of Mo Yan novels, especially at over two hours of running time.
It’s clear that many aspects of farm life are changing rapidly and forcibly in the name of China’s socio-economic transformation, and Living the Land hits subtly on a great number of them. The storytelling is anchored – though not slavishly – in a wise young boy of ten, Chuang, through whose eyes and ears and feelings the spirit of the village springs to life. The youngest of three siblings, he has been left in the care of his grandma and his extended family, while his parents have moved to the city with his two brothers. This rather heartless arrangement doesn’t daunt him, though its emotional toll is hinted at.
Nimbly played by little Wang Shang, Chuang has a very distinct role in the village, representing a sort of linchpin between the dominant Li family and the exotic and modern, citified world of his father. Mom and Dad appear only once, for the traditional (though in part farcical) funeral of the elderly Li matriarch. For the occasion, the bones of her late husband, a robber king executed many years earlier, are dug up and reburied beside her. The episode has amusing undertones but also serves to underline the peasants’ attachment to their land and everything buried in it. Chuang’s folks take their leave with hints they will not be coming back anytime soon.
Chuang also fights off bullies in his role as the friend of a mentally unbalanced youth; he is, in fact, the only person Jihua trusts and bonds with. Realistically interpreted by Zhou Haotian, Jihua reveals the dark side of the villagers’ character in their distaste for someone so far out of the norm, and his fate is one of the cruelest in the film.
Told with an almost documentary realism, these small, interlaced stories are ordinary in themselves yet add up to something that feels grander, like an ultimate reflection on a disappearing way of life. As Chinese government planners enter these remote lives with their insidious bulletins and orders broadcast over loudspeakers, some of it has a queasily contemporary ring, notably the edict for all women of child-bearing age to submit to a government pregnancy test.
The fascinating aspect of the film is Huo Meng’s minute depiction of a collective way of life revolving around ancient traditions, ceremonies and even calendars. (In one of the lighter moments, if it can be called that, an old man describes his wife’s death due to his mistaking the day of her operation as referring to the lunar calendar in common use on farms, rather than the solar calendar of the city. As a result, he got her to the hospital too late to save her. The calm stoicism with which he tells the story is remarkable.)
Though the film opens and closes with a death, the real tragedy is the wedding of Chuang’s 21-year-old aunt Xiuying (Zhang Chuwen). With great delicacy, her love for the young village schoolteacher is indirectly conveyed when she sends the boy out one dark night to give the teacher a letter. We infer that it tells him she is going to marry a well-to-do young man with political connections (and a drinking problem). The reason for this has been gradually explained, beginning with the fact her sister-in-law is pregnant with a (forbidden) third child and the family sends Xiuying to take the obligatory pregnancy test in her place. This has harsh consequences, but the real trouble comes when the sister-in-law delivers her baby in a hospital, where the birth is registered, noted and heavily fined. Xiuying is ultimately the sacrificial lamb in a revolting (though typically de-dramatized) wedding scene that nauseates Chuang.
Much of the cast performs with the awkward realism of non-pro actors, in which they are fully convincing. This is particularly true of the most elderly, whose unforgiving lives offer a sharp critique of their youths and dispel any fantasies about the good old days. One woman bitterly recounts being married off at age 6. A 91-year-old woman tells the authorities she doesn’t know her own given name — she has always been known as Mrs. Li-hwang 3 (there having been two other women known only as Mrs. Li-hwang).
Pulling the narrative together and giving it a solemn tone is D.P. Guo Daming’s sensitive cinematography, that ranges from the earthy squabbles between kids in dusty courtyards to near-sublime panoramas of bright green wheatfields that have been tilled with oxen for centuries and cut by hand — now a true visit into the past.
Director, screenwriter, editing: Huo Meng
Producer: Zhang Fan
Cast: Wang Shang, Zhang Chuwen, Zhang Yanrong, Zhang Caixiai, Cao Lingzhi, Zhou Haotian, Jiang Yien, Wan Zhong, Mao Fuchang, Yang Kaidong
Cinematography: Guo Daming
Production design: Yu Shuyao
Soung design: Li Tao
Music: Wan Jianguo
Production companies: Floating Light (Foshan) Film and Culture in association with Shanghai Film Group, Bad Rabbit Pictures, Phoenix Legend Films, Lianray Pictures
World sales: M-Appeal
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In Mandarin
132 minutes
