Pema Tseden’s Snow Leopard (Xue bao) is at once a gritty social-realist drama about the economic hardship among livestock herders in China’s rural hinterlands, a CGI-laden fantasy about karma and spiritual enlightenment, and a very subtle allegory about a beleaguered community’s troubled co-existence with disruptive outsiders.
The multi-layered and ceaselessly vociferous Snow Leopard is a powerful reminder of the recently deceased Tibetan filmmaker’s undimmed humanism, his ease in accommodating different visual styles to his poetic universe, and his deft representation of socio-political issues which might still be taboo for China’s rigorous censors today.
The first of two films Pema Tseden managed to finish shooting before he died of a heart attack in May, Snow Leopard is a powerful and unquestionably appropriate showcase of the filmmaker’s flair and also his vigorously open approach in embracing different artistic influences and social perspectives. Bowing out of competition at Venice, where Pema Tseden’s three previous features also premiered, Snow Leopard is bound for broad gallops across festivals after its next stop at Toronto, and should serve as an effective entry point for the filmmaker’s new converts in potential retrospectives.
After a night of bloody ravage in a pen of rams, a snow leopard finds itself encircled by the owners of its prey. The herders are conflicted about what they could or couldn’t do with a predatory beast which is at once a spiritual totem, a state-protected animal and a threat to the livelihoods of people on the ground. The patriarch of the ram-rearing family, Aku (Losang Choepel), says the leopard shouldn’t be harmed as it’s just acting according to the divine laws of nature; the hot-headed son (played by Pema Tseden’s regular star Jinpa), however, demands retribution, and has to be restrained by his family and friends from shooting the animal.
For once, however, the peasants are not really the sole protagonists. As if taking a leaf out of his 2007 feature The Search, a Kiarostami-like story about a film crew’s roam across rural hinterlands to cast non-professional actors for a production, Pema Tseden parachutes a team of TV reporters into this rural incident. Led by the bespectacled journalist Dradul (Genden Phuntsok) – whose urbanite background is shown through his ruminations about life, and also his video chats with his flamenco-loving fiancée – the group watches from the sidelines as arguments (and threats of violence) ebb and flow, first among the herders themselves and then between them with the arriving government officials.
However much we could consider Dradul as Pema Tseden’s onscreen proxy, his importance here is merely as the foil to the beating heart of the whole film. Nyima (Tseten Tashi) provides an interesting contrast to the single-tracked city and countryside dwellers around him: a monk who converted to monastic life only in his 20s, he is at once comfortable with his religious calling and enthusiastic about modern-day technology, as shown in the sophisticated camera he carries around him. “I can do what I want to do, and still chant sutras,” he says to Dradul in one of the many conversations the pair have throughout the film.
And it’s around Nyima that the viewer gets to engage with the titular animal – and the spiritual aspect of Pema Tseden’s film kicks in. As the monk approaches the besieged snow leopard, he is catapulted into visions which remind him of his past connections with it. In less certain and more populist-minded hands, these flashbacks could have been rendered cheesily melodramatic; here, Pema Tseden invokes genuine emotions and affections through polished on-screen special effects, fostering Nyima’s budding relationship with the leopard.
Such reflections about how people should engage with their (human) foes – or, specifically, how the Tibetan minority is to contend with the incursions of Han Chinese in the rural backwaters in western China and beyond – are in fact the subtly articulated central theme in Snow Leopard. It’s a topic Pema Tseden had long brought to the screen through minor nods and nudges, but he had perhaps made one of the most overt reference to this debate in Snow Leopard through what seems to be a bizarre editing decision.
In the middle of the film, Nyima and a fellow local hook a ram’s carcass from the pen and carry it to a snow-covered hilltop, so as to feed the snow leopard’s hungry, squealing cub. The film then suddenly cuts indoors to the herder’s house, as celebrations begin for Wang Xu (played by pop singer-actor Xiong Ziqi), the only Han person in the TV crew and for miles around. He’s feted with a big birthday cake – a confectionery the locals decline to consume – and adorned with a paper-made crown by his colleagues, perhaps in jest.
But is the “coronation” really just a visual gag? The fresh-faced, diligent Wang is impeccably polite and respectful for local traditions, with his enthusiasm about learning and speaking Tibetan surprising his colleagues and the locals. But Wang could also be considered as the human equivalent to that cub in the distance: he might seem vulnerable and benign, but he’s from “the other side” after all. (Pema Tseden’s ninth and last feature, The Stranger, is aimed at probing this further, with a story about a Han motorcyclist’s arrival at a remote Tibetan village. His son, Jigme Trinley, is working on the edit with Pema’s long-running close collaborators, such as composer Dukar Tserang.)
In another instance, the younger ram-rearer is heard screaming about how he could only watch on helplessly as snow leopards (and other similarly protected wild animals) run amok among his flock: “They’re so protected, we can’t even lift a finger!” What lengths, then, could one go to formulate some kind of peaceful and fair-minded co-existence with the vanguards of assimilation of an overwhelming majority? And isn’t it a co-incidence that the film was set in 2016 – a time when the Chinese authorities established a state-backed fund aimed at compensating rural shepherds for leopard-caused damages to their livestock, and also the year when Pema Tseden emerged from official custody with bruises aplenty, after he was arrested at an airport for what the police described as a “scuffle over luggage”?
Admittedly, Snow Leopard doesn’t leap out as something as visually slick and genre-inflected as his recent outings, whether it’s the crisp monochrome of Tharlo, the desaturated hues of the noir-tinged (and Wong Kar-wai-produced) Jinpa or the blooming technicolour of Balloon. But Snow Leopard’s power doesn’t lie with what’s on the surface. Zipping between the claustrophobic confines of the herder’s small house and the vast expanses of the wild, DP Matthias Delvaux and editor Jin Di bring to the screen the raw energy produced by the clanging clash of ideas between people – and the fears and hopes such conflicts could possibly yield.
Director, screenplay: Pema Tseden
Cast: Jinpa, Xiong Ziqi, Tseten Tashi
Producers: Wang Lei, Tsemdo Thar
Executive producers: Ji Nan, Zhou Hao, Yu Going, Pema Tseden, Zhang Beipeng, Zhao Yan, Hu Mengchu, Fan Zhaohui
Director of photography: Matthias Delvaux
Editor: Jin Di
Production designer: Daktse Dundrup
Music composer-sound designer: Dukar Tserang
Production companies: Mani Stone Pictures, Beijing Nanji Film Co Ltd, Dzona Pictures, DIGIK 2
World sales: Rediance
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of competition)
In Tibetan, Mandarin
104 minutes