Drifters: Smoking and Moping on the Mainland

Is anyone in China happy? The above question, asked recently by a genuinely perplexed viewer on an internet conference dedicated to Chinese films, prompted one response that not only listed a series of depressing themes the writer proposed as common to mainland Chinese films, but in addition stated emphatically that it was precisely these subject matters that caused her to flee to the happier climes of Hong Kong cinema. (1) While subsequent postings sought to refine and clarify the position as being a concern with the distribution of Chinese films rather than their production, one of the issues being opened up here is the age-old debate concerning the nature of cinema itself: is its end to be diversionary escapist entertainment or to be an authentic expression of precisely that quotidian existence that is people's real experience of life as lived, and if that includes suffering, so be it. Wang Xiaoshuai's Drifters, screened at this year's Toronto International Film Festival, is an example of the latter approach to cinematic content. Together with its complementary snail-paced tempo and languorous style, Drifters, it seems to me, would be an excellent example for the above debate. At the press screening I attended, over half the audience had fled before the film ended. Not that this is unusual, of course. My experience has been that, for the most part, the festival press (and those concomitant others who have access to these preview screenings), pressed with the need to see as many films as possible over a short period of time, have little patience with films that are slow-paced and evocative. Which is a pity. Films like Drifters require a lot of investment on the part of the viewer because there doesn't seem to be a lot going on for most of the time. Nevertheless, those who manage to stick it out are (in this case, as well as countless others) rewarded in the end with a filmic experience that lasts well beyond the closing credits. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The cinematic style of Drifters is very different from Wang Xiaoshuai's earlier films that have screened in Toronto; Frozen (1995) and Beijing Bicycle (2001). With its emphasis on long static shots where not much seems to happen, its reliance on mood conveyed through glances and gestures rather than dialogue and its sense of quiet desperation punctuated by both over and under-determined actions, Drifters most closely resembles an homage to the Taiwanese school of cinema of Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-Liang. As with these two directors, mood is everything. Rather than American-style narrative action, this film's cinematic time is filled with contemplative moments-the smoking and moping alluded to in the title of this piece. However, I want to stress the fact that I do not intend that to be a pejorative description. Quite the opposite. To address criticism of the emptiness of these moments, I would like to offer the following. As with abstract art, there are two possibilities for reading these scenes. One is that they're empty cinematically, i.e. there's nothing there. The other position-and the one I prefer to take- is that these seemingly empty moments are in fact full of meaning. But it is the work of the viewer (if they're open and willing) to fill in these narrative lacunae with internal reflections and meditations on the possibilities open to the character/s. The result is the opening up for the viewer of a concentrated living-through- the-protagonist that goes beyond the conventions of filmic identification. In Wang Xiaoshuai's film, the protagonist, Hong Yunsheng, nicknamed Er di or 'Younger Brother' (the Chinese title of the film (2)), is a young man recently returned from a failed attempt at illegally emigrating to the United States. While this venture has made him a kind of celebrity in his small town in the south eastern province of Fujian, he spends his days in idleness. Most of the time he sits around and smokes, staring into space, indolently refusing to get involved or get a job or even have much contact with anyone else. …

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