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November 18, 2005 > Arts & Entertainment > ‘Balzac’ makes smooth trip to screen

‘Balzac’ makes smooth trip to screen

By Margaret Tung | Thresher staff

Book-turned-movie screenplays usually behave like sequels to blockbuster films — the high expectations viewers bring to the movie often lead them to favor the book over the film. But Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which is set in a time of political unrest and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, has a rare advantage: It is directed and co-written by Dai Sijie, who authored the book by the same title. The on-screen Balzac, like the novel, gives a florid and moving commentary on rural life under Mao Zedong’s regime, and its engaging story appeals to viewers on both political and sentimental levels.

Luo (A West Lake Moment’s Kun Chen) and Ma (Purple Butterfly’s Ye Liu), best friends and sons of bourgeois parents, are abruptly uprooted from the city and transported to the breathtaking landscape of the mountainous regions of China, which is captured brilliantly by the film’s cinematography. They are there for “re-education,” part of Mao’s effort to eliminate any perceived elitism. Once they reach the tiny village, it is clear that the small remnants of freedom they once took for granted — such as the cookbook immediately sent to the burning pit — will have to be sacrificed.

Ma’s violin is spared, though, thanks to his adeptness as a musician and Luo’s ingenuity. Luo tells the awe-stricken villagers the piece Ma plays is a Mozart composition created for Mao. This sequence is especially compelling because of the inner conflict taking place within the communist-party-appointed village chief (Blind Shaft’s Shuangbao Wang). Even though he can see through the fib, the novelty of classical music is far too appealing for him to resist.

Life in the country is harsh on the city boys, who are forced to carry barrels of watery manure and work in the mines. These gritty daily activities are captured realistically with un-retouched, low-budget filming reminiscent of documentary filmmaking. Dai uses this stark camerawork to contrast the beauty of the lush landscape with political commentary. By mixing wide frames of the area’s greenery with the mud-drenched sweat on the faces of the hard-working villagers and the laughable rhetoric of the proletariat ideals the chief espouses, he none-too-subtly attacks the Communist regime in China.

To pass the slow country time, the boys tell elaborate tales, and their affinity for storytelling earns them trips into the city to learn propagandized entertainment for the villagers. On one such trip, Ma and Luo meet the Little Seamstress (Suzhou He’s Xun Zhou), their muse of sorts who has no other name throughout the film. Her simple beauty and playful innocence bring a new optimism to the boys — particularly Luo, who begins a quiet love affair with her.

The seemingly naive seamstress has a few tricks of her own, though: She helps Ma and Luo acquire an illicit bevy of European books from the likes of Dumas, Flaubert and, of course, Balzac. Luo reads to the Little Seamstress every day in an effort to transform her bucolic mind into a literate and introspective one. Soon, she seems to fall as much in love with Balzac as she does with Luo, and she even learns to write.

Toward the end, the love story between Luo and the Little Seamstress breaks down both in and out of the context of the story. A critical and anticlimactic narrative flaw in the story is only worsened by the lukewarm chemistry between Kun and Xun, and the film loses its viewers’ interest rapidly from that point forward.

The actors do a marvelous job with the script they are handed, but the film never delves deep enough into the characters’ relationships with the arts and each other, and it sports more loose ends than a fraying sweater.

While the ending lacks any much-needed closure, the well-illustrated paradox of the movie is hopefully what viewers end up remembering. In their re-education, the boys actually teach the village people and the seamstress how to appreciate and love the very arts they have been sent to forget. Dai adeptly shows this paradox throughout the film, mainly through the village chief. From allowing the violin to be played to letting Ma off the hook when caught reciting The Count of Monte Cristo, the chief’s actions suggest even the most stubborn member of a society is not immune to the appeal of music and literature. Balzac may be a foreign film and its story incomplete, but it does keep a firm grip on a universally charming and insightful theme.

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