Yellow Earth (Film)

Huang tudi. 1984. Dir: Chen Kaige. Scr: Zhang Ziliang. Cin: Zhang Yimou.

Context:

• Produced at Guangxi Film Studio after Chen asked to be transferred there to work with his friend Zhang Yimou, it was Chen's first feature film.
• Based on essay 'Echo in the Valley' by Ke Lan. This was a musical paean to the government and people, with a stereotypical story of an Eighth Route Army soldier bettering the life of a peasant girl by influencing her to struggle from the feudal traditions of her family (thereby emancipating her). The musical element in the film (i.e. the folk songs and recurring musical scenes of Cuiqiao's melancholy song over the river, overseen by pre-eminent composer Zhao Jiping) must be seen as stemming from this source, although it had no specific reference to the Northern China setting of Yellow Earth. A number of melodramatic and political clichés were dropped by Chen in his adaptation, which initially went under the working title 'Silent is the Ancient Plain', before the colour tones of the final result inspired a name-change.
• The film is a deconstruction of Communist mythology and propaganda: namely that their message spread like wildfire in the countryside, with peasants instantly being enthusiastic, as if the CCP and their message had a natural bond with them. The reality in Yellow Earth is shown to be vastly different, and the difficulties in bringing the Communist message to uneducated illiterate peasants, who are culturally steeped in ancient Confucianist beliefs and traditions, are shown to be deeply complicated.
• Chen, Zhang Yimou and other crew members scouted Shaanxi province, lived there with peasants for a month, and in the final film would recruit plenty of actual peasants and locals to star in roles or as extras. They would also include plenty of local 'colour', in the form of Shaanxi folk songs (xintianyou) and folk rituals. This would give the film an anthropological, documentary-esque film, although this was frowned upon by the official regime's views, presumably because they saw the film's portrayal of the rural population as clashing against their own propaganda of how they had made the peasants progressive and improved their lives.
• Technically the second 'Fifth Generation' film, it represents their efforts to disown and distance themselves from what came before them: propaganda films, didacticism, aged melodramatic styles. Chen Kaige said in an interview with Tony Rayns: "[The Fifth Generation graduates] shared two convictions: first, the older generation of Chinese filmmakers could be dismissed as propagandists, and second, film was an artistic medium that should be used personally. All of us hated what was passing for cinema in China – all that didacticism, all those dated, theatrical styles – and we set out determined to do something different and better." Such claims clearly sound like the words of a new generation of filmmakers starting what could be termed unde the label of 'new wave', as a cinematic movement.
• True to the Fifth Generation's ambitions to make a type of cinema completely different from previous Chinese films, its style and treatment of its content is very different to what came before in many respects. For instance, when compared with the many post-1949 films depicting feudal marriages, Yellow Earth can be seen as making a subtle comment on these films and their appropriation of such rituals for political rhetoric. E.g. Paul Clark states that one stock character from the 'model opera' type films during the C.R. was a "young woman eager to join the revolutionary struggle". Yellow Earth subverts this stock character.
• Like several other 1980s Fifth Generation films, it was shot in rural locations, specifically in the Shaanxi province just like Tian Zhuangzhuang's On the Hunting Ground, made the same year. Part of this interest with rural locales could be down to the directors' own experiences as zhiqing during the Cultural Revolution, to the greater ease and freedom (from the censorship and control of central regulations) they could enjoy working in such remote settings, and to bring to provide a cinematic portrait of/voice to some of the ethnic minorities of China.

The Film:

• Set in 1939, during the Sino-Japanese war (just as The One and the Eight had been, presumably because it is a safer era to touch on than any CCP era), in the rural parts Shaanxi province, with its parched yellow-ochre earth and by the banks of the Yellow River and also famously where Mao set up base after the Long March. Lao Gu (Wang Xueqi) is an Eighth Route Army (CCP) soldier on a mission to collate folk songs from the local peasants, in order to then turn them into Communist propaganda songs; it would both boost morales for the troops and presumably the goal is to also boost CCP support amidst these peasants. During this time Lao Gu is being housed by a poor family of farmers: a widower (Tan Tuo), his teenage daughter Cuiqiao (Xue Bai) and his young son Hanhan (Liu Qiang). The film however does not focus very much at all on Lao Gu's mission, or even that much on Lao Gu himself. Lao Gu as a central character works more as a focal and observational device, being our witness and guide to this harsh rural and feudal world (it must be noted that he has clearly far more modern values, as seen explicitly in his conversation with Cuiqiao's father concerning marriage). Lao Gu's role, as a relatively educated character from the city, sent to the rural backwards countryside in interaction with uneducated farmers/peasants, is easily read as a stand-in for the situations the zhiqing found themselves (including of course Chen himself the Yellow River. These traits should be seen as an attempt to directly and distinctly move away from the previous cinematic tropes of didacticism and melodrama.
• The parallels and contrasts between the film's two paternal figure - girl relationships (i.e. Father with Cuiqiao, and Lao Gu with Cuiqiao - representing respectively the relationship with/impact on of traditional confucianism and of communism on the population, both being impotent in improving lives) are key to its structure and meaning.
• Lao Gu's ineptitude and incapability to create any positive change to the fate of Cuiqiao (besides indirectly influencing her, he can do nothing as he cannot help her join the army before her marriage) can be seen as a reversal of the official version, where these peasants' lives were radically improved by the CCP and its soldiers.
• Aesthetic influences from pre-CCP classical culture: Its visual aspects and cinematography attempt to form a distinctly Chinese filmic language (as opposed to more conventional Western narrative filmic visual tropes) [c.f. Rey Chow describing the film's central dilemma as wanting to describe and comment on China with a technological medium and artform which the filmmakers were aware was 'non-Chinese' --- i.e. a cultural exchange of film technology and national culture]. In particular, the film has drawn comparisons to the non-perspectival tradition of Chinese scroll painting (long-shots of landscapes with dwarfed human figures, pans and tilts like the opening of scrolls, empty space, disproportionate horizons in the composition, etc), and to Taoist school of thought (the use of landscape is reminiscent of the Taoist dictum 'Silent is the Roaring Sound, Formless is the Image Grand'). From 'New Chinese Cinemas':"Yellow Earth’s reinsertion of nature into the coded semiotic system of Chinese film syntax, its reinterpretation of landscape and its strategy of emptying space constitute… the Daoist terms for the political reinstatement of a classical mode of the Chinese aesthetics". The peasants have a deep respect and understanding of nature (c.f. the father's respect for the land by ritually sprinkling grain on the revered yellow earth, which Gu laughs at and sees as supersition --- to him the earth is merely raw material to be exploited just like the folk songs are to the CCP, but to the peasants who work it, it offers livelihood and deserves deep respect, as do the folk songs --- and Yellow Earth also reflects that respect for both the earth and the folk songs and traditions) which fits with the Daoist view of harmonious order between man and nature.
• Zhang Yimou's cinematography, filmed on location, uses natural lighting and non-perspectival use of space to depict barren landscape in extreme long shots (with human figures as tiny dots in the distance). The horizon is very often oddly proportioned, positioned at the very top or very bottom of the frame, with the majority of the frame then being made up of earth/landscape or of sky. This leaves a lot of 'empty space' in the compositions, which traditionally feature in Chinese classical painting and is regarded as just as important as anything else in the painting.
• Visual symbolism of having to go against the current (non-conformity) occurs with Cuiqiao's escape in the river against the water's current and also at the very end with Hanhan running inthe opposite direction of the mass, when he sees Lao Gu.
• The intermittent shots of Cuiqiao watching on, during the first wedding procession, intercut 3 or 4 times into scenes of the festivities, have added resonance due to the Confucian teaching inscribed on the door behind her. The Chinese characters visible mean 'Three obediences and four virtues', referring to the Confucian principles, where the three obediences are a woman's obedience to father, husband and son. Of course these shots also foreshadow the second wedding procession sequence, which will be Cuiqiao's wedding.
• The rural peasants of the film have no time for CCP ideals or indeed ideals of any kind, since they are far more preoccupied with survival on a day-to-day basis. No collective farming is ever shown in the film, instead we see lone farmers with an ox and a trough, representing an age-old agrarian sensibility.
• Self-referentiality: (like Chen's King of the Children) the soldier Gu and his effort at making change, is a stand-in not only for Chen's experiences as a sent-down youth but for the artist trying to change the fate of the masses of peasants as per Mao's instructions for art/artists at the influential Yan'an conference. In the end both the efforts of Gu and of art are well-intentioned but futile, and Yellow Earth itself is self-reflexively inserting it and its filmmakers in the role of Gu. Just like usurping the folk songs for propaganda is doomed to fail, so is hoping that songs/art can improve the lives of the peasants, contrary to what the idealistic Gu at the beginning says to his peasant hosts at the wedding banquet. [See Helen Hok-Sze essay in Chinese Films in Focus for more on this]
• Folk elements, rituals and local colour: 

1. The folk songs (xintianyou of Shaanxi province), bitter and lamenting, songs of oppression and hardship, sung variously by the man at the wedding banquet, Cuiqiao several times (each intercut with shots of the river long-shots of nature) and one time by Cuiqiao's father (c.f. what Helen Hok-Sze writes of this instance, which demonstrates that the father is not as simple-minded as Gu and perhaps we the audience might have assumed.He is not unsympathetic towards his daughter's fate but knows he cannot change it. He sings now for Gu because, though he knows his song-collecting project is bound to fail, he still wishes to help him avoid trouble with his superiors.)  
2. The rain dance..
3. The waist-drum performance....
4. The wedding ceremonies.... 

• The film can overall be said to have three major aims: 1) to investigate and perhaps create cultural and historical meaning (a look at rural folk culture and back in Chinese history, much obfuscated by propaganda, also an attack on feudal and Confucianist patriarchical traditions which imprison these otherwise lively peasants full of vitaly); 2) to attempt to move away from the didactical unambiguous discourse of social propaganda by introducing some uncertainty and opening up questions; 3) to give a platform and voice to specifically Chinese aesthetics.

Reception:

• Distribution: International Film Circuit (US theatrical, 1988); Fox Lorber (US VHS, 1997)
• Famously premiered at the 1985 Hong Kong film festival, on 12 April 1985, where its screening was met with much 'collective rapture' and the audience stayed for a long time afterwards in a post-screening discussion with Chen and Zhang, both in attendance. Although most of the audience were from Hong Kong (thereby people who generally would have low expectations of mainland China art/culture but who were shocked by the quality of the film), there were enough foreign journalists and critics (including of course Tony Rayns) present to report back to the West and garner the film's acclaim and international attention. It was hailed as a 'bold breakthrough' and as an 'exploration of film language'. It won five festival prizes in 1985, in China, in Hawaii, in Locarno, in Spain and a prize for cinematography at the Three Continents festival at Nantes. It also sparked a great deal of debate within China amongst critics and scholars.
• Within China, the official views towards it were suspicious, due to its seeming subtle reversals of the official story of the CCP bettering the peasants lives then (in 1939) and of possessing high quality of life now (bearing in mind that the film makes extensive use of local peasants as actors and of local rituals and location settings). They were also not keen on the 'ethnocentric' 'celebration' of 'poverty' and 'backwardness'. However the film was not banned by the Film Bureau, probably largely thanks to its ambiguity as well as the success of its premiere at the Hong Kong festival which prompted the regime to modify their initial reactions, presumably because they felt they could instead turn its international reputation to their advantage. Tony Rayns has written: "Yellow Earth was received with considerable hostility by the older members of the film establishment, but its triumph at the 1985 Hong Kong Film Festival (with a 99 per cent Chinese audience) meant that it could not be dismissed as an aberration. In the film press and among the jury for the annual ‘Golden Rooster Awards’, the film was attacked for being obscure, incomprehensible and above the heads of the mass audience; the filmmakers were also accused of trying to deal with a subject they were too young to know anything about." Rayns in a contemporary Time Out 1986 wrote: "Yellow Earth has ruffled feathers in China partly because it doesn't look, sound or behave like other Chinese movies"
• Older, more conservative members of the film establishment received it with considerable hostility. In the film press and among the jury for the annual ‘Golden Rooster Awards’, the film was attacked for being obscure, incomprehensible and above the heads of the mass audience; the filmmakers were also accused of trying to deal with a subject they were too young to know anything about.
• One could certainly say, as Rayns and Yau suggest, that Western audiences enjoyed this film more for its exquisite visuals than for its politics. Indeed, to a Western audience, the vast 'empty' landscapes of this rural peasant land could signify a nostalgic return to a simpler pre-industrial bygone age. It also opens up questions which recur for many rural-set world cinema films in their international reception, which ask whether Western audiences (perhaps subconsciously) prefer to see such films because they exoticise their third world 'others', as opposed to show some urban metropolis similar to their own.
• Hence accusations of this film, and other contemporary new wave films, of being 'un-Chinese'. Read for instance the translated essay by the older director Wu Yiqong, warning against films being too experimental and esoteric and driving audiences away. ("I want to be a Chinese artist, and not a foreign artist or an artist enslaved to foreigners. Without Chinese national characteristics, how can something become international? If a film can’t be understood by the Chinese people, how can it achieve international affirmation?") But do these films not have Chinese characteristics? Is it right for them to be judged by box office revenue, when [to a large extent] the opening up of Chinese cinemas to foreign imports meant domestic urban audiences wanted something else.
• To some foreign critics, it was misconstrued as simplistic CP-dictated propaganda, example.
• In the opinion of Tian Zhuangzhuang, the film was a pioneering work that paved the way for him and others.

References:
Rayns in Time Out, 1986.
Rayns in Perspectives on Chinese Cinema.
Wu Yiqong translated essay in Perspectives on Chinese Cinema.
Yau in Perspectives on Chinese Cinema, 62-.
Hok-Sze in Chinese Films in Focus.
Cornelius in New Chinese Cinema.