Review: A Touch of Sin

Directed by Jia Zhangke
Starring Jiang Wu (Dahai), Wang Baoqiang (Zhou San), Zhao Tao (Xiao Yu), and Lanshan Luo (Xiao Hui)
Written by Jia Zhangke
Cinematography by Nelson Yu Lik-wai
Edited by Matthieu Laclau and Xudong Lin
Released in 2013

Whenever I watch an older American movie with a black heart like Double Indemnity or Sunset Boulevard, my reaction is usually one of bewilderment. I often wonder how the Hays Code brigade didn’t catch and stamp out the darkness hidden within these films. I suppose they were too busy going through a checklist to notice the barely hidden themes. I got a similar vibe from Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin. The film follows four different people who are pushed to extreme actions by poverty, corporate malfeasance, and sexism. Technically, they all connect, but only in small ways, and not with the overbearing nature of other hyperlink films.

Jia's film is so angry about the state of modern China, that I’m surprised it was made at all. I know Jia is an independent filmmaker, so he isn't subject to the same rules as most Chinese films are, but I’m still not sure how the film's production went untroubled by government interference. Perhaps the censors knew that blocking Jia, an internationally-renowned filmmaker, would bring them more trouble than it was worth. Unfortunately, the film was never given a release in mainland China and the Central Propaganda Department demanded a media-blackout on the film. Also unfortunately, the film had an underwhelming run in the U.S. After doing well on the festival circuit, it won the screenplay award at Cannes, it was well-reviewed here, but was somewhat forgotten by the end of year. That’s a shame, because the film’s politics are hugely relevant to America as well. I think one reason the film did poorly box office-wise here is that there a few situations that make it seem impenetrably Chinese. While it’s true that there is a parade of Chinese symbols within the film (a statue of Mao and a portrait of Mary share the frame in the beginning, and the animals of the Chinese zodiac figure prominently), the basics of the four tales are universally understandable.

A Touch of Sin perfectly captures a troubling mood I’ve been worrying about the past year. That things have gotten so bad economically and socially, that the only way for the average person (i.e. not a politician or businessman) to enact any kind of significant change on the world is through violence. On paper, the film sounds repetitive, but Zhangke twists each tale just enough that the film remains interesting throughout its full runtime. Dahai attacks the CEO of the corporation that is screwing over his village when no one else will work with him. Zhou San has been so ground down by poverty that he shows little emotion towards his family and only livens up when committing acts of crime. Xiao Yu enacts wuxia-style vengeance after being treated as a prostitute. And Xiao Hu subverts the movie's structure by internalizing the violence. Each story walks a tricky line between cathartic and horrifying. The stereotypical action setup of the first story, complete with Dahai swaggering through town with music blaring behind him, is immediately undercut by the gruesomeness of his actions, which Jia shows in explicit detail, and the ordinary nature of Dahai's targets. The second story goes through two, whiplash-inducing shifts in tone. Yu's plight is built up in a low-key and realistic way, rockets to an unreal confrontation, and then immediately snaps back into reality, as Yu silently walks around haunted and covered in blood.

Cinematographer Yu Lik-wai transforms China into a near-dystopia. The exteriors have a dull grayness to them, and the interiors are either blandly white or bathed in neon. Ancient, crumbling houses and temples sit uncomfortably next to ultra-modern cities and train stations. Vegetation is sparse, confined to a small village overlooked by a huge city or to being sold in a half-finished airport. Everything seems on the verge of collapse or sterilization, a few obscene graffiti tags away from A Clockwork Orange or a handful of fluorescent lights away from 2001: A Space Odyssey. These settings make the characters extreme actions more understandable. Who wouldn't go crazy in a place like this? The sad thing is that these images aren't that far away from reality, if anything Jia downplayed their distressing nature. Just do a Google image search for "Foxconn" if you want to see how necessary Jia's film is.