Americans
like to think our strength lies in our diversity. Chinese propaganda prefers to
extoll unity, despite the breadth of its varied ethnicities. As a filmmaker accustomed
to going his own way, Wang Xiaoshuai paints a more diverse picture of contemporary
Mainland China in Chinese Portrait,
which screens during this year’s Doc Fortnight at MoMA.
Comprised
of often-posed, narration-free snippets of everyday people Wang shot on the fly
since 2009, Portrait is a series of
just that—which come together to form a somewhat Whitman-esque mosaic of
contemporary China. There are miners, nomads, students, rural laborers,
commuters, and even journalists, most of whom clearly bear signs of the
weathering of a hardscrabble life. It is not an overtly political film, but Wang’s
inclinations are far more inclusive than anything you will see in popular
Chinese cinema. Hence, we see multiple portraits of the Muslim Uyghurs, as well
as a Buddhist monk (presumably a Tibetan on a pilgrimage).
Wang
has a long history of struggling with Communist state censorship in its various
manifestations, most notably with his debut, The Days, but his loose thematic Cultural Revolution Trilogy was not exactly welcomed with open arms
either. There is not a lot to explicitly antagonize the censors this time around,
but Wang’s self-portraits standing in the middle of Tiananmen Square or beclouded
by the thick smog of Beijing offer up some slyly coded commentary nonetheless.
Portrait is definitely a
minor work for Wang, but it always counts as a victory when he can get a film
produced and released. There are some striking images, but that is really the
extent of the film. In the case of the newsroom tableaux, the journalists hold
their poses so well, viewers might think the playback is frozen, until the
fellow in the foreground moves his head.
Arguably, this is a case where the
more viewers know about Wang, the more interesting the film will be, because of
what they might read into it. Narrowly recommended for Wang’s admirers and
patrons of installation-style filmmaking, Chinese
Portrait screens this Wednesday (2/27) as part of the 2019 Doc Fortnight at
MoMA.
