ND/NF ’16: Behemoth

Just for the record, China’s leading documentarian has explicitly likened the country to Hell through a deliberate and unmistakable extended cinematic metaphor. Zhao Liang takes viewers on a guided tour of the environmental devastation wantonly inflicted on Inner Mongolia, with only Dante’s Inferno provided for commentary. The Divine Comedy becomes a Communist tragedy in Zhao’s Behemoth (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Zhao will take us to three specific locations, or rings of Hell if you will. The first is in the east, where the coal industry gives strip mining a bad name. The nomadic herders almost find themselves outrunning the collapsing earth under the feet, like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon rendered, well yes, in Hell.

The furnaces and blackened faces of the western iron forges could not could well be what inspired Zhao’s poetic use of Dante. It is literally a subterranean inferno. Just watching this section might cause lung damage and burn trauma.

The concluding segment takes in the spectacle of the Kangbashi New Area, the eerily empty sprawling residential high rises and office buildings that stand like a monument to hasty overdevelopment in Ordos City. Evidently, some recent documentaries have suggested Kangbashi is no longer as uninhabited as once reported. However, it still looks pretty darn desolate in Zhao’s recent footage. Maybe it still is not yet the right time to pursue that Kangbashi Quizno’s franchise after all.

Zhao, who serves as his own cinematographer, captures some striking, stunning, and altogether staggering images. However, he consciously de-emphasizes the human element, which makes Behemoth a much more challenging viewing experience than his profoundly powerful Petition or the daring muckraking of Crime and Punishment. Indeed, the film has an experimental ethos, in the most forbidding sense of the term.

Nevertheless, Zhao just sends truth cascading over the audience. It is impossible to watch Behemoth and not conclude the Communist government and its oligarchical cronies have recklessly plundered the provincial environment past the point of criminal negligence, directly and perhaps deliberately endangering the regional ethnic populations that depend on the land for their livelihoods. Zhao’s visuals stand as an overpowering indictment, but they might also overwhelm less adventurous viewers. Recommended for sophisticated cineastes, Behemoth screens this Thursday (3/17) at MoMA and Friday (3/18) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2016 ND/NF.

Zhao Liang’s Crime and Punishment

Imagine the Keystone Cops with severe mean streak. That is pretty much what you get from the Chinese military police stationed in a hardscrabble village on the North Korean border. Watching a full day of these officers on the job is not a pretty picture, but it is often quite absurd. Such is the nature of Chinese criminal justice subversively documented by Zhao Liang in Crime and Punishment (trailer here), which screens at the Anthology Film Archives in conjunction with the long-awaited theatrical release of Zhao’s devastating Petition.

Distributed by dGenerate Films, the specialists in independent Chinese cinema, Punishment watches fly-on-the-wall style as the recruits of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) gruffly patrol the isolated border town in hopes of a more permanent and prestigious assignment at the end of their two year tours. Essentially temps, the young men do not seem to be concerned with forging any rapport with the locals. Beatings are pretty much par for the course, as the soldiers quickly demonstrate during their first case of the day.

A severely hard-of-hearing man is hauled in on suspicion of stealing a cell-phone, with the obvious irony therein completely lost on the PAP. When their interrogation flounders, they first resort to public humiliation, eventually falling back on a good old-fashioned beating. “Turn off the cameras” they instruct Zhao. We will be hearing those words several times more before the film ends.

Although they do not physically assault the subject of their next investigation, their behavior towards a dirt poor farmer collecting scrap metal without a dozen government permits filed in triplicate is arguably crueler. Watching them badger and berate the clueless old man feels like one of the longest, most uncomfortable sequences ever captured on film.

As the day progresses, it looks like the coppers might be doing some legitimate police work when they launch a manhunt for a suspected killer. However, the only prey we see them bag is a desperate farmer poaching firewood to sell for New Year’s gifts for his children. Even the arresting officers have misgivings after seeing the suspect’s truly mean living conditions. Unfortunately, they had already administered the requite beat-down by this point.

Although Zhao basically cuts the camera when he is told, he still leaves no question as to the nature of what happens shortly thereafter. Like most Digital Generation filmmakers, Zhao eschews artificial conventions like voice-over narration and talking head interview segments. Aside from a few Dragnet like title cards explaining what happened to suspects after their questioning/thrashing, Zhao simply captures the scene in his lens, letting each character speak for himself through his behavior.

While Punishment does not have the same emotional heft as Petition, it is still a rather shocking expose of the Chinese criminal justice system. Yet, for all the abuse and intimidation meted out by the PAP, their actual results are less than impressive. After three investigations and much thuggery, they have less than one thousand Yuan in fines to show for their efforts. Daring in its own right, the unvarnished Punishment is definitely worth seeing when it screens at Anthology Film Archives today (1/13), Saturday (1/15), and Sunday (1/16) in conjunction with Zhao’s staggering Petition.

Injustice in China: Petition

They are the dregs of society. Scorned and maligned, they live a dangerous existence in crude shantytowns as they pursue their quixotic quest. They seek redress from the Chinese government and for filmmaker Zhao Liang, these “petitioners” are his country’s greatest heroes. The product of over ten years spent with these marginalized justice seekers, Zhao’s Petition stands as arguably the most damning documentary record of contemporary China to reach American theaters since the initial rise of the Digital Generation of independent filmmakers. A special selection of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Petition finally opens in New York this Friday at the Anthology Film Archives.

Throughout Petition it is crystal clear the Chinese government has institutionalized corruption and hopelessly stacked the deck against the petitioners. Those victimized by unfair rulings have limited options locally for appeal (from the same corrupt bodies), so their only recourse is through the Kafkaesque “Petition Offices” in Beijing. Never in the film do we see the bureaucrats there actually give a petitioner satisfaction. They do keep records though. In fact, the local authorities have a vested interest in maintaining low petition numbers. Hence, the presence of “retrievers,” hired thugs who physically assault petitioners as they approach the petition office.

Petition is definitely produced in the fly-on-the-wall, naturalistic style of Jia Zhangke and his “d-generate” followers, but there is no shortage of visceral drama here. Each petitioner we meet has an even greater story of injustice to tell. Perversely, it seems it is those who do not take bribes who usually find themselves prosecuted in China. Petitioners are arrested, beaten, and even die under mysterious circumstances. Yet, it is through Zhao’s central figures, Qi and her daughter Juan, that we experience the emotional drain of the petitioning process with uncomfortable immediacy. Frankly, even if you have seen a number of Chinese documentaries, this film will still profoundly disturb you.

Zhao deserves credit for both his significant investment of time and his fearlessness. Not surprisingly, filming is strictly prohibited in the Petition Offices, but that did not stop him from trying, often getting more than a slight jostle for his trouble. Indeed, Petition represents truly independent filmmaking.

Petition is the cinematic equivalent of a smoking gun. It is impossible to maintain any Pollyannaish illusions of about the rule of law in China after watching the film. Yet, like Zhao, viewers will be struck be the petitioners’ indomitable drive for justice. May God protect them, because their government certainly won’t. A legitimately bold and honest film that needs to be seen, Petition opens this Friday (1/14) in New York at the Anthology Film Archives.