In
recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has embraced Confucianism and its
filial piety to cover for the shortcomings of its own failed socialist ideology.
As far as Lao Yang is concerned, you can just stick your five relationships in
your ear. He is going to take what’s coming to him and do as he will, letting
his family be damned in Zhou Ziyang’s Old
Beast (trailer
here),
which screens during the 2018 New York Asian Film Festival.
Like
the city of Ordos, Lao Yang has had his ups and downs, so now he figures the
world owes him, including his family. His wife just suffered a stroke and needs
an operation, but he wouldn’t know. He is too busy drinking with cronies and dropping
by his mistress’s flat. In between these important duties, he has a camel he
was supposedly taking care of for a buddie butchered for its meat.
Yes,
Lao Yang is a hard man to love, but he is more complicated than he initially
seems. It turns out he rather generously supported his grown children when they
needed it most. Still, stealing the cash they scraped together for their mother’s
operation is about as dirty it gets. It is hard to blame them for tying him up
and holding him hostage. However, things really get ugly when Lao Yang gets the
police involved.
At
this point, the vibe of Old Beast starts
to feel like contemporary Iranian dramas, such as Melbourne and About Elly,
in which the characters keep digging deeper and deeper moral-ethical holes to
bury themselves in. Everything Lao Yang does makes the situation worse for him
and his long-suffering family. It gets uncomfortable to watch, but he certainly
receives his comeuppance.
Tu
Men is quite remarkable as Lao Yang, in what could be described as a
Falstaffian performance, but without the loud bluster. There is real
Shakespearean dimension to the man, but there is also a painfully realistic grubbiness.
He dominates the film, but Sun Jiaqin and Yan Liyang further ratchet up the
pathos as his married and expecting daughter Yang Xiaoqin and his favorite
grandson, Dandan.
