China is often depicted by the traditional media as a nation with a booming economy, a thriving middle class, and an unlimited future. We’re led to expect that it soon will become the world’s unchallenged economic and geopolitical superpower.
But there is another side to that narrative, a story of how the other half lives, those many millions who are caught up in the turbulent backwash of industrial and commercial growth. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to see a small masterpiece of a movie called Ling yi ban (“The Other Half”) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
The film, made inside China in 2006, tells a compelling story, seen through the eyes of a young woman trying to make her way through a maze of societal dead ends that confront her at every turn. Trying to find a decent job, dealing with a troubled boyfriend, fending off groping or overbearing suitors, negotiating a hilly terrain of generational differences with her nagging mother, and, finally, fleeing a deadly chemical spill, she does her best, as we all must do in our own circumstances.
Few people may have the chance to see this movie, at least not in a theater, but you may be able to rent it on DVD. As a movie buff (and as an observer of contemporary world society), I strongly recommend it.
Using natural lighting, ambient sounds, and a jerky or sometimes stationary hand-held camera, the director, Liang Ying, skillfully mixes a blend of professional and nonprofessional actors into a stunning triumph. Sometimes portrayed as quasi-documentary or shot as cinéma vérité, and at other times as a more straightforward low-budget melodrama, this highly unconventional effort shouldn’t work, and yet somehow it does. Stick with the strange sound track and deliberately murky photography long enough, and eventually the power of what you’re witnessing, in totality, may overwhelm you.
I had the experience of being completely consumed by this film, the essence of what is called a “suspension of disbelief.” I was in southern China—Szechuan—breathing polluted air, stifled by oppressive humidity, worn down by an incompetent strangling bureaucracy. I struggled, as our heroine struggled, to find a way out, to escape the dismal dead end that the other half must face each and every day of their lives. For me, of course, escape was as near as my theater exit. For her and for them, it’s not so easy.
It’s important for those of us lucky enough to live in progressive, modernized western societies not to take our good fortune for granted, and also not to forget or underestimate the difficulties faced by so many others.
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