| THE SEARCHER : Ying Liang's 'Taking Father Home' [8/10] |
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 TAKING TAKING FATHER HOME HOME by Neil Young Sichuan province, China, 2002. 17-year-old Xu Yun informs his mother (and the audience) of his plan to travel to the big city of Zigong in search of his father, who abandoned his wife and children some six years before. The father has been regularly sending money 'back home,' but otherwise has broken off all contact - much to Yun's mounting anger. The family are facing a particularly critical time, as their village is about to be 'relocated' as part of a government river-dam project. Flooding is also a major concern when the lad arrives in Zigong: water-levels are rising in the Fuxi river which flows through the metropolis: the residents are under orders to evacuate in advance of a potentially-catastrophic inundation. Penniless, his only 'currency' being the two geese he carries in a basket on his back, Yun roams the dauntingly huge city in search of his father. Along the way he receives advice and help from a hardened street-criminal known as 'Scar' (who shows him "the man's way" to eat watermelon); and from a paternalistic policeman (who at one point treats him to a rendition of the classic barracks song 'Coming Back After Shooting Practice'). Yun learns fast - perhaps too fast. And when he finally tracks down his errant dad, he is no longer the wide-eyed boy who arrived from the countryside... Though comfortably the strongest and most rewarding film competing at Rotterdam 2006, Taking Father Home - the debut feature by 28-year-old writer-director-editor-cinematographer Ying Liang, made in very close collaboration* with Peng Shan - somehow left the Netherlands without a prize to its name. Even the Netpac Award, confined to the festival's Asian films, went elsewhere (split between The Lost Hum and The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros.) Apparently the Netpac jury was restricted to a shortlist of 14 prepared by the festival - a list which reportedly didn't include Taking Father Home. A surprising and unfortunate omission, if true (and if any IFFR representative would like to contact this website on this issue, they can do so by e-mailing neil@jigsawlounge.co.uk)... although of course the festival is to be warmly commended for including the film in its main competition.  Taking Father Home nevertheless made enough of a splash with enough critics to suggest it will go on to a successful life on the global film-festival circuit, where it will surely soon add to the 'Special Jury Prize - Kodak Vision Award' it won when world-premiering at Tokyo's FILMeX event last November. The jury citation said they had given Ying the prize of 500,000 yen "as a support and encouragement to a first film director." That sum equates to a little less than £2,500 or just over €3,600 at today's rates - rather more than the total budget for Taking Father Home, which was shot with a single borrowed video-camera, and with a cast and crew who were all either volunteers or friends/relatives/acquaintances of Ying and (his girlfriend) Peng.Not that there is anything amateurish about the finished product shown at Rotterdam (apart from a slightly shaky DV-transfer, and some erratic English-language subtitling) Indeed, the jury's slightly patronising citation about "encouragement to a first film director" could be construed as damning with faint praise. Because Taking Father Home isn't an instance of a 'promising,' embryonic talent: Ying is already pretty much the finished article. He's one of those rare 'naturals' with the camera, presenting his shots with an uninflected compositional eye - he's particularly good on foreground/background placement within the image - that gives the viewer a real sense of the story's wide range of locations, from sparsely-populated backwater to teeming city. And Zigong really does quickly become a character in the story - we feel we've actually spent time this place, so evocatively does Ying capture its many different neighbourhoods, faces and moods. The dialogue plays a major part in this - and even though the Rotterdam print's English-subtitling (of the Rotterdam print) is riddled with typographical errors and over-literal translations ("you are too gluehead!" Yu is scolded in the opening scene), this actually fits perfectly with the rough-edged verisimilitude of Ying's approach (even the title should, on reflection, perhaps be Bringing Father Home rather than Taking Father Home.) These translations give the flavour of the (often bracingly foul-mouthed) language as it's actually spoken: for example, it's revealing that in Zigong everyone is casually greeted in familial terms - "uncle," "grandmother," "brother," etc - even when the people aren't related to each other at all. Everybody is a relative here, precisely because nobody is actually a relative. The subtitling could use a little tidying-up in terms of those distracting typos (like a reference to Yun's 'bastet'), but it would be a major shame if any shred of the Rotterdam translation's slangy vitality were to be lost in the process. The sound of the film is also absolutely crucial - and Zhang Xiau's score, one of the few areas not credited to Ying and/or Peng, provides a pleasing, restrained accompaniment to Yun's odyssey. In Zigong, the roar of traffic competes with advertising jingles; tannoy-broadcast government propaganda; regular flood warnings (which give an apocalyptic air to proceedings, and provide the screenplay's structure with propulsive urgency); police bulletins (we're told of a wanted criminal whom "all citizens must help impeach!") and news reports. The latter culminate in a bald statement that Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin has handed over power to the country's new leader Hu Jintao - which occurred at the party's 16th National Congress in November 2002. The inclusion of this particular event clearly isn't accidental: Taking Father Home is about an enormous country in the ongoing throes of a violent, often painful transition - one in which millions of people face upheaval and hardship in the name of the common good. Ying's achievement is to tell a simple human story against such a backdrop, and do full justice to both the 'micro' and the 'macro', to the specific and the general, while taking us into the heart of a culture and a society. What at first seems like a hackneyed tale of a son searching for his father gradually reveals its subtletly, originality and power - building throughout a real 'page-turner' of a narrative to a shattering emotional climax. It'll be fascinating to see what Ying and Peng come up with next - but they can already be proud of their accomplishment here. article by Neil Young, 1st March, 2005 TAKING FATHER HOME : [8/10] : Bei ya zi de nan hai : China 2005 : LING Yiang : 101 mins (timed) seen at Cinerama cinema, Rotterdam, (Netherlands), 1st February 2006 - press show (Rotterdam Film Festival) for Jigsaw Lounge's exhaustive coverage of the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival, click here AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH YING LIANG CAN BE FOUND HERE * CREW Director : Ying Liang Producer : Peng Shan Screenplay : Ying Liang & Peng Shan Photography : Li Rongshen & Ying Liang Editor : Ying Liang Sound : Yingliang & Peng Shan Art direction : Ying Liang & Peng Shan Music : Zhang Xiao CAST Xu Yun : Xu Yun Police Liu : Liu Xiaopei Scar : Wang Jie Xu Er : Song Cijun Mama : Chen Xikun Girl friend : Liu Ying Rascal : Deng Siwei Drunk : Chen Xiyang Chen sir : Chen Jianxun Young Policeman : Zhang Honglang Policewoman : Peng Shan Rascal A : Zeng Yigang Rascal B : Zhang Yuan Girl : He Ye Boy A : Yang Yang Boy B : Yng Jingling Doorman : Chen Ximing The Man : Zhao Chao Porter : Liu Bo Manager : Cao Zuxi Grandma A : Chen Xigui Grandma B : Jiang Yuying Young Woman : Cai Yihui (supplied by Ying Liang - reproduced with thanks) |
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