Crouching China, Hidden Agenda

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The anti-romantics of the Sixth Generation renounce glamour. They eschew the star quality that marks Hollywood, Hong Kong and, to an extent, Fifth Generation cinema; indeed, they often do without professional actors. Their films look less like paintings than placards. They're often in black and white, or (in Ning Ying's 1995 "On the Beat") in a color tone so desaturated that only a stoplight cuts through the monochrome monotone. No stately artifacts, no echoes of the fine arts, no images that pop your eyes in wonder. The very notion of masterpiece-making seems like dilettantism to the rebels of the sixth form. Craft isn't suspect, but it's subsidiary to the bold statement, to the down and docu-dirty, the raw, the real. Here are film kids in revolt — against the government, of course, but also against their sanctified big brothers. Speaking of the Fifth Generation, Zhang Yuan told Shannon May of The Harvard Advocate, "They had a slogan: 'Not like the past.' It motivated us to create our own: 'Not like the Fifth Generation.'"

There's one thing the two generations have in common: the pernicious attention of government censors. Sixth Generation films have often been drastically trimmed, or withheld from release for years, or banned outright. Zhang Yuan had his passport revoked in 1997 when the Cannes Film Festival invited his "East Palace West Palace," the story of a gay man and the policeman who arrests him and is then attracted to him. The editing of "Postman," the story of a mail carrier who reads the letters of the people on his route, was halted by the censors; the film had to be smuggled out of China and into Europe, where it was completed with a grant from the Rotterdam Film Festival. In 1996, Wang made "Frozen" under the pseudonym Wu Ming (literally, No Name), for fear of government retribution. By then he had already shot "So Close to Paradise," but that study of gang warfare in Shanghai was reshot, recut and withheld for five years. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999 and makes its New York debut at the Screening Room Friday, March 9.

Of course, the Fifth Generation auteurs were no ivory-tower artistes. They made powerful films about the Cultural Revolution. Chen's films were routinely banned or vandalized; by the mid-'90s Chen was saying, "I am a Chinese director who finds himself making films for the international market." Zhang Yimou was forbidden at the last moment from bringing his 1997 comedy "Keep Cool" to the same Cannes festival that had requested "East Palace West Palace"; perhaps he was being punished for the other film, or perhaps some bureaucrat confused the names Zhang Yuan and Zhang Yimou. Tian paid dearly for the worldwide success of "The Blue Kite": He was officially forbidden to make films for a year. Unofficially, the edict stands; he has not been back behind the camera, though he has acted as a sort of godfather to the Sixth Generation.

The entire film industry in China is a censorship apparatus. The Beijing Film Academy disgorges talented directors, but the regional film studios typically employ these ambitious youngsters in menial jobs. By the time they get a chance to make a film, the government hopes, they will be sympathetic to the corruption of the system — docile artisans. Then they will get their films approved. But something in a Chinese filmmaker cannot take yes for an answer. In one of the world's most repressive systems, they create fearless social commentary. And instead of waiting for the censors to approve their scripts and their films, they go out and do it themselves. Zhang Yuan financed "Beijing Bastards" with money he got directing music videos. Wang made "The Days," the harrowing story of a marriage on the rocks, for an astonishingly meager $10,000. Dire circumstances create principled outlaws. The censors didn't intend this, but by their intransigence they helped spawn a truly independent film culture.

COURTESY OF THE SCREENING ROOM Rockers and other layabouts: "Beijing Bastards"

"I think the government takes movies too seriously," Ning Ying quipped in 1995. "If the public took films as seriously as the censors, that would be great." If the censors take their mandate seriously — and are not toying with a director's carefully crafted work simply because they can — then they must believe they are protecting the vulnerable minds of the proletariat. They are like the police officer in "On the Beat," who quizzes a man charged with selling racy pictures (women in bathing suits). The man protests that the pictures are art. "For cultured people this is art," the officer retorts. "But what if it falls into the hands of a hooligan?"

Many of these films have won prizes at Western festivals; none of them has been shown officially in their home country. And the directors aren't in it for the laurels. They want the Chinese people — the subjects of their topical dramas — to see their films. (Imagine that the films of Martin Scorsese or the Coen brothers could be seen in every country but the U.S.) "As long as the Sixth Generation and their films remain unknown within China," May writes, "they will remain heroes without a battlefield." Perhaps not; perhaps the act of filmmaking is their battlefield, and the cause they fight for is the goal of showing, in the face of government suppression and their own frustrating anonymity, the truest, and certainly the darkest, image of their huge and complex country. Surely that makes them heroes.

III
A cop to his buddies: "An elevator in a building is full of people. It falls from the 18th floor. Police discover that no one is injured.... Because they all died!"
— "On the Beat"

If four puppies are thrown down a deep hole, one will try to claw his way up the walls; a second will sit mute and desolate in the darkness; a third will growl at Fate or his Master; and the last will sharpen his fangs, preparing to devour the others. Or they may huddle together, wondering what comes next. Sixth Generation movies are views from the bottom, not of the light above but of the surrounding murk. See enough of these films, and your eyes will become accustomed to the shades of anger and despair. Somewhere, there may be a nanosecond flash of hope.

The rockers and other layabouts in "Beijing Bastards" are the growlers, daring to rebel against the most sacred Chinese belief: the work ethic. "We do whatever we feel like," one says. "We're all social outsiders." The film, which mixes concert performances by seminal Mandarin musicians He Yong and Dou Wai with scenes of aggressive anomie, is cited as the first Sixth Generation film. Zhang Yuan became the most prolific director of the group, alternating fiction films (most recently "Seventeen Years," the first Chinese film to show prison life) and documentaries (try to find "Crazy English," a delightfully deadpan study of the nation's No. 1 motivational speaker, whose mission is to teach our language to the Chinese, 50,000 or so at a time).