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Review: UP THE YANGTZE / Yung Chang (2007)

June 21st, 2008 by Scott Marks

The Yu family on the banks of the Yangtze

Up the Yangtze (2007)
Written and Directed by Yung Chang
Photographed by Shi Qing Wang
Starring: Cindy & Jerry
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Running Time: 93 min.
Rating: ★★★★☆

Warm jazz and those slow, smooth camera moves the Italians are best known for. Instead of taking a cruise on the Po, we’re about to chart a body of water that makes Italy’s longest river look like a tributary.

Known in China simply as “The River,” the mythic Yangtze is undergoing the largest engineering endeavor since the Great Wall. Luxury-liners packed with tourists take so-called Farewell Tours before the area is flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. “Imagine the Grand Canyon turned into a Great Lake,” documentarian Yung Chang posits in the film’s opening narration.

Officials follow the “what’s good for the dam is good for the nation” party line while Chang argues, “all serious studies show that mega-dams like the Three Gorges ultimately have greater negative effects than positive.” In 2002, Chang, his parents and grandfather booked passage on one of the farewell cruises. He got the idea of filming the tourists and ship’s crew on a surreal journey up the Yangtze via Gosford Park.

Godard wrote, “I have always tried to make what is called documentary and what is called fiction two aspects of a single movement, it is the relation between the two that produces the true movement.” Chang does a skillful job of finding the drama in the lives of his two leads. The narrative follows two teenagers, Yu Shui, daughter of a family of subsistence farmers who live along the river and Chen Bo Yu, a cocky middle class urbanite.

The way Yu’s father barks for rice and bosses her around, she is pretty much a slave at home. Living in squalor, she might as well go to work and get paid for it. Wanting to get an education, but knowing her family needs quick money Yu is exploited by her uneducated parents and forced to set sail.

Chen Bo Yo comes from an upper middle-class single family household and his shipboard director looks down his snoot at only children, thinking them spoiled and lazy. Like a drill sergeant backed by an all you can eat buffet, the boss intends to whip his young employees into shape by offering each and every one of them a degree in his “University of Life.”

The first task is assigning new hires Westernized, passenger-friendly names. Yu translates to “Cindy” while Chen turns out to be Chinese for “Jerry.” Upper management instructs them never to talk politics with guests and if they must reference a person’s size, substitute “plump” for “fat.”

Jerry’s relative affluence lands him a spot on deck while Cindy is chained to a sink as a galley slave. Behind the bar, his good looks and ability to schmooze make him a natural performer. Down below the bewildered peasant girl is shown no mercy by her supervisor whose tough love motto is “If her family is poor she should work even harder.”

In the meantime, scads of plump American and European gawkers who paid good money to take a vacation amidst decay, line the decks to watch the flood level warning markers float past. While ruddy-faced Midwesterners dress up in authentic period attire, an old-timer parked at a piano croons, “It’s so easy, to speak Chinesey.” It will take you weeks to shake this bouncy ditty from your shower repertoire.

It’s not the definitive statement on ugly American tourists. That distinction goes to Les Blank’s deadpan documentary Innocents Abroad which follows forty average Joes on a whirlwind tour of Europe. It would make a fine companion piece with this film.

Jerry knows how to work the crowd: avoid the young and the old because they don’t tip. Even Cindy learns how to play the game. In an effort to get her to assimilate (and make he look more womanly) a colleague teaches Cindy how to dress up and wear makeup.

Cindy’s parent make a couple of trips to visit their daughter. One can sense a hint of resentment when the father compares Yu’s glitzy workplace to his own accommodations. This lessens with the second visit where both parents appear sporting new duds.

Chang approaches his subjects as if they were first time actors playing roles in a shipboard odyssey. Both characters’ stories are compelling, but it’s the way in which Chang sets them to pictures that makes the film so remarkable. Not since Gunner’s Palace has a documentary demonstrated such formal cunning.

We watch as two of the Yu’s homes are gradually swallowed by the mighty river. Upon leaving their second shack, a series of dissolves shows first the entrance and then the roof become engulfed. Eventually, all that’s left is a body of dirty water with a cruise ship drifting lazily in the background. It’s the most subtle and effective use of cinema I’ve seen all year.

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Chinese Government blasts Spielberg for backing out of 2008 Olympics

February 14th, 2008 by Scott Marks

thalidomide-spielberg.jpg

One of his lackeys must have slipped Steve Spielberg a DVD screener of Darfur Now. Yesterday the Oscar winning director stepped down as the artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies of this year’s Summer Olympics to be held in in Beijing. Steve’s decision came in response to China’s disingenuous attempts to help end the crisis in Darfur.

According to the Associated Press, “China is blaming activists with ‘ulterior motives’ for linking the Beijing Olympics to the nation’s involvement in Sudan, with top officials saying they shared concerns over the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.”

“China is believed to have influence over the Islamic regime because it buys two-thirds of the country’s oil exports while selling it weapons and defending it in the United Nations.”

1 Billion Chinese can’t be wrong, and while I’m against China’s lack of involvement in the Darfur crisis, I wholeheartedly endorse any country that will publicly support, then denounce Lord Spielberg.

In a written statement Spielberg said, “”I find that my conscience will not allow me to continue business as usual…At this point, my time and energy must be spent not on Olympic ceremonies, but on doing all I can to help bring an end to the unspeakable crimes against humanity that continue to be committed in Darfur.”

Hey, save some of that precious energy for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

In an act of coincidence probably intended as a tribute to Spielberg’s storytelling skills, earlier on Tuesday, nine Nobel Peace Prize laureates sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao urging China to uphold Olympic ideals by pressing Sudan to stop atrocities in Darfur.

Initially game organizers took the high road stating, “”We express our regret over his recent personal statement.” Yesterday, the committee blasted Spielberg for not keeping “in line with the Olympic Spirit that separates sports from politics.”

Hey, Charlie, this is America where sports and politics go together like Spileberg and a low-angle dolly shot. If anything, the organizing committee took another look at Munich and decided that they didn’t want this years festivities to be as dull as Spielberg’s Olympian creaker.

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