BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS
China, 2002, 120 minutes, Colour.
Ziiou Xun, Chen Kun, Liu Ye.
Directed by Dai Sijie.
What re-education meant after the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution is quietly examined in this memoir of two young men, sentenced to the remote Phoenix mountains to labour with the peasants. The scenery is breathtaking but the harsh life under the single-minded Maoist village chief is lightened only by surreptitiously reading Balzac and violin music. One of the men, infatuated by the little seamstress sets out to transform her. She is re-educated in the ways of culture and finds she cannot stay in her village. While the severity of the experience is ever-present, the film tends towards the gentle, sweet and beautiful.
1. A Chinese perspective on the cultural revolution from the point of view of the 21st century? An examination of the past, a sense of nostalgia and loss, an appreciation of the changes?
2. The adaptation of a novel by the writer-director of the film? Opening out a novel, the use of the Chinese locations, the remote mountains and valleys, the steep paths and caves, the transition to the formation of the dam at the beginning of the 21st century? The local village?
3. The title of the film, the focus on Balzac and the range of novels taken by the young students for their re-education, the changing of the little seamstress by educating her in literature and helping her to ask questions about life? Her being completely re-educated as the two educated young men were to be re-educated in labour and simplicity of life and attitudes against the bourgeoisie?
4. The technical qualities of the film: the location photography, life in the village, the special effects for memories, especially the ending with memories being drowned in the dam? The musical score?
5. The memoir of Ma, his talking about going with his friend Luo to the remote re-education centre? Their arrival in the village, the ignorance of the villagers, the chief and his not knowing what a violin was? The attempts to burn the books, the complete commitment to Mau, his portrait hanging everywhere (and being rescued from a cave-in), the complete brainwashing of the populace for Mau's attitudes in the cultural revolution? The need to re-educate the educated? Ma's perspective on the re-education program?
6. The characters of Luo and Ma, their friendship, their backgrounds, Luo and his dentist father? Their being put to work, carrying the manure in the heavy vessels, falling, working in the fields? The range of labour? The dictatorship of the head of the village? The head of the village and his toothache, his spurning of the bourgeois dentist and his work for Chiang Kai- Shek, Luo having to treat the rotten tooth after the dentist took out the wrong one, the ingenuity of setting up the sewing machine and the working of a drill, getting the tin for the filling?
7. The tailor and his work in the village, his granddaughter as the little Chinese seamstress? Her alertness, yet ignorance of the ways of the wider world? Attraction towards Luo, listening to his stories, the Balzac tales? Listening to the stories of the movies? The music? The change of attitude, her working with the two young men, Luo and his malaria and the beating cure and her doing it? Kissing him, the swim, the sexual encounter, becoming pregnant, Luo going to see his father, Ma and the arrangement of the abortion? Its effect on her, his selling his violin and giving her the money, buying the pair of sneakers? Her decision to leave, running away? Her being transformed - and Luo trying to track her down in Shanghai and her going to Hong Kong?
8. The old man, the effect of hearing the stories, putting the motifs in his art in his tailoring work, listening to the novels, the head of the village wanting to arrest the two young men? His grief at his granddaughter's leaving?
9. The people in the village, their simplicity, hard work, the crops, working in the fields, listening to the stories of the movies (and Luo and Ma adapting the music as Mozart in the mind of Chairman Mao, the Tchaikovsky for Lenin, the Balzac stories transferred to Albania)?
10. Luo and his character, transformation, in love with the seamstress? Ma and his friendship and love for Luo, his care for the seamstress, arranging the abortion, talking with the doctor, giving him the coat with the transcription of Balzac, selling his violin?
11. Their later careers: Ma and his fifteen years in Europe, the violin, the quartet, seeing the documentary on television about the dam, going back, videoing his visit, the boats on the lake and the villages? Going to Shanghai and meeting Luo and his family, their reminiscing?
12. The memories of the cultural revolution as an aberration in Chinese history? Their not being re-educated? The seamstress being transformed by higher learning and culture? A perception of China at the beginning of the 21st century?
