Much deserved International award winner (including Cannes’s Un Certain Regard), Guan Hu’s site specific drama, set in a near ‘ghost town,’ part of the boom-to-bust economy of 2008's Northern China, features some of the most dramatically spectacular Wide-Screen landscapes since Chuck Jones took Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner to an animated Monument Valley.* Here, the focus is on recent parolee Lang (a very lean/very fit Eddie Peng), home after early release on a manslaughter charge where his involvement is unclear. That makes our Road Runner figure a skinny, possibly rabid, black dog, part of the packs running wild over what’s left of the city. But while Hu is specific in his use of location, he’s purposefully sketchy on character & narrative. So it feels right to have Peng communicate only with gesture & whistling. Letting us understand just enough Hu’s modus operandi here, and we pick up on Lang’s situation obliquely. Former musician & circus acrobat; father a recluse dying of cancer; town being cleared out, especially of those roving packs of dogs, to facilitate a new industrial development program. And 2008 has big events guiding the few still in town: an upcoming solar eclipse, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, even the circus coming to town. This last bringing possible employment and romance to Lang. Hu lets us put the pieces together, like one of those glueless Asian paper constructs that magically hold together on their own. And lenser Weizhe Gao makes it happen by giving his images the participatory vibe of silent movies.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Mid-to late ‘50s Chuck Jones’ ROAD RUNNER cartoons. *Apparently Looney Tunes were generally shot in Academy Ratio, but Jones must have designed his preferred frame projection to work best in ultra-wide ‘scope’ ratio. (Experts in this field are welcome to tell all in the Comments. Thanks!) NOTE: This is such a weird suggestion for a film match-up, I guess it also counts as a SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY. But, in case you didn't notice, this was posted on April 1st!
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: After the completion of filming, Peng adopted his Black Dog acting partner.
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