A Touch of Sin

For more than a decade, Jia Zhangke has been China’s most fear­less film­mak­er. Dra­con­ian film cen­sors only embold­ened the direc­tor by slap­ping him with a life­time ban fol­low­ing his sec­ond film, 1997’s Xiao Wu. Then, a series of inter­na­tion­al suc­cess­es forced Beijing’s cul­tur­al guardians to recon­sid­er. Despite being made with­in the sys­tem, A Touch of Sin is arguably his most out­spo­ken movie yet.

It’s an unflinch­ing and vio­lent ride. In the open­ing min­utes alone, there’s a fatal truck crash, an attempt­ed rob­bery that leaves three dead and an explod­ing fire­ball on the hori­zon. The rapid­ly ris­ing body count in this full-on open­ing seg­ment sig­nal that Jia has not so much shift­ed up a few gears, but is rid­ing on a com­plete­ly new stretch of road. His sig­na­ture long, slow pans, a por­trait painter’s eye for detail and that sense of lone­li­ness in a crowd are still present. But the soli­tude is now punc­tu­at­ed with vio­lence. One of his pro­tag­o­nists could’ve walked out of a Taran­ti­no film as he emp­ties his shot­gun in front of a vil­lage tem­ple. But this is no homage. Like Taran­ti­no, Zhangke is influ­enced by wux­ia mar­tial arts films. Even the title is a nod to King Hu’s 1971 Tai­wanese wux­ia clas­sic A Touch of Zen.

But instead of look­ing back to ancient times, Jia finds low­er-class jour­ney­men heroes try­ing to fight oppres­sors and find ret­ri­bu­tion for mis­deeds in mod­ern Chi­na. Inspired by true sto­ries that only came to light through Wei­bo (China’s answer to Twit­ter), Jia scratch­es through the sur­face of eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle head­lines to focus on a fis­sured, frag­ile and volatile Chi­na. A Touch of Sin moves through four provinces to look at the sto­ries sur­round­ing four deaths: there’s a dis­grun­tled min­er whose faith in the sys­tem is fray­ing due to endem­ic cor­rup­tion; a silent migrant work­er who keeps his liv­ing is secret from his fam­i­ly; a young itin­er­ant fac­to­ry work­er whose luck runs out; and a spa recep­tion­ist who must fend off an inde­cent proposal.

“I’ll smoth­er you in mon­ey,” an offi­cial says with men­ace to recep­tion­ist Xiao Yu — defin­ing one of the movie’s cen­tral ques­tions: what is the def­i­n­i­tion of the term ​‘cost’ in a soci­ety where every­thing is up for sale? Jia picks up themes from his pre­vi­ous films con­cern­ing the human strug­gle against changes set in motion by much larg­er, unseen, pos­si­bly incom­pre­hen­si­ble forces. His heroes here are peo­ple in var­i­ous stages of adapt­ing to the new real­i­ties of a once com­mu­nist coun­try that has hit fast for­ward to ultra-indi­vid­u­al­ism. These are the peo­ple who are exploit­ed, cast aside and left behind as busi­ness­men and polit­cians have become fix­at­ed with the race to get rich.

Beyond the social cri­tique, Jia is also mak­ing his case for how movies about Chi­na ought to be made. In the past, he’s crit­i­cised oth­er film­mak­ers, such Zhang Yimou, direc­tor of Raise The Red Lantern and the Bei­jing Olympics Open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, for shy­ing away from con­tem­po­rary prob­lems in their films and flee­ing into the past.

His con­tem­po­raries seem to be lis­ten­ing. This year, the Chi­na Film Direc­tors’ Guild, the country’s equiv­a­lent to the Oscars, refused to hand out its two top awards — best pic­ture and best direc­tor — in what was wide­ly seen as a protest against cen­sors’ refusal to screen A Touch of Sin.

“You’ve picked the wrong time to fight,” an offi­cial tells coal min­er Dahai in the film. But like his heroes in this film, Jia remains defi­ant and gives it to the cen­sors with both barrels.