Blind Shaft
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Product Description
Two killers inveigle their victims to work in coal mines, then prepare to collect their compensation when they die from mining accidents.
Customer Reviews
Hyper-Capitalism Does China...
You'll get all the plot info for Blind Shaft on the article's webpage.
But it's misleading to stress the narrative alone (which is only incidental), for the real point of this film--what it's really about--is what Bush/Cheney American managerial hyper-capitalism has done specifically to China--(and by extension, to other lesser developed nations of the world).
The film is nothing less than a travelog of hyper-capitalistic horrors: crude pit-mines, prostitutes, scam-artists, murderers--the gritty gamut of social-Darwinism: a veritable verismo of the nauseating nightmare of economic and social Neo-Primitivism.
The most telling segment of the film is the scene wherein the whores humorously sing their own adaptation of a former propaganda song, the lines of which they changed to, "When the US dollars returned, it was the sexual climax of state socialism!"
(Interestingly, it appears that the yuan is nearly pegged to the dollar in a 1.¥ = 1.$ parity.)
See this film, and see what life is like on the other side of Earth.
2009-08-23
(Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
An Ugly Little Lump of Coal from China
Having just seen this film, I was startled that such a bleak and dark film about contemporary life made its way past the Chinese censors. In fact, I learned from a little research that the filmmaker is based in Germany and circumvented Chinese censors by making the film outside the established filmmaking procedures and conrols by registering it as a foreign production originating in Germany and Hong Kong.
It is, in fact, one of the best films to come out of China that I've ever seen. (*It's at least 20,000 times better than the tired epic history films with 20,000 extras that have now become a staple of Chinese cinema and which function as de facto propaganda for China's superpower greatness -- Yes, the same critique can be applied to vast spectacles from the U.S., only the U.S. government doesn't play such an overtly direct role in film production. But of course, those films suck just as much.)
Yang Li's ugly little lump of coal of a film is intense for its entire 85 minutes while delivering many little truths about the price of modern life.
My only quibble is that were I the producer, I would have strongly urged Yang Li to cut the first two minutes from the film so that the film would then start from a completely different place and deliver even more of a jolt than it already does. Once you see the film, you'll know exactly what I mean.
2008-12-31
(Harlem, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
compare to Harlan County
I just saw Barbara Kopple's highly esteemed documentary Harlan County about a coal miner's strike, and kept thinking that Blind Shaft presented many of these same subjects in fictionalized forms. The social problems posed by Blind Shaft are starker and more horrifying than anything harlan county did (and frankly, that's saying a lot). This is a case where fiction can do a lot more than a documentary could (especially given the difficult political climate in China).
2008-07-13
| idiotprogrammer (Houston, TX United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
Blind Shaft
Filmed in actual Chinese mines, this bleak moral fable has as much to say about worker exploitation and the hardscrabble lives of China's population as it does the attitude of the criminal mind, sporting a gritty, smudged look that works perfectly with the tone, setting, and dog-eat-dog mindset of Song and Tang. Wang is especially good as the studious innocent forced to give up an education he could not pay for, a situation that resonates powerfully with Song, a father whose meager criminal earnings pay for his own son's schooling. As their relationship tightens, Li skillfully builds tension around the question of whether Song will carry out the plan and kill Yuan. Harrowing and ruthlessly realistic, Blind Shaft illuminates the darker corners of contemporary Chinese life.
2007-07-18
| The Best Movies by Farr | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
A modern Chinese Chaucerian Tale
Judging from the opening credits of Blind Shaft, Li Yang obviously isn't troubled by an excess of modesty: 'Li Yang Presents/a Li Yang Production/Presented by Li Yang/a Li Yang film' - and that's not counting his credits on the end titles. I don't think I've seen anyone credit themselves so many times since Eddie Murphy's infamous Harlem Nights ('Eddie Murphy Productions presents An Eddie Murphy production of an Eddie Murphy film - Eddie Murphy in Harlem Nights Written by Eddie Murphy, Produced by Eddie Murphy, Directed by Eddie Murphy' - and that's by no means a comprehensive list). Luckily Li Yang isn't short of the talent to back up that kind of effrontery: this is easily one of the best films I've seen this century.
An almost Chaucerian tale set in the kind of China you don't see in the tourist brochures or even the average Chinese movie, the premise is simple: Li Yixiang and Wang Shuangbao go round the primitive coal mines in the provinces selecting a new itinerant worker to murder in a fake accident so that they can blackmail the mine owner into paying them compensation to hush it up and not file a report with the Party or the police. After all, "China has a shortage of everything but people." What's most surprising is the characterisation of the two sociopathic conmen, all-too recognisably human, primarily concerned with the future and education of their own children in an increasingly market-led economy. In many ways they're no worse than the corrupt mine owners who would happily kill them to hush up a scandal if paying off the police weren't three times as expensive: both are utterly indifferent to those who die to make them a little bit richer. Until, of course, one of them starts to take a genuinely paternal interest in their latest intended victim, a slow but guileless young boy trying to earn enough money to go back to school (Wang Baoqiang).
In a country as repressive as China, it's surprising just how critical Li Yang is of the corruption endemic throughout the country in the new capitalist society. Hookers sing subversive lyrics to old party songs on karaoke machines, arrests for corruption are everyday TV news fodder and the poor are left to fend for themselves. There's also not a single blade of grass to be seen in the entire film. This is a pitiless, harsh landscape, whether it be the slag heaps of the mines or the cities where crowds of workers hang around in search of a day's work. Nothing can grow here, least of all a conscience. But this isn't art-house fare or a self-important exercise in miserablism a la Ken Loach. It works as a drama as well, albeit one more focused on character than suspense (the ending is not exactly unexpected), and isn't without its comic moments. Very impressive indeed.
2006-10-01
(London, England) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
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