Customer Reviews

Blind Shaft

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
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I was expecting a heavy-handed preachy film about the tough lives of miners. How wrong I was. This film about two serial-murdering con men opens with the killing of their latest victim, we then watch as one man pretends to be a grieving relative while the other skillfully negotiates the bereavement payout with the mining company, which recongizes the con but is too mired in bureaucracy to care. Later, after sending the bulk of their "earnings" home and spending the rest on prostitutes, they spot their next "relative" like predatory hawks in the sky, and descend for the kill instinctively. What happens after is supposed to be textbook for them, but traces of humanity spring up to surprise all. This last section could have turned melodramatic, but the well-researched script never allowed us to feel anything less than real. Add to that the sure handed direction, claustrophobic hand-held photography, efficient editing, and capable performances all fit together perfectly. You really couldn't ask for more from a movie. It's easy to see why La Mexicaine de Perforation would want to screen this, since it was an underground (without government approval) film about the the underground, and the fact that it's so good probably didn't hurt either.

Written and directed by Yang Li, "Blind Shaft" provides us with a fascinating twist on the serial killer scenario. In most such films, the killer is usually relegated to the role of a shadowy antagonist whose basic function is to allow a brilliant investigator to outwit and outsmart him and bring him to justice in time for the closing credits. Not so in "Blind Shaft." For here the killers themselves take center stage and there isn't a single law officer in sight to foil the plan or mitigate our fear about what is going to happen.

Song and Yuan are two struggling Chinese laborers who've come upon an ingenious but grizzly scheme to make money. They befriend a stranger who is desperate for employment and convince him to come work with them in a nearby mine. All he has to do is agree to pass himself off as a relative of one of the two men. When they have their unsuspecting victim alone in the mine shaft, Song and Yuan cold-bloodedly murder him, claiming that the death was the result of a mining accident. Eager to avoid a scandal, the boss of the mine invariably pays a generous sum of money to the dead man's "relatives," whereupon Song and Yuan take their ill-gotten gains, lure another man into their trap, and head off to another mine to repeat the scenario.

What separates "Blind Shaft" from so many American tales about serial killers is that Song and Yuan are not portrayed as writhing, eye-rolling, hand-rubbing psychopaths, devising elaborate schemes to torture their victims and antagonize the authorities. Rather, these two killers approach their "business" in the most banal, matter-of-fact (i.e. "businesslike") way imaginable, making them all that much more chilling and believable. We feel we really could encounter people like these in our own lives. Their acts of murder are no more extraordinary to them than folding their clothes, ordering at a restaurant, or consorting with local prostitutes. In fact, the film spends far more of its time observing the mundane minutiae of their day-to-day existence than detailing the mechanics of their crimes. To these two men, killing is a means to survival (much of the money they earn from their killings they send back to their own relatives), and no moral or ethical code or twinge of compassion is allowed to stand in the way of ensuring that survival. And if it does...

It is their utter disregard for human life, their indifference to the intrinsic value of the individual that make them and their story so discomfiting and disturbing. Yet, even in this darkest of scenarios, Li gives us a glimmer of hope. When the latest intended victim turns out to be a naïve 16-year-old lad looking for money so that he can resume his studies, one of the killers begins to have second thoughts about what they have planned for him, primarily because he himself has a son who is also a student. The film, thus, becomes a gripping and fascinating study of whether or not even the most amoral person has a line beyond which he will not cross. Yet, what is most unsettling about the film is the way in which the two killers can treat their victim so "humanely" - they even insist on paying for a visit to a prostitute so that the boy won't die never having had sex - all the while knowing full well what they intend to do to him. What monster in any horror film could be scarier than that?

"Blind Shaft" is not a thriller in the conventional sense of the term. It relies less on plot and more on observation, as we follow this fascinating trio through the brothels and marketplaces of rural China, seeing a world and a lifestyle wholly unfamiliar to most of us. Li remains utterly objective and detached as he records the doings - sometimes major, sometimes trivial - of Song and Yuan as they go through their day. Stylistically, the director brings an almost documentary feel to the story, and by dedicating as much screen time to the trivial details as to the murder plot itself, he conveys the sense of moral equivalence and bankruptcy that defines the characters' way of thinking. With no melodramatic background music to cheapen the suspense, Li allows the horror to develop naturally, out of a situation in which conscience and basic human compassion have been essentially drained. As we get to know this kid, and as his two intended killers get to know him as well, we can do little but watch helplessly as the elements of the plot move inexorably to their foregone conclusion. Through this approach, "Blind Shaft" generates a kind of "suspense" that the typical slick Hollywood thriller can only dream of achieving.

With brilliant performances from the three leads, Li forces us to look into the darkness that often lurks in the heart of Man. It is a frightening but unforgettable vision.

Li Yang, writer/director of Blind Shaft, is a Chinese documentary filmmaker who, in this film, turned to features and with superior results. In a revealing and powerful essay he himself wrote for the release of this film on DVD, found in the DVD case insert, he talks about how grueling it was to make it.

The story of two murdering grifters with mining experience--enough to get them jobs in any one of hundreds of mines that sprang up after the demise of the Communist economy in mainland China--Blind Shaft pulls no punches in portraying the day-to-day existence of dirt-poor, working class men and women who scrabble for a living, waiting in the streets of the city, the village, the town, for work to come along. These two, Tang and Song, have developed a vicious plan to make money--find a poor, unsuspecting man, have him pose as the nephew or cousin of one of them, take the man with them to the next mine that needs workers, descend the shaft into the mine, kill the third man and make it look like a mine cave-in, then, in essence, blackmail the mine owner into paying funeral and related expenses to the two of them for the "accident".

The editing in the film is what sets this apart from many other films. The filmmaker, one can tell, is a master editor, absolutely brilliant. There's not one wasted shot, not one extraneous cinematic moment. The story is lean and mean, and so is the editing. Interestingly enough, this is, as well, reflected in the acting; Yang used mostly non-professionals to portray the characters in the film. This lends the work a jarring realism that one wonders would be there had he used professionals.

When Tang and Song recruit a 16-year old, Feng, as their next victim, things do not go exactly as planned. One of the two killers, as it turns out, has slightly more humanity running through his polluted blood than the other.

Winner of several awards at various international film festivals, Blind Shaft is a riveting work of cinema that should without question have a much wider audience. This is truly superior filmmaking. Thanks to Kino for finding and releasing this powerful film.

Very highly recommended; one of the best Chinese films in the last five years.

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.

A very bleak story. Two miners are teaming together to entrap a young teenager, underage if possible, on the run for any reason whatsoever into coming to work with them underground. The mines are managed by bosses who do not want problems. So they have some kind of premium, or contract for the casualties of accidents, 30,000 yuans per dead. The two miners who want to be rich as fast as possible kill the third one as soon as they can, pocket the premium and run away to the next mine, and the next escaping teenager. It is a simple business, and yet it is not that simple. It is dark in the mines and you do not see very well. So one day, circumstances will reshuffle the pack of cards. One of the two will be impatient and the two will end on the wrong side of some road, of some dynamite. And guess who is going to get the money, and the two urns with the ashes? The film is not interesting because of that, because we more or less know what is going to happen. That kind of undertaker's job cannot last very long. What is interesting is the realistic vision of China's industrial and mining areas today. People have to move away from their families to find work. They have to pay for their schooling or the schooling of their children. They also have the opportunity to work whenever they want. Working conditions are hard. Living conditions are hard too. But It is not that long ago that we had the same situation in Europe, and the present situation in China is what we had in Europe at the end of the 1950s or even beginning of the 1960s. It is only in 1968 that the situation really improved in France with a 13% average pay rise in May 1968. It is exactly what is happening in China this year with a minimum 20% hike on the minimum wage all over China, and the more developed a province the higher the hike is. It may create some inflation. It may cause the yuan to go up slightly. It may make exports slightly more difficult. But the country is dynamic enough not to recapture in productivity what they lose in labor cost. They are catching up so fast that we may not even see them overtaking us. And that is the interest of this film. It does not show a bleak situation centering on exploitation, the hardships and suffering of the working class. It centers on what the desire to catch up with wealth may produce in some minds, even may make some become criminals. A society like this one that is growing, as for their industry, at a 13.9% rate may make some dizzy and envious and impatient to reach the object of their dream faster than honestly possible. An interesting film that shows China is also catching up in that industry too.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

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.

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).

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.

Welcome to modern day China, a land turned ruthlessly capitalistic, providing fertile breeding ground for con-men who go the extra mile, ruthlessly. The paraphrased words here of one of the main protagonists sums up the mercantile jadedness quite succinctly: Nothing is real anymore, except a mother's love.

In this intriguing film of low-key suspense put out by Li Yang, the plot centers on two cold-blooded con men who operate in the northen part of Asia's most powerful yet troubled country. These wolves in sheeps' clothing run scams against unsafe mining companies, the likes of which haven't tormented the American worker in decades. Integral to their ongoing machinations are strays they pick up in the big city; young men from impoverished villages who come looking for scarce work and even scarcer honor, to support the loved ones back home and maintain a sense of traditional dignity. Ripe plums for the plucking.

Li Yang's portrayal of today's somewhat Red China is both disturbing yet interesting, but not in a train-wreck fascinating sort of way. The folk on vivid display are but fifty-odd years yanked from an ancient way of life, thrust for a second time into a newly emerging system, the latter almost as chaotic in its long birthing as the earlier attempt at collectivism, and presently just as unsure. The realistic scenes that unfold of casehardened citizens working, plying or roaming the harsh and dirty streets of the city impart an overarching sentiment of bleak prospect. Accentuated from beginning to end are inadequately addressed challenges of today and future China: with so many people to provide safe work, plentiful food and adequate housing for, it seems to be herculean tasks the pseudo-communist, hyper-capitalist government is just not up to. Exasperating the difficulties is the disregard of basic civil rights we Westerners take for granted, because in contemporary China, where now almost everything's for sale, the film has the viewer believe it is very unlikely the authorities ever make a comprehensive effort at keeping accurate records of one's true and legal authenticity. That dysfunctional social and legal problem of essential identity plays into one of this production's most starkest and frightening statements: a single solitary not easily identifiable Chinese citizen can not only be easily victimized, but die without hardly causing a stir. Untraceable identity is also a theme crucial on more than one level as the story-line plays out.

Also explored is the damage done to the character of the Chinese everyman. With not enough developed resources, so many must barely get by, all the while chafing under a capricious, strictly market-minded government-one not by the people, nor for the people and certainly not of the people, but overly concerned with national results at the expense of individual dignity. Such a way of life cannot help but be prone to produce much human sadness, which can make it distressingly easy for too many souls to be corrupted, which unfortunately not only enables but encourages the basest of men to inflict upon others terrible evil.

If you like suspenseful plots and interesting individual and national character studies in exotically perilous environments, then I highly recommend Blind Shaft. It's an engaging way to spend 90 minutes getting an incisively sneak peek into the underbelly of the most populous country on the planet. And if one is inclined to doubt the veracity of this film, that they might consider this video display as little more than some guy trying to trade on unfair characterizations of Mother China, they should also take this into consideration prior to renting or buying this DVD: The film is banned in China.

http://www.frankrheins.com

Just because this film is about murder in a coal mine don't expect MY BLOODY VALENTINE part 2, 95% of the film is about the two no-nonsense con men who commit murders (that look like accidents in order to collect payoffs by the mine) looking for and then befriending their next victim.

The film was interesting, but at the same time slow and unsatisfying. Kinda like eating a half portion of a tasty meal. I'm not saying I didn't like the film cause I did, but there just wasn't enough there to make me want watch it again or even recommend it to others.

I am interesting in seeing what Yang Li does next.