Under the Light

Under the Light is a modern crime drama from Zhang Yimou, director of Hero, The Great Wall and Shadow.

After a disastrous bus bombing incident in the fictional city of Jingang, police officer Su Jianling, son of Mayor Zheng Gang, conducts a crime investigation with the help of his ex-girlfriend and fellow officer Li Huilin. The clues lead towards rich businessman Li Zhitian, an associate of Zheng Gang, uncovering a bigger conspiracy.

Director Zhang Yimou unleashes his trademark color play, gorgeously dressing the city of Chongqing into a neo-noir neon cityscape punch-drunk with an array of bright fluorescents, mirror surfaces, and lens flares. All that visual intrigue, however, is wasted by the on-the-nose dialogue that gives everything away, erroneously placing the audience one step ahead of its story.

Chen Yu's script doesn't trust the audience enough to follow through the intended convoluted plot. It was intriguing in the first half and then progressively loses momentum with the characters explaining everything away and it all immediately becomes routine. All the moral murkiness created from the bright Blade Runner-like visuals is wasted.

Full River Red, the last Zhang Yimou film released earlier this year also written by Chen Yu, had a lot more bite and wit, giving effective narrative twists and turns. Perhaps Zhang and Chen are more confident working in the historical action genre as their grasp of crime film tropes seem greener.

All in all, I'd rather watch Full River Red one more time.

The film is laughably cliche and unbelievable.

The main character always manages to arrive one second too late to move the plot forward. The cops always show up just at the right time to save the day.

It apparently took Zhang Yimou 5 years of back and forth with the censors for this film to finally come out. I don't know how much the censors are to blame, but the characters are laughably cliche, there's no complexity in their personalities, they're either total villains who are ultimately punished by the law or are complete heros with no moral qualms. A Disney movie has more complexity.

The female characters are sad, there's only one real female character, the others are just there to talk about the men. The film does not pass the Bechdel test.

Finally, the long-awaited (at least by me) film by Zhang Yimou, 'Under the Light', which spent four years in the "freezer", has seen the light of day. And it didn't just see it but also claimed the top spot at the global box office in its opening weekend.

Was the wait worth it? The initial reviews from China weren't very encouraging - they pointed out imposed cuts and re-dubbed scenes, underdeveloped characters, and the tiring neon colors. However, I personally liked it a lot. We know that Zhang Yimou excels at creating unique aesthetic worlds, and he succeeded here as well. Naturally, the colors are unreal, but they create an unforgettable atmosphere in harmony with the film's main theme: the intertwining of corruption and family relationships. There is melodrama, there are exaggerations, there are villains, there are young, inspired idealistic cops, there are also Yimou girls. In fact, it has everything that once ignited my passion for cinema. Perhaps the initial version was bolder and more critical and hinted at involvement of higher government circles. But in the final version, which seems to have been cut around 30 minutes from a previously shown version, corruption remains at the level of deputy mayor and smaller-scale crimes within a friendly circle. But considering the not-so-distant history of censorship (and self-censorship) in my part of the world, we should be satisfied with what we got.

In some early reviews, 'Under the Light' was compared (in a negative way) to an earlier film on a similar theme and with a similar fate. 'The Shadow Play', directed by Ye Lou, from the next generation of Chinese filmmakers, was shown just before the completion of Under the Light, after also spending more than two years in the "freezer". The core of the story is quite similar - the symbiosis between a small-scale official and an unscrupulous businessman, disrupted by family (or romantic) relationships. The difference lies in the style - here it's more realistic, the story is told non-linearly with numerous flashbacks. I had the opportunity to see an uncensored version here, but the added parts weren't translated into English, so I couldn't understand how it was "more dangerous" than the officially approved version - the differences were minimal, with some dialogues being shortened. Probably, something similar happened with Zhang Yimou's film - some scenes seemed suspiciously short and abruptly cut.

In the end, I recommend both films. It's a matter of personal preference which one you'll like more - I lean towards 'Under the Light'.

P. S. Joan Chen, known e.g. From 'Twin Peaks', also appears in Zhang Yimou's film - in a small but powerful role, possibly shortened during editing.