Blind Shaft

This powerful film just took top honors at the Tribeca Film Festival, winning in the category of best narrative feature. All the competitors were first-time feature directors, so don't expect Bertollucci here, but this is a view of working-class Chinese characters that will grip you from start to finish.

Thankfully, the programmers at this festival are daring enough to support this film in spite of the Chinese government's ban on it. Let's hope it finds

distribution soon.

Why do we love movie gangsters? What is it about the good-badman that

draws us in to Cagney at his selfish best, or a zillion noir protagonists? All of that is here, and more in the writing, and the low-key acting never threatens to spoil the bleak mood, either. This is DETOUR, PATHS OF GLORY, SWEET

SIXTEEN (Ken Loach's latest) territory. The scene where the two miners sing

karaoke, wasted with two sex workers in a cheap brothel is enough to make a

government blacklist and everyone's else's must-see list at the same time.

These men have spent their lives being exploited by crooked mine owners and

are fighting back in a crude and _extremely_ callous way, and the reserve with which the scene plays out conveys so much more than even the best socialist

realism of Sayles' MATEWAN ever did. (A great film in its' own right, don't get me wrong. But the situations for coal miners depicted in BLIND SHAFT are all

the more sobering since it is contemporary.)

Don't sweat the ending of a tale like this. First-time directors should always get a pass on wrapping a film up. If they get the characters across convincingly (and here they do) then what comes in the last reel hardly matters. Gangsters back in the day knew enough to leave a theater before the moral was delivered. The real message is in the body of a film, where the mirror is held up to real life.

The film explores the human nature with all possible situations that might arise in life nicely. The story revolves around two people who used to work in a mine and fake the dead person as their relative in order to take money from the mine owner. Things got changed when one of them had a change of heart. It might look normal to see this type of story but the way they acted and portrayed the characters and the representation that they do not care anything about morality but in their heart they wanted to do the right thing, is worth watching.

Pros:

The story moved forward at a good pace to its climax and was interesting. The actors acted properly. What I liked most was the different angle of the film with respect to the story. Without entering into much detail of mines, they just showed us what was really necessary.

CONS: Nothing.

Message: "No matter what you do there is always a good person in you."

VERDICT: "A recommended watch."

"Blind Shaft" is a good/great film about two con men. One of the con men is more vicious than the other, and has lost all feelings for other human beings. The other less-vicious con man still has some pangs of conscience, but both will do whatever it takes to survive.

This is like a small "Goodfellas" in that the two crooks, and the mine bosses they work for, are corrupt, and have no qualms about criminally exploited those around them. They live in a world of crime, and act accordingly. The Chinese street scenes ring with authenticity, no Westerners are present, this the China that hundreds of millions of Chinese see every day - poor, impoverished, corrupt, desperate, where the Communist party has long since abandoned Communism, and Socialism is just an empty slogan.

Nevertheless, there are good, compassionate people in this cynical environment. This film is really about one man's "redemption", the less negative of the two con man, and his realization that his destructive path in life is wrong. I'm writing cryptically because I don't want to spoil what the con is, I recommend this film highly, and I think it will play just as well on the small screen as on the large. See it on the big screen or DVD, but just see it!

I just saw this at the Pan African Film Festival where it was curated in conjunction with Visual Communications in a cross-cultural viewing. Bravo for that foresight.

And bravo for selecting BLIND SHAFT. Is it a masterpiece? No. What it is is a very solid piece of film-making. In basketball terms, it isn't Magic Johnson, it's James Worthy.

Rather than go into the plot, which everyone seems wont to do on these boards, I think it's much more helpful to talk about films in terms of their elements. Plot you can get anywhere, such as Ebert.

The story is a simple morality tale. Nuff said. What's standout about this movie is the ACTING - some of the best, particularly by the youngster that plays the young boy. He is super. The two principles and extended cast are solid as well.

Which points toward director Li Yang who flexes assured muscles throughout. Nothing fancy - no super montages or MTV fancy shmancy technique. In fact, the lighting is uniformly flat throughout, with a decidedly blue cast to connote the frigid brisk air. That's it.

It's also marked by the absence of a soundtrack.

BLIND SHAFT is a return to film-making of a Bressonian order, but with actors, not "models" as Bresson called them. It is a simple tale, but told in such a straight-ahead honest manner, it stands in stark contrast to the contrived machinations of the Hollywood puke machine that spews out "packages" like clockwork.

See this movie if you want bare-knuckle, honest film-making. Skip it if you want Brett Ratner window dressing from Hollywood - it's not for you then.

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.