Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Little Red Flowers (2006)
Director: Yuan Zhang
Should you see it? It is hard for to me believe this film would have a wide appeal beyond those interested in kindergarten or Chinese culture.
This is a film the Seattle International Film Fest is made for. A brilliantly made film that is rich simultaneous in subtle cultural commentary and idiosyncratic entertainment. It is a film that reveals layers of meaning the more you consider it. It is a sort of Animal Farm, only instead of animals standing in for political and cultural figures, in Little Red Flowers kindergartners and their teachers are used to make subversive political and cultural insights.
First, on its most superficial level this is the most adorable film I have ever seen. It is populated with the cutest 4 and 5 year olds you have ever seen. The brilliance of the story telling is Zhang's choice to make the children's perspective the point of view of the narrative. It is simultaneously an anthropological and psychological study of 'kindergarten culture’ expressed as a narrative seen through the subjects’ eyes. It is extraordinary how fully Zhang gives you an experience of what life would feel like to a small child alone at a boarding school.
The narrative, set in the 1940s?, follows a little boy whose father drops him off at a state run boarding kindergarten designed to indoctrinate the children into communist china’s society. Those who are good at following the rules get little red flowers on a big chart, and there are rules and time tables for everything, from the games they play to the need to set your body to school’s clock of simultaneous bathroom breaks. Those with the most flowers are the ones who can mimic the teacher most adeptly and keep the strict, mechanical schedule most accurately. Our protagonist is the boy sticking out his tongue in the crystal palace. We watch his rebellion grow more and more sever as he refuses to do what is expected until he leads a mini-rebellion. He imaginatively convinces his fellow kindergartners the head teacher is a witch and they swarm her in the middle of the night to tie her up. He is found to be the ring leader and is punished with time in kindy-solitary-confinement. (The film does a great job balancing the adorable and humorous with the sad and serious.) Irrepressible, he ultimately curses out the head teacher and runs from the school.
Then we get to the most abrupt ending in film history. In fact it feels as if 1.this is a working-edit of the film and they have yet to finish or 2. the crew ran out of film and said: 'well, I guess that’s it.' Here’s what happens: After escaping the boy sees a military parade with the soldiers stepping mechanically in unison. They are wearing big red flowers on their uniform. The boy lays down on a rock and the film ends. Now the message is clear, if he is going to rebel against being a cog it is not going to end with kindergarten. The whole of his life will be one of necessary conformity to oppressive rules. The audience is left to reflect on the injustice being done to textensiontention the injustice being waged against the whole of communist Chinese society.
But why the abruptness of the ending, why leave us with the startling arbitrary feeling? Perhaps this is the way the director could get his message out. The point against conformity is clear with some reflection on the film, but in the immediate ending of the film you are just confused and think, this is a bad ending. Perhaps Zhang had only the choice between a bad ending or an obviously subversive ending and be needed to make the bad ending to fool the censors. I don’t know, but the rest of the film is so good you have to believe the poor ending was a necessary choice.
Should you see it? It is hard for to me believe this film would have a wide appeal beyond those interested in kindergarten or Chinese culture.
This is a film the Seattle International Film Fest is made for. A brilliantly made film that is rich simultaneous in subtle cultural commentary and idiosyncratic entertainment. It is a film that reveals layers of meaning the more you consider it. It is a sort of Animal Farm, only instead of animals standing in for political and cultural figures, in Little Red Flowers kindergartners and their teachers are used to make subversive political and cultural insights.
First, on its most superficial level this is the most adorable film I have ever seen. It is populated with the cutest 4 and 5 year olds you have ever seen. The brilliance of the story telling is Zhang's choice to make the children's perspective the point of view of the narrative. It is simultaneously an anthropological and psychological study of 'kindergarten culture’ expressed as a narrative seen through the subjects’ eyes. It is extraordinary how fully Zhang gives you an experience of what life would feel like to a small child alone at a boarding school.
The narrative, set in the 1940s?, follows a little boy whose father drops him off at a state run boarding kindergarten designed to indoctrinate the children into communist china’s society. Those who are good at following the rules get little red flowers on a big chart, and there are rules and time tables for everything, from the games they play to the need to set your body to school’s clock of simultaneous bathroom breaks. Those with the most flowers are the ones who can mimic the teacher most adeptly and keep the strict, mechanical schedule most accurately. Our protagonist is the boy sticking out his tongue in the crystal palace. We watch his rebellion grow more and more sever as he refuses to do what is expected until he leads a mini-rebellion. He imaginatively convinces his fellow kindergartners the head teacher is a witch and they swarm her in the middle of the night to tie her up. He is found to be the ring leader and is punished with time in kindy-solitary-confinement. (The film does a great job balancing the adorable and humorous with the sad and serious.) Irrepressible, he ultimately curses out the head teacher and runs from the school.
Then we get to the most abrupt ending in film history. In fact it feels as if 1.this is a working-edit of the film and they have yet to finish or 2. the crew ran out of film and said: 'well, I guess that’s it.' Here’s what happens: After escaping the boy sees a military parade with the soldiers stepping mechanically in unison. They are wearing big red flowers on their uniform. The boy lays down on a rock and the film ends. Now the message is clear, if he is going to rebel against being a cog it is not going to end with kindergarten. The whole of his life will be one of necessary conformity to oppressive rules. The audience is left to reflect on the injustice being done to textensiontention the injustice being waged against the whole of communist Chinese society.
But why the abruptness of the ending, why leave us with the startling arbitrary feeling? Perhaps this is the way the director could get his message out. The point against conformity is clear with some reflection on the film, but in the immediate ending of the film you are just confused and think, this is a bad ending. Perhaps Zhang had only the choice between a bad ending or an obviously subversive ending and be needed to make the bad ending to fool the censors. I don’t know, but the rest of the film is so good you have to believe the poor ending was a necessary choice.
