Yellow Earth by
Chen Kai-ge (Farewell My Concubine, Life on a String) was
the first film of the so-called fifth generation of filmmakers who introduced
a new aesthetic and social awareness to Chinese cinema. It is set just
before World War II in Shaanxi province in Northern China near the Yellow
River, an area referred to as gian shan wan he (thousands of hills and
ten folds more gullies). Based on Ke Lai's novel, Echo in the Deep Valley,
the film shows the struggle of the peasants in the area known for its unyielding
harshness and the folk traditions they drew on to express their anguish.
As the film begins, cinematographer Zhang Yimou creates a feeling of desolation
with panoramic shots of the vast landscape as a soldier from the Communist
Eighth Route Army, Gu Qing (Wang Xueyin), walks over the barren hills to
a small village. He says he is there to collect folk songs for the army
to use so that "the people will know why they are suffering, why their
women are beaten, and why they should rise up".
Comrade Gu stays with
a poor family that includes 47-year old widowed father (Tan Tuo), his 13-year
old daughter Cuiqiao (Xue Bai), and almost mute son Hanhan (Liu Quiang).
Rather than relying on traditional narrative to convey the film's message,
Kai ge uses long static shots and songs of the people to express mood and
tone. The father has become embittered with his life of constant deprivation
and sings "Life is hard for seasonal workers. They are hired in January,
dismissed in October". Conditions are tough and the farmers pray for rain
to alleviate the drought but there is no rain. At a wedding, the serving
of wooden fish figures covered with sauce underscores the lack of adequate
food. The film also dramatizes the sorry condition of women, showing how
they had to carry heavy buckets of water on their backs for miles, and
how they were forced into arranged marriages at a very young age.
Gu is seemingly confident
of the fight he is waging. He lets the family know that in the South, there
are no longer any arranged marriages and tells Cuiqiao about women who
cut their hair, fight against the Japanese, and can read and write. She
hears about her older sister's unhappy marriage and does not want to endure
the same fate. "Of all us poor folk," she sings, "girls are the saddest."
Cuiqiao is infatuated with Gu and wants to leave home and join the Army
200 miles away in Yanan. She knows that if she stays she will be forced
to marry an older man in an arranged ceremony. When Gu leaves to return
to camp, he promises to return in April. Promises alone, however, cannot
change Cuiqiao's growing feeling of entrapment or the terrible consequences
that follow. In its heartbreaking portrayal of people caught in lives of
"quiet desperation" that even Communist ideas or marching songs cannot
redeem, Yellow Earth speaks a universal language of sadness.