The Blue Kite
Directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang
Starring Lu Liping, Zhang Wenyao, Chen Xiaoman
Mandarin with English subtitles
In Sydney at Academy Twin and Walker Cinemas from October 13, followed by interstate screenings
Reviewed by Kate Shannon
This film will inevitably be compared with the book Wild Swans, dealing with the same subject: Mao's China through the 1950s and 1960s. The Blue Kite is a moving account of the realities of daily life for a young boy, Tietou, and his Beijing family. Through Tietou's narration, we are transported convincingly to a time of great political turbulence and, at the same time, witness the intimacy of his thrice-widowed mother's marriages.
The film opens with the austere wedding ceremony of Tietou's parents, who bow to a huge portrait of Chairman Mao before bursting into a song of praise for socialism. Tietou's father, a librarian, and his mother, Chen Shujan (Lu Liping), a school teacher, live a simple life until Mao launches the "anti-rightist" campaign.
It's 1957 and Mao calls on people to air their criticisms of the party and government bureaucracy: to "let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend". This supposed move to liberalisation took China by surprise but, as Mao later explained, it was merely a device, a trick to "entice the snakes out of their lair".
Convinced that the threat to Maoism would come from the "intellectuals" — with a population of more than 600 million and a very low level of education, the government classified anyone with an education as "intellectual" — Mao ordered punishment for the critics.
Between 1% and 10% of all intellectuals were considered rightists, so Mao ordered that each school and workplace find a quota of 5% of rightists. Desperate to meet the quota, officials and bureaucrats needed no evidence; some tagged "rightist" were simply at the toilet when names were suggested at workplace meetings. Tietou's father was one of these. Other family members also disappeared. At least 550,000 were labelled rightist; many never returned from labour camps.
At the end of 1957 Mao launched the Great Leap Forward. Steel output was to be doubled in one year. The whole population were to be thrown into steel production: nearly 100 million peasants were switched from agricultural to steel production.
Private cooking was outlawed; woks and cooking utensils were thrown into the backyard furnaces that were kept burning around the clock. Children on the way to school scavenged for broken nails, rusty cogs — any metal objects for the school's furnace.
Endless "mass movements" were launched by Mao. Grass was ordained to be "bourgeois", so hundreds of thousands of Chinese on their hands and knees pulled grass by hand.
The film shows the wiping out of sparrows because they ate grain. This is all just childhood fun for Tietou, as he joins in making so much noise the birds are too afraid to land and finally fall from the sky dead with exhaustion.
The Blue Kite gives a very personal glimpse of the 1966 Cultural Revolution, with its slogan "Bombard the headquarters". Mao used the "revolution" to wipe out any opposition within the Communist Party, informing the nation's youth that "it is right to rebel". We watch schools and offices being shut down as people throw themselves into this continuous "revolution".
Tietou at 14 is still enjoying the unrest. School, he tells his worried mother, is fun. Each day students gather to denounce either teachers or other students as class enemies [no pun intended]. With no evidence required, disliked teachers quickly become victims of the young Red Guards.
It is only when the Red Guards descend on Tietou's family that the brutality of it all becomes real to him.
Production of The Blue Kite began in December 1991 after the initial script, rejected for political reasons, was revised. With no official explanation, the film was banned in China after the shooting was completed, and Tian was forbidden to leave the country. The negative was smuggled to Japan, where it was scored and edited as directed by the absent Tian.
The result is a film not to be missed by those wanting to understand Mao's China. Although insightful and illuminating of Mao's China, it is no documentary. From its opening scenes, this movie is totally absorbing and thoroughly deserves the many accolades it has received, including "best director" at the Chicago International Film Festival.
"Our parents' generation paid for this history with their tears and blood", explains Tian; it is too important for us not to understand what happened, he says. "Film isn't simply entertainment. What I mean is that we have to write history as we understand and remember it. We can't rely on our children to tell the stories of when we were young, it's a different perspective entirely."