Plodding plot about rural life
While there is not yet a commonly used Mandarin equivalent of the American term 'politically correct', Brother Wu Invites God is about as 'PC' as a Mainland Chinese film could hope to get.
Produced by Sichuan province's Emei Studio, Brother Wu (in Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles) follows the party line in depicting rural poverty, urban excesses, and the need for the haves and have-nots to work together at a private level with minimal reliance on government funds.
Director Fan Yuan covered similar Sichuan terrain in his debut production, The Accused Uncle Shangang (released here last year). In that award-winning opus, he used village life as a backdrop to relate the party's commitment to rule by law. This time round, Fan uses a similarly plodding technique to relate an equally propagandistic message.
The script, co-authored by the director and Liu Xiaoshuang, is set in the village of Yutancun, a remote town mired in hopeless poverty. The village leader, Brother Wu (Cao Jingyang), realises the nation is too cash-strapped to help the villagers out.
Determined to follow the party directive that villages find financial support from the private sector, he hits upon a risky plan. Twenty years earlier, a teenage youth was expelled from Yutancun for having sexual relations with a young girl. Nobody has heard from the boy since, until a chance mention in the provincial newspaper reveals that Wang Jinliang (Zhao Jun) is now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Chongqing. Wu enlists the help of Wang's former girlfriend, Shuishui (Zheng Weili), to go to the big city and beg him for help.
It is no easy matter. Shuishui is married to the town's cripple, and living in circumstances that are impoverished even by Yutancun's low standards. The emotional scars from the innocent affair still haunt her. The movie makes the interesting point that sexual mores considered scandalous in the 1970s would cause barely a ripple today.
It takes too long to get started, with an extremely verbose half-hour spent on establishing the backwardness of the village. The pace picks up in Chongqing, two country bumpkins experiencing culture shock that effectively demonstrates the huge disparity between urban and rural societies. Wang invites them to an 'ordinary' banquet which costs 1,350 yuan (about HK$1,260). As Brother Wu tearfully observes, it is the equivalent of two years' income for a peasant.
On an emotional level, the director captures the lingering pain, bitterness, and hatred Wang feels two decades after the traumatic events in which he was accused of rape and cast out of the only home he knew. One can imagine the struggle he must have endured to get where he is today. Though the movie paints his eventual homecoming in a sentimental light, it also provides a glint of reality when Wang's girlfriend cynically comments: 'They're not inviting you back. They're inviting back your money.' The movie earns points for its unvarnished portrait of country life and critical scrutiny of nouveau riche city dwellers but sometimes veers into the realm of stereotype. Chief among them is Wang's girlfriend, a cigarillo-smoking, highly rouged 'super shrew' with a boundless jealousy of Shuishui.
The movie pities Shuishui for being married to a drunken cripple. She was 'damaged goods' and in the village's feudalistic mindset would make a suitable bride only for a man equally damaged. The film does not even hint that this attitude towards the physically handicapped is feudal, narrow-minded and unjust.
In the end, Wang donates money for the village to build a proper road to the outside world and begin mining its valuable stone. One shudders to think of the environmental damage that will result, or the corruption newfound wealth will bring to the town. These are pitfalls that can be avoided only through open government and an inquiring press, two crucial elements of whose existence both the residents of Yutancun and the film-makers seem oblivious.
Brother Wu Invites God (Cine-Art)
