POSTMEN IN THE MOUNTAINS (Huo 99): [3.5]

I forget where I first heard of this film, probably scouring the depths of film forums earlier in my cinephile career, but I do remember it being listed as Unavailable on Netflix for quite a while, only recently making the jump from the Saved section to my actual Queue. I knew little about it upon receiving it, somewhat expecting a rigid and difficult minimalist 'slow film' the likes of which are quite popular on the international circuit these days. Turns out despite being slow and minimal in its own way, it's a quite earnest and accessible semi-crowdpleaser. In an alternate universe where Americans regularly sought out challenging foreign films, this would be held up as a model of painlessly presenting neorealism and cultural specificity in a way anyone could appreciate. Unfortunately, in our universe, independent distributors have to fight tooth and nail to secure rights to a film even as broadly satisfying as this, and even once they have, it's a crapshoot as to whether Netflix will deign to provide it to its many uninterested subscribers.

Like many others, I consider myself a huge fan of Jia Zhang-ke. His contributions to Chinese cinema itself and its visibility on the world stage are immense and deeply praiseworthy. I've yet to see a film by him that I don't absolutely adore, and I followed A TOUCH OF SIN more eagerly than perhaps any other film at this year's Cannes. I am also very invested in seeking out the cousins of Jia's style, films made by a collection of politically active filmmakers known as the dGeneration, named, as I like to imagine it, not only for their liberating reliance on digital technology but also their films' corrosive visual assessment of their mother country. These films will only continue to proliferate as China continues its transition into late capitalist hell, and it's essential that we support them as much as we can.

It is, however, easy to forget in the wake of this artistic renaissance that China was not always the tragic lost soul of neoliberalism. To be sure, Deng Xiaoping's economic plans were already reshaping the nominally Communist country from the late 1970s and onward, but until recently these changes seemed less present in Chinese cinema itself. The filmmakers collectively dubbed the Fifth Generation, of whom Zhang Yimou is probably the most famous and the one with whom I'm most familiar, were not exactly oblivious to the changes taking place in China but seemed less interested in provoking a response in their viewers at home or abroad. Zhang, of course, could never be accused of being apolitical, as his early films dealt with social issues beneath their saturated colors and narrative parsimoniousness. Two relevant examples would be THE STORY OF QIU JU, which cleverly subsumed a sustained critique of Chinese bureaucracy into the comedic story of one woman's quest for retribution, and TO LIVE, which staged a lavish historical epic in order to better depict the changing times of late 20th century China. Zhang has shifted comfortably between these two contrasting modes of cinematic cultural analysis, omnivorously refusing to fully commit either to social realism or Fifth Generation politically-tinged dramas. Lately, however, he has retreated away from the both the present and the recent past of China, creating instead still worthy but safely fossilized works such as HERO and CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. I quite enjoyed both of those (HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS less so), and his divergent RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES is absolutely worth attention as well. But where TO LIVE resulted in a two-year ban on filmmaking due to its stern criticism of the Communist Party's impact on the lives of Chinese citizens, it seems increasingly unlikely that Zhang will again court the controversy of his rawer early works.

Somewhere beyond Zhang's ambivalent political concern and Jia's unapologetic outrage lies POSTMEN IN THE MOUNTAINS. Taking place in the rural mountains, set in the 1980s and featuring technology no more advanced than a radio and several briefly glimpsed buses, it seems a pointedly low-key and analog piece of fiction in comparison to other works of Chinese cinema. But the anxieties of modern living are present by absence. It's impossible not to view the father's mail delivery system as anachronistic even in the mountains of 1980s China, and his son frequently challenges his father's commitment to old ways and old systems. There's no sense that the father (Ten Rujun, alternately cheerful and strict as many fathers can be) is lost in a world of his own as he explains his lifestyle to his son. Rather, it seems he's aware of the forward march of progress and simply rejects it for his old-fashioned ways. This choice comes across as political even without the father ever explaining it in terms of politics. Coming out of the Cultural Revolution and still as committed as ever to shoving its citizens into the future, China at this point in time had no place for traditionalist postal workers. The son likewise doesn't seem to think of his mild preference for modernity as political, but as always, the political becomes personal. Politics can't be escaped even in the depths of the Hunan province's mountain ranges.

This shadowy subtext faintly predicts both the state of China to come and its cinema's subsequent radicalization. Jia led the Sixth Generation into directly engaging his country's dogma and empowered the dGeneration to do the same on an even smaller and more democratic scale. Politics are inescapable these days by design, and the only two options left seem to be to fight back or ignore it all. But look back a decade and a half and you'll find Huo Jianqi engaging with the lives of his countrymen on a subtler and more humanist scale. If he's angry at what China has become and is still becoming, he doesn't show it except in the father's brief dismissals of his son's modern sensibilities. Politics is both everything and nothing, present everywhere at all times but visible mainly through the way we treat other people. And the father chooses to treat his mail recipients as nothing less than human beings with unique stories and concerns of their own, all of which are worth his respect.

The son, on the other hand, finds himself slowly growing to accept and understand his father's previous absence (and it's not easy to do, as I myself can attest; my own father was very committed to his job too and frequently spent days or weeks abroad). His father sacrificed his closeness to his family at home in exchange for being a dependable and compassionate presence for the people he met on his path. This sense of responsibility for the needs of what we might call "little people" is something almost extinct in America with our never-ending vilification of the poor and marginal, and I suspect we'd find a similar process occurring in modern China as its citizens are seduced with possibilities of affluence and independent living. If there is a political message to be inferred from this film, then, it's that the lures of capitalism and easy living are no substitute for the human connection a job, however obsolete, can provide.

Huo examines the costs of communal loyalty in a very evenhanded way, taking time to earn the mutual respect of his sensitively rendered father/son reconnection. After the son finds himself taken with a female member of a village the two visit, the father broaches the topic of marriage. The son objects calmly, saying he'd hate to do what his father did and abduct this woman from her life and make her a postman's wife ever in wait of his return. A shriller American movie would inflect this moment with decades of bitterness and resentment, but the son lays out his objection civilly and blamelessly. His father does not visibly react, but we get the sense that he has heard and respects his son's point. He's not so stuck in his ways that he refuses to accept any challenges to it on his son's part, but at the same time he doesn't seem to show any open regret over the way he's chosen to live his life (though Huo diplomatically sometimes privileges us with flashbacks the father privately experiences). This may strike some as dramatically noncommittal, but to me it felt like an accurate depiction of reckoning with one's past and another's future. There are no easy answers, just feelings and opinions on both ends that each have their own private legitimacy.

Its Huo's refusal to judge either character that lets us get to know them as humans and not symbols of two different mindsets. Their trek through beautifully photographed landscapes deepens their connection through a shared experience neither have had the pleasure of enjoying in their lives. The past doesn't go away for either of the two, it just lives on in their sympathetic but occasionally strained treatment of each other. Yet somehow they manage to do what many men seem capable of doing in sublimating their tensions through bonding and commitment to a common goal. The father has felt this sense of duty all his life, and the son grows to feel it too over the course of their journey. In place of the open flow of emotions and needs they might have perfected through years of closeness, both men seem content to at least have had the chance to see what drives the other to act as they do. When the son begins his first solo journey at the end of the film, it's clear that he and his parents each have their own personal stakes in his new career. What unites them is the hope that he can learn from the strengths and weaknesses of his father and continue to serve his fellow citizens without having to give up the chance at personal happiness.