The Berlinale favorite So Long, My Son : guilt and reconciliation in the shadow of the One-child policy

Inner time and outer time to fall apart almost always. But nowhere you can be so little to cover, such as in China. From the aftermath of the cultural revolution, the goss and the people of their traitorous poison into the heart, to the high-tech glitter of the million cities in just four decades: a moral barely holds awareness step. How to tell? Wang Xiaoshuai, in addition to Lou Ye and Jia Zhang-ke is one of the most renowned Directors of the heterogeneous "sixth Generation" of filmmakers, brought as graduates of the Beijing film Academy, an unheroic everyday sound to the cinema, takes just three hours.

in view of the material masses, the rich of Deng Xiaoping's Four modernizations to the present day, this is undoubtedly another act of violence. In view of the subjective layers of Time, through which his protagonists move in "So Long, My Son", but also an epic. With a calm breath and a steady Hand, it collects the particles, which are ejected from this historic centrifuge in all directions.

Liu Yaojun and his wife Wang Liyun, for example, that it takes soon from the North to the southern province of Fujian. He (Wang Jingchun) repaired boats, you (Yong Mei) mends networks and ensures the cohesion of the family, which in the face of a rebellious 16-Year-old by the name of xing xing calls upon all forces.

The Private is implies from the Political penetrated

such As Wang Xiaoshuai, who also wrote the screenplay, now in flashback, and then, piece by piece, reveals that this adopted son to replace the biological son who drowned in a reservoir, to the first name, is a Drama in and of itself. In his an unsentimental hardness it lends to the ubiquitous motifs of guilt and reconciliation contour. As the Director of weaving the individual conflicts of this family in a historical context, showing you at the same time as the forced-abortion victims of the (now discontinued) One-child policy, and as the flotsam and Jetsam of a mass dismissal in the factory, in which both were employed, gives a further Dimension.

And that's not enough. The destructive work of mismanagement and politics has a human face. One of these belongs to Li Haiyan (Ai Liya). She is the mother of Haohao, the best friend of the body of xing xing. Haohao, in turn, is the godson of Liyun and Yaojun. That Li Hayan as a factory Director for family planning Liyun granted the abortion command, and this is in the case of the procedure, infertile, driving the alienation of the two to each other long-connected families. It was only years later, on the deathbed, will you ask for forgiveness – with a tragicomic range, the ratios in balance.

a crisis of conscience has also Moli (Qi Xi), the younger sister of Li Hayans man. Freshly divorced, but pregnant, it is on the way to study in the USA and offers Yaojun your child as a replacement.

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Wang leads the fortunes of the two families in parallel, with a focus on the Liyun and Yaojun. Like few others of his generation enjoyed, he shows the degree to which everything is Private from the Political is imbued. Lou Ye, whose "Shadow Play", which ran in the Panorama, not more, despite the epic approaches on the Thriller, and Jia Zhang-ke, the spans with the "ash is the purest White" (from the end of February in the cinema) - perhaps even the image more momentous epoch in the horizon, not interested as a neorealist, Japanese-trained Director so much for the Psychological.

in this respect, So Long, My Son" (camera: Korean Kim Hyun-soek) portrays "the contingency of the political circumstances in combination with the coincidences of fate in a unique way – and with great acting. Wang told by the unwillingness to bend under what vicissitudes, from the peace you have to connect with the past sometimes, and from what is in the midst of all the turbulence of responsibility, Affection, or even love.

censorship or not?

Wang, 1966 was born in Shanghai in, put back in all of this, even a wide, not at all collision-free path. "The Days", his legendary debut from 1993 with the painter Liu Xiaodong as a Bohemian in the title role, is on the black list. And with his trilogy about the cultural revolution, he ended 2014 with "Red Amnesia," he is always hard on the edge of what is Allowed. With "So Long, My Son" he finds a shape with the recent history marked by deep compassion. It has not been chalked out for him so far.

However, he knows exactly how sensitive the authorities are to become. In Berlin, he says, he had learned that two Chinese films, including Zhang Yimous competition entry "One Second" about the time of the cultural revolution, "had not been" admitted. He could not but say clearly whether it was censorship. When he wants to explain to the press conference, the legislation in China, and their processes, he is interrupted, however, by its producer.

"So Long, My Son" blowing "Auld Lang Syne" melody in the verses by the Scottish poet Robert Burns, who is in China country-wide as the "Eternal friendship". If it is received with the right things, you were Wang Xiaoshuai for this moving Film-neither in the East nor the West.

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Berlinale-column In the case of the cancellation of Chinese films in the Filmfest delivered

Robert Ide

15.2., 10.30 am & 16: 30 (Friedrichstadt-Palast), 19 PM (HdBF); 16.2., 17: 30 (HdBF)