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Zuotian (2001) More at IMDbPro »
13 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
a gripping and intelligently constructed film with great acting, 20 February 2002
Author: tez from Amsterdam, Netherlands
I saw this film at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2002. This seemed to be one of the less popular films on the festival, however, as it turned out, all the more interesting.
The story, of an actor trying to come to grips with himself and his environment after withdrawing from a drug addiction, is based on actual facts. Moreover, the characters playing in the film are the real people living this experience over again, this time for the film, which is partly set up as a stage play. Not only do they all happen to be good actors, Jia Hongsheng's parents are actors in real life as well, the methods used in highlighting their relationship towards Jia are very effective.
Jia Hongsheng is the actor of some Chinese action films late eighties start nineties. Later you can see him in great films such as Frozen and Suzhou River. In between these two career paths Jia becomes a drug addict and looses all drive to act or even do anything productive, except for making somewhat futile attempts at becoming a guitar virtuoso.
I like the way the writer of the scenario choose to emphasize on his behavior after withdrawal more than on the horror of drugs. We really feel the pain and struggle Jia is in. At the same time we hate him for the way he treats those around him.
The film draws the viewer into a tiring pattern Jia seems to be caught in, dragging with him his parents and sister who try to take care of him. Because there are personal 'interviews' with the characters we feel like we are getting to know Jia not only through himself but through others as well.
The film has a heavy feel, but scenes of Jia cycling through Bejing and partying with his friends lighten the tone. So does the bitter humor in a lot of events throughout the film. The music is beautiful and stayed with me for a while after. This is a film that might not easily appeal to many people but for those interested in the more serious and modern Chinese film this is a strong recommendation.
4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Real Life, 11 November 2006
Author: jelloshot0808-1 from United States
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
My wife is a mental health therapist and we watched it from beginning to end. I am the typical man and can not stand chick flicks, but this movie is unbelievable. If you want to see what it is like for someone who is going through these type of struggles, this is the movie for you. As I watched it I found myself feeling sorry for him and others like him.
***Spoiler*** Plus the fact that all the individuals in the movie including the people in the mental institution were the actual people in real life made it that more real.
A must see for someone in the mental health profession!
3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
This movie will tug at your heartstrings, 10 April 2006
Author: missbirdie05 from United States
I must say, every time I see this movie, I am deeply touched, not only by the most painful four years of Hongsheng's life, but also by how his family deals with his drug addiction. It is also true that getting addicted to anything, such as drugs, alcohol, or pornography, cannot only hurt you, but also hurt your most important people in the world: your family. Since family is the #1 priority in the Asian culture, it takes guts for the circle to gather together and show one person how much the family loves him/her. this is actually the first Chinese movie that I actually enjoy, not for the fun of it, but the elements surrounding it (superb acting, touching story, great direction) make this movie worth watching. What stands out the most is that Hongsheng and his family act out the story themselves instead of having some B-movie actor trying to imitate the real person. It shows the genuineness of the movie.
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Effing Great!, 21 August 2007
Author: xseducexmyxfatex from United States
I loved this movie from beginning to end.I am a musician and i let drugs get in the way of my some of the things i used to love(skateboarding,drawing) but my friends were always there for me.Music was like my rehab,life support,and my drug.It changed my life.I can totally relate to this movie and i wish there was more i could say.This movie left me speechless to be honest.I just saw it on the Ifc channel.I usually hate having satellite but this was a perk of having satellite.The ifc channel shows some really great movies and without it I never would have found this movie.Im not a big fan of the international films because i find that a lot of the don't do a very good job on translating lines.I mean the obvious language barrier leaves you to just believe thats what they are saying but its not that big of a deal i guess.I almost never got to see this AMAZING movie.Good thing i stayed up for it instead of going to bed..well earlier than usual.lol.I hope you all enjoy the hell of this movie and Love this movie just as much as i did.I wish i could type this all in caps but its again the rules i guess thats shouting but it would really show my excitement for the film.I Give It Three Thumbs Way Up!
This Movie Blew ME AWAY!
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Great movie, really grasps the concept of how hard it is to end an addiction, 20 June 2007
Author: Acdc671 from United States
I first saw this movie on IFC. Which is a great network by the way to see underground films. I watched this movie and was thinking it was going to be pure drama and a story line that doesn't hold water. But it really was a worth while watch. The main character is in such rough shape, and you hate to see him deny help, but no matter what you just can't hate him. His devotion to The Beatles and John Lennon is a great metaphor for his life and the helplessness he feels.
The atmosphere of the film is also great. At times, you feel like you can see what he sees, feel what he feels in some situations. This movie does not leave you wanting to know more, or disliking a loophole in the plot. There are NO loopholes (in my opinion). I have always been a fan of foreign films, especially now with movies being made so poorly in America. I really enjoy the foreign settings because I feel it can take you on a trip, and sometimes understand a different culture. This movie did all those things to me and more. Please watch this movie and if you're new to foreign films, this is a great start.
2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Well worth it!, 7 March 2004
Author: valis1949 from United States
Films concerning the problems of alcohol and drug addiction are as cliched as cowboy films and the propaganda films put out during WWII. But, this one is a cut above the rest. The focus is not on the lead character's addiction, but more on how his family deals with it. I guess in China, the family is most important, and the father and mother go to unbelievable lengths to help their son. Not that they give him everything he asks for, although they give him more than one would expect, but they certainly give him everything that they think he needs. I thought that the father's floundering attempts to understand his boy though the son's music was very touching. Also, the shift from 'film mode' to 'theater mode' was an interesting way to convey the story. It's unfortunate that this film did not come with a commentary. A film concerning issues this painful and personal must have created some strange situations with the characters playing themselves.
1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
The New Actor, 16 January 2008
Author: jcappy from ny-vt
*** This comment may contain spoilers ***
"Quitting" may be as much about exiting a pre-ordained identity as about drug withdrawal. As a rural guy coming to Beijing, class and success must have struck this young artist face on as an appeal to separate from his roots and far surpass his peasant parents' acting success. Troubles arise, however, when the new man is too new, when it demands too big a departure from family, history, nature, and personal identity. The ensuing splits, and confusion between the imaginary and the real and the dissonance between the ordinary and the heroic are the stuff of a gut check on the one hand or a complete escape from self on the other. Hongshen slips into the latter and his long and lonely road back to self can be grim.
But what an exceptionally convincing particularity, honesty, and sensuousness director Zhang Yang, and his actors, bring to this journey. No clichés, no stereotypes, no rigid gender roles, no requisite sex, romance or violence scenes, no requisite street language and, to boot, no assumed money to float character acts and whims.
Hongshen Jia is in his mid-twenties. He's a talented actor, impressionable, vain, idealistic, and perhaps emotionally starved. The perfect recipe for his enablers. Soon he's the "cool" actor, idolized by youth. "He was hot in the early nineties." "He always had to be the most fashionable." He needs extremes, and goes in for heavy metal, adopts earrings and a scarf. His acting means the arts, friends--and roles, But not the kind that offer any personal challenge or input. And his self-criticism, dulled by the immediacy of success, opens the doors to an irrational self-doubt, self-hatred-- "I didn't know how to act" "I felt like a phony"--and to readily available drugs to counter them. He says "I had to get high to do what director wanted." So, his shallow identity as an actor becomes, via drugs, an escape from identity.
Hongshen's disengagement from drugs and his false life is very gradual, intermittent--and doggedly his own. Solitude, space, meditative thinking, speech refusal, replace therapy. The abstract is out. And a great deal of his change occurs outdoors---not in idealized locations but mainly on green patches under the freeways, bridges, and high-rises of Beijing. The physicality is almost romantic, but is not. The bike rides to Ritan Park, the long spontaneous walks, the drenching sun and rain, grassy picnics, the sky patterns and kites that absorb his musing are very specific. He drifts in order to arrive, all the while picking up cues to a more real and realistic identity. "I started to open up" he says of this period in retrospect. And the contact seems to start with his lanky body which projects a kind of dancer's positioning (clumsy, graceful, humorous, telling) in a current circumstance. If mind or spirit is lacking, his legs can compel him to walk all night.
Central to his comeback is the rejection of set roles. To punctuate his end to acting and his determination to a new identity, he smashes his videos and TV, and bangs his head till bloody against his "John Lennon Forever" poster. He has let down his iconic anti-establishment artist---but he's the only viable guide he knows. He even imagines himself as John's son (Yoko Ono), and adopts his "Mother Mary" as an intercessor in his "hour of darkness" and "time of trouble." (the wrenching, shaking pain in the park--hallucinatory and skitzoid ordeals) "Music is so much more real than acting" he says. And speaks of Lennon's influence as "showing me a new way." In the mental institute, the life-saving apples (resistance, nourishment) reflect Lennon's presence, as does Hongshen's need to re-hang his hero's poster in his redecorated room.
If Lennon's influence is spiriting, Hongshen's father's influence is grounding. Although father and son are both actors and users (drugs and drink), it is Fegsen's differences from his son that underwrites his change. For the father is more secure in himself: he accepts that he's Chinese, a peasant in a line of peasants, a rural theater director. And he exercises control over both his habit and his emotions. It's this recognizable identity that drives Hongshen to treat him like a sounding board, sometimes with anger and rage, sometimes with humor (the blue jeans, Beatles) and passivity. In his most crazed, and violent exchange with his father in which he accuses him of being a liar, and a fake, he exposes more of himself than his father: "all the acts I acted before were bullshit... life is bullshit." And to Hongshen's emphatic "you are NOT my father," he softly replies, "why can't a peasant be your father?"
Under these two teachers and with much additional help from his mother, sister, friends, inmates at the rehab inst., he makes some tangible connection to a real (not whole) self. As the long term drug effects recede, so does his old identity. Indebtedness replaces pride, trust distrust. Integrity banishes his black cloud. All his edges soften. "You are just a human being" he repeats endlessly after being released from the strap-down incurred for refusing medicine. Back home, lard peasant soap is fine with him now. And his once "rare and true friendships" begin again as is so evident in the back to poignant back-to-back fence scene with his musician buddy. Hongshen says of this movie: "it's a good chance to think about my life." And I might add, become a New Actor, one bound to art and life. Like Lennon, he has gained success without a loss of identity.
0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Amazing Movie but not for everyone, 12 August 2007
Author: kostaq sevo from PA, USA
This movie is amazing because the fact that the real people portray themselves and their real life experience and do such a good job it's like they're almost living the past over again. Jia Hongsheng plays himself an actor who quit everything except music and drugs struggling with depression and searching for the meaning of life while being angry at everyone especially the people who care for him most. There's moments in the movie that will make you wanna cry because the family especially the father did such a good job. However, this movie is not for everyone. Many people who suffer from depression will understand Hongsheng's problem and why he does the things he does for example keep himself shut in a dark room or go for walks or bike rides by himself. Others might see the movie as boring because it's just so real that its almost like a documentary. Overall this movie is great and Hongsheng deserved an Oscar for this movie so did his Dad.
0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
new age oriental cinema, 4 March 2004
Author: Roger from Antwerp, Belgium
I felt this film did have many good qualities. The cinematography was certainly different exposing the stage aspect of the set and story. The original characters as actors was certainly an achievement and I felt most played quite convincingly, of course they are playing themselves, but definitely unique. The cultural aspects may leave many disappointed as a familiarity with the Chinese and Oriental culture will answer a lot of questions regarding parent/child relationships and the stigma that goes with any drug use. I found the Jia Hongsheng story interesting. On a down note, the story is in Beijing and some of the fashion and music reek of early 90s even though this was made in 2001, so it's really cheesy sometimes (the Beatles crap, etc). Whatever, not a top ten or twenty but if it's on the television, check it out.
0 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Hongsheng full of himself?, 16 April 2003
Author: ihateeverything from Boston
Maybe I'm reading into this too much, but I wonder how much of a hand Hongsheng had in developing the film. I mean, when a story is told casting the main character as himself, I would think he would be a heavy hand in writing, documenting, etc. and that would make it a little biased.
But...his family and friends also may have had a hand in getting the actual details about Hongsheng's life. I think the best view would have been told from Hongsheng's family and friends' perspectives. They saw his transformation and weren't so messed up on drugs that they remember everything.
As for Hongsheng being full of himself, the consistencies of the Jesus Christ pose make him appear as a martyr who sacrificed his life (metaphorically, of course, he's obviously still alive as he was cast as himself) for his family's happiness. Huh?
The viewer sees him at his lowest points while still maintaining a superiority complex. He lies on the grass coming down from (during?) a high by himself and with his father, he contemplates life and has visions of dragons at his window, he celebrates his freedom on a bicycle all while outstretching his arms, his head cocked to the side.
It's fabulous that he's off of drugs now, but he's no hero. He went from a high point in his career in acting to his most vulnerable point while on drugs to come back somewhere in the middle.
This same device is used in Ted Demme's "Blow" where the audience empathizes with the main character who is shown as a flawed hero.
However, "Quitting" ("Zuotian") is a film that is recommended, mostly for its haunting soundtrack, superb acting, and landscapes. But, the best part is the feeling that one gets when what we presume to be the house of Jia Hongsheng is actually a stage setting for a play. It makes the viewer feel as if Hongsheng's life was merely a play told in many difficult parts.
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