A Touch of Sin
Written and directed by Jia Zhangke
Japan, 2013
Jia Zhangke rightfully walked away with a Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival for A Touch of Sin, an intricately plotted exploration of violence and corruption in contemporary China. Sin is a grim but poetic crime film, which the writer-director based on four shocking and true headline-making events, while browsing the Internet for stories of violent crimes censored by the government. These stories reveal a growing restlessness between China’s new ruling class and the working class, and paint an artful condemnation of the Chinese state capitalism. All four stories centre around tragedies of a common man or woman, all set in different regions of China, and all ending in bloodshed. The protagonists in each of its subsets are driven to violent ends while living in the world’s fastest-growing economy.
The first story follows Dahai, a...
Written and directed by Jia Zhangke
Japan, 2013
Jia Zhangke rightfully walked away with a Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival for A Touch of Sin, an intricately plotted exploration of violence and corruption in contemporary China. Sin is a grim but poetic crime film, which the writer-director based on four shocking and true headline-making events, while browsing the Internet for stories of violent crimes censored by the government. These stories reveal a growing restlessness between China’s new ruling class and the working class, and paint an artful condemnation of the Chinese state capitalism. All four stories centre around tragedies of a common man or woman, all set in different regions of China, and all ending in bloodshed. The protagonists in each of its subsets are driven to violent ends while living in the world’s fastest-growing economy.
The first story follows Dahai, a...
- 10/23/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
A Touch of Sin
Written and directed by Jia Zhangke
China, 2013
Oppressed and censored from its national origins, Jia Zhangke makes his prolific USA debut of A Touch of Sin (Tian Zhu Ding) at the New York Film Festival. Telling four overlapping parallel stories, each inspired by real-life depictions of violence, Zhangke shows no mercy for the four souls tormented by the political and social weight of the film’s portrayal of a corrupt Chinese government and fading belief system. Both marginalized yet timeless in scope, the film captures violence in bombastic outbursts but conveys its message with nodes of passive humanity and silent courage. Sin has the awareness of a news alert, but one filled with emotional outcries, callbacks to moral responsibility, and the right for personal freedom. Zhangke demands to be heard, even if China isn’t listening. To paraphrase the director, “Change will come about starting with...
Written and directed by Jia Zhangke
China, 2013
Oppressed and censored from its national origins, Jia Zhangke makes his prolific USA debut of A Touch of Sin (Tian Zhu Ding) at the New York Film Festival. Telling four overlapping parallel stories, each inspired by real-life depictions of violence, Zhangke shows no mercy for the four souls tormented by the political and social weight of the film’s portrayal of a corrupt Chinese government and fading belief system. Both marginalized yet timeless in scope, the film captures violence in bombastic outbursts but conveys its message with nodes of passive humanity and silent courage. Sin has the awareness of a news alert, but one filled with emotional outcries, callbacks to moral responsibility, and the right for personal freedom. Zhangke demands to be heard, even if China isn’t listening. To paraphrase the director, “Change will come about starting with...
- 10/17/2013
- by Christopher Clemente
- SoundOnSight
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