Poster for The Cremator [Photo: Global Times]
Indie film 'The Cremator' holds flame up to dark corner of society
While stories of life and death are common subjects in films, those who work in industries related to death also seem to arouse people's curiosity. When the Japanese film Okuribito premiered five years ago and ended up winning Best Foreign Language Film at the 81st Academy Awards in 2009, its soft unfolding of a corpse beautician's job and his witnessing of heart-warming love stories behind each cold body make it a very humane movie, removing the typical repulsion about a job that deals with dead bodies.
Now a Chinese director is also trying his hand in this field. The Cremator, produced in 2012, has already been screened at several international film festivals including the 37th Toronto International Film Festival, and now it is showing in China. As a low budget production with a cost of around 1 million yuan (less than $161,000), it is an independent film that did not enter commercial theaters but was only screened at some art institutions.
A rare subject in Chinese films and documentaries, the picture has not only aroused foreign but also domestic audiences' interest in both this industry and the people engaged in it. "They are at the very bottom of society. Their situation is even worse than migrant workers since most people deem their job as [cursed] and think they are [bad luck]," said Peng Tao, director of The Cremator.
"They are not popular anywhere, people never think of inviting them to parties or happy occasions," said Peng. "I want people to pay more attention to this group of people through this film," he said.
Utter misery
Peng's idea to shoot the film was inspired by a news report about an "infernal marriage," a Chinese tradition that exists in areas like Shanxi, Shaanxi and Henan provinces, referring to the match-making between two dead people who were not married when they are alive. Most of them are young and die of accidents, and since their families don't want them to be alone in the afterlife, they get a postmortem partner.
In the film, a man named Lao Cao works in a crematorium in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, and to earn some extra money he helps families arrange infernal marriages. However, since he is becoming old, he also wants to seek an infernal marriage for himself. In his words, "Who wants to marry me doing such a job?"
One day, the lifeless body of a beautiful young girl who died of drowning is delivered to the crematorium. When no one comes to claim the body, Lao Cao secretly keeps it and holds his own mock marriage ceremony.
Later, the girl's younger sister, A Zhu, comes to the crematorium looking for her older sister. Lao Cao lies and says he doesn't remember such a girl's body being delivered there.
As the story progresses, the miserable situations of Lao Cao and A Zhu begin to intersect and eventually intertwine to the point where a quasi family relationship develops. But closeness doesn't relieve their sorrow.
For example, Lao Cao runs into A Zhu at a brothel where they are arrested. Lao Cao must use his meager savings to bail out A Zhu and himself. Then he catches a deadly disease and tells A Zhu the truth about her sister's death. He gives A Zhu all the money he has left and tells her to go home.
But she doesn't leave. Hoping to cure Lao Cao, A Zhu agrees to set up her dead sister with another man in an infernal marriage. She collects 10,000 yuan for "trading" her sister, but by the time she returns to the hospital she finds Lao Cao is already dead.
Far from a great tragedy
As the film has no background music and employs a handheld shooting style, it has the look of a documentary. "I visited many crematoriums before shooting the film, and the people I met were in an even more miserable living condition than those depicted in the film," Peng told the Global Times.
"They are used to living with the misery that has befallen them without thinking much about life and death. Maybe this is a characteristic of Chinese people's nature," he added.
While trying to move audiences with his thoughts about Chinese people who live at the bottom of society, others have different views. "The film generally is good, reflecting the director's concern and attitude toward this group of people, but it lacks a multiple perspective," said Tong Xiaofeng, vice professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. "People living at the bottom of society also share laughter... To show their bitter life does not rely only on the depiction of their misery, but a more round and 3D display of their characters and life," Tong told the Global Times.
"It is a completely miserable story, but not a great tragedy that can touch hearts and be thought-provoking," Tong added.
Mistaken idea
Gaining fame as early as 2007, Peng was known in the circle for his first independent film Little Moth which appeared at several international film festivals that year. Another subject about people living at the bottom of the society, Little Moth focused on children who were handicapped and abandoned by their families, and then fell into the hands of bad people who forced them to beg for money on the street.
Not only Peng, but many of China's independent filmmakers choose subjects like this for their films. According to Peng, this is mostly because shooting a film about these subjects saves money since it is basically the reality of the society.
However, another factor that should not be neglected is that these films win at international film festivals, since foreigners want to know more about a fast changing China.
"Actually the current China is much more complicated than the film has reflected, so are the people living in it. It is not a simple definition of good or bad," said Tong.
"Now most Chinese independent films seem to fall into the mistaken idea that only complete display of bottom people's bitterness can reflect their misery and arouse people's attention," said Tong.