Zhang-Ke’s magisterial film yokes complexity with simplicity, micro with macro, tragedy with comedy, violence and humour. Each of the four tales within the film employs the eternally potent dramatic tool of violence, to offer a savage X-ray of society, moving from high end hotels to scabrous street restaurants where anonymous faces slurp noodles like there’s no tomorrow. I was watching it with Mr Presno, who said at the end: But they can’t show that in China can they? How Zhang-Ke gets financing for his films remains a mystery but in many ways they give the lie to the idea of China as an overwhelmingly repressive state, in part because they are permitted to show the worst of the corruption and decadence of the new money with its communist party kickbacks. Despite being split into four parts, A Touch of Sin in many ways employs a classical narrative character framework. Each of the featured four flawed characters have to fight to find their significance within a world which reduces the individual to a part in a vast machine. Whether this is through the cathartic act of killing the bad guys, as in stories 1 and 3, or choosing a tragic end, as in story 4, or just assuming a role beyond the moral or social remit of society, as in the story 2, each character realises themselves though their capacity to enact violence. This model makes for straightforward storytelling, which is at the same time a radical critique of the society they emerge from.
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