Review: The Story of Qiu Ju

As part of my preparations for my upcoming Harvard Summer School film class, we watched Zhang Yimou's (张艺谋) The Story of Qiu Ju (秋菊打官司). Set in the early 1990s, it tells the story of a village woman (played by Gong Li) who struggles -- via China's primitive law enforcement and legal system -- to get an apology from the local village chief for injuring her husband. It's an interesting, well-told story, with a special twist at the end. It highlights, among other things, various cultural and social issues including the importance of food, "face", and "connections" (guanxi, 關係).

The Story of Qiu Ju also portrays some major weaknesses in China's legal system. I can't describe them in depth here, but suffice it to say that Western concepts of gathering evidence, filing complaints, and preventing conflicts of interest are quite different in China at the time this film was shot. Qiu Ju's struggles with the system are sometimes comical, but mostly awkward and sometimes very discouraging. The problems with the legal system are very apparent, despite an obvious effort to present certain aspects in a very positive light. For instance, characters praise the legal system as fair, and a senior law enforcement figure goes out of his way to help Qiu Ju. I suspect that propaganda had to be inserted into the screenplay in order for Zhang to get the project off the ground and shown to domestic audiences. This would not be surprising, considering the totalitarian information controls that have dictated mass media content in China since the revolution.

I also wonder what domestic audiences thought about the film when it was released in the early 1990s. Qiu Ju is a character many Chinese could identify with -- like the lead character, most of the popoulation at that time was poor and rural, and many had no doubt heard of official abuses against ordinary members of the population, if not directly affected -- remember this film was released three years after Tiananmen Square, 25 years after the Cultural Revolution, and almost 35 years after the Hundred Flowers Campaign.

One last note, about the cinematography. Zhang is well-known for his use of color (as in Raise the Red Lantern, Ju Dou, etc.) but The Story of Qiu Ju is very grey and drab. In fact, the film looks more like a documentary than a staged drama. Many scenes use telephoto or long-shot lenses focussing on the actors in real-life street markets, outside bus stations, and on city sidewalks, with the people nearby clearly oblivious to the fact that a film shoot is taking place! This style of filmmaking lends itself to highlighting the gritty aspects of life in China, circa 1992, and it's very effective -- you get a feel for the poverty of ordinary people, and for the lives that they lead. Seeing the scenes that took place in the city was like stepping back in time for me. I first visited China in April of 1992, and Datong and parts of Beijing at that time looked very similar to the urban scenes in the film. I remembered the dust, the poverty, the fleets of ringing black bicycles, crowds of people dressed in blue, and even those rickety old long-distance busses with the luggage racks on top.