The Blue Kite (1993)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Blue Kite (1993) – Z. Tian

A quiet film that contemplates how history impacts personal lives, charting a mother and son as they experience China under Mao between 1950 and 1968.  The film is broken into three parts (Dad, Uncle, and Stepfather), representing the three husbands of the central character, Shujuan (played by Liping Lü), and the three great upheavals in Mao’s era, Rectification & the Hundred Flowers Movement, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.  Director Zhuangzhuang Tian had to smuggle this film out of China in order to complete the editing and postproduction in Japan and the movie was subsequently banned in China.  Indeed, it takes a very critical stance toward the events of this period, which see the optimistic Shujuan and her husband embracing the new Communist Party of China only to discover later that whispers about “counter-revolutionaries” could be used to send people to forced labour camps.  The Hundred Flowers Movement may have encouraged critiques of the government but these were later used against those brave enough to speak out.  The family is subsequently impacted by Mao’s decision to move the entire country to new collective agricultural techniques during the Great Leap Forward which lead to widespread and devastating famine.  Many died of malnutrition.  Finally, when Shujuan makes the decision to marry a Party elder in order to provide a better life for her rascally son, Tietou (or “Iron Head”), the Cultural Revolution emboldens the young students who make up the Red Guards to attack those seen to be bourgeois or elite.  So, in some ways, the film is a tragedy, but it also speaks to the power of family and community bonds, as the mother and son, and their friends and relatives who share a courtyard in Beijing, weather the chaos of these events (which are not didactically explained – I used Wikipedia later to better understand them).  As dramatic as these upheavals seem, it is hard not to wonder about the coming decades or century, when even more intense dramas may be in store for our children (as a result of global warming, over-population, and their consequences).  Indeed, there are places in the world where upheavals affect personal lives now (Syria or Burma, for example; it is easy to generate a depressing list).  The Blue Kite reminds us not to ignore those who suffer from political decisions (as there but for good luck and good fortune go we).