Wheels of Misfortune

Preamble
This movie showed in Perth as part of the Silkscreen Festival in early 2002, and won the Berlin Film Festival Silver Bears Award.

Director: Xiaoshuai Wang

Cast: (main)
Guei – Cui Lin
Jian – Li Bin
Yuanyuan Gao - Xiao
Yiwei Zhao - Father
Jian Xie - Manager
Xun Zhon - Qin


Story
The setting: Beijing today.

Guei has come to the capital to find work and a future. The movie opens with Guei and other country lads being interviewed for jobs as couriers for a delivery company. The manager is keen to promote a good image for his company and issues the young men with new mountain bicycles and uniforms, along with an exhortation to work well. Any commission they earn will help pay off their bicycles (which in Beijing are not only numerous, but also a lifeline, a success and status symbol).

Guei is a keen worker. With the goal of owning his own bike a driving force, he religiously marks off each daily payment until the bike is his, or so he thinks. On the day he goes to claim his bike, the company tells him he owes another day's payment. Helpless, he returns to work, but knows that in twenty-four hours the bicycle will be his.

Enter Jian, high-school student, around the same age as Guei. He hangs out with his mates who practise wheelies and acrobatic stunts on their bicycles, vying for prime spot as best performer for the girls’ attention. Jian’s dad has been promising him a bicycle for years but hasn’t delivered, so Jian takes matters into his own hands.

When Guei’s bike goes missing, the consequences are unthinkable: to have to do the mail run in a city the size of Beijing without wheels (as the boss suggests). The alternative is to track down the bike on his own (he’s put a special identification mark on it).

Inevitably the two protagonists meet.

Dissection
The plot of Beijing Bicycle is not one that grabs you in the viscera, but for those who are interested in human interaction and relationships (especially in Asia), it is sufficient to hold the viewer.

Themes include the desire to get ahead, peer-pressure, competition, adolescence, winning the female, the importance of ‘face’ and image in Chinese society, relationships between parents and children, as well as that of country folk (male and female) trying to make it in the big city.

The action evolves against the chaos and order that is Beijing – the rigid bureaucracy of government and private enterprise, juxtaposed against anarchy at a lower level whereby the average person settles scores on his terms, even at the risk of life. Then there is the glitz and tackiness of the pinball alleys (where the young kids go for kicks and stimulation) on a par if not superior to what is available in the West. Contrast this with the homes the kids return to, along with their parents who are striving to give them the best - often a bicycle. Jian and his sister sleep in bunk berths in a tiny room; another family shares part of the building. Guei shares digs with a friend who runs a tiny stall tucked away at the base of a modern apartment block.

The movie takes the viewer right into the action, down the back alleys where the poor people live, where they go about their everyday activities - washing, cleaning their teeth, shaving, sitting in wicker chairs dozing in the sun; old men play mah-jong in peaceful, timeless attitudes; an elderly gentleman practises Tai Chi while gang warfare erupts a few yards away. Violence and harmony side by side.

The acting is superb, especially by Cui Lin (Guei) and Li Bin (Jian). Guei, for all that he is a simple peasant, not street wise, particularly clever and afflicted with the shyness of his kind, has the stubbornness of a true believer, shining in his determination to succeed and hold on to what is rightfully his. His lifeline, his future.

Jian, although more privileged, is still a sad figure – desperate to woo the pretty, demure Xiao and be one of the crowd – steals his father’s savings to buy a second-hand bicycle. The father’s distress when he learns of this is equalled only by the shame of losing face in his son's eyes. For Jian, the bike is freedom, acceptance, winning Xiao.

Conclusion
The actors are superb, including those in the supporting roles, (Yuanyuan Gao is serene and classy, even in school uniform and riding a bike; Xun Zhon is suitably dismissive and unattainable as the imperturbable, secretive Qin revered by Guei) and the film is devoid of sentimentality or superfluous emotion. The viewer ends up caring about both young men, because of their pain and vulnerability symbolised by the acquisition and loss of a simple bicycle.

In this movie, there is no right or wrong, or good or bad person, it’s all a question of circumstances.

Four stars.