So Long, My Son

So Long, My Son

Di jiu tianchang -  地久天长

Director – Xiaoshuai Wang

Writers – Mei Ah, Xiaoshuai Wang

2019, China

Stars – Jingchun Wang, Mei Yong, Xi Qi

A Chinese epic covering the history of two of families and especially the lifelong effect on their friendship and repercussions of the “one child” policy that lasted from 1979 to 2015. Chronicling both domestic and political contexts, its narrative requires patience and attention as it is non-linear, flip-flopping across decades. This elucidates life as a mosaic of incidents and drama, where the past, present and future are concomitant, always making away for and crashing into one another. It is also a challenge in that the audience must wait for clarification on details. The jigsaw structure means it engages like a mystery.

The shot framing is often exquisite, often being visually beautiful and busy. The locales look/are convincing lived-in, the minutiae of life cluttering up and almost overwhelming. Like the film in total, the nuances of performances, especially by the exceptional Wang Jingchun & Yong Mei, gather increasing weight as details and suppressed emotion accumulate, as understanding of their characters is layered. Inevitably, when spanning many characters over a long period and with such a complex, diced narrative, there are lacunas – Moli’s motivation is a little vague, for example – and maybe appearing a little cumbersomeness, but once the viewer gets into the flow, the temporal changes and cues reveal themselves as deftly handled.

It is also a film that centres on the political contexts that define domestic lives: here, it's the Chinese one-child policy, the post-1978 era of Reform and Opening-up, work life, etc., with a focus is on how one affects the other. It’s awareness and presentation of the micro and the macro is astute and relatable and establishes ‘So Long My Son’s place as an essential, humanist, melancholy social epic.

The three-hour length reaps tremendous rewards in that, come the end, the audience is no doubt craving for reconciliation. Antecedents like Edward Yang’s domestic epics are obvious, demanding patience and attention to detail until investment in the characters has gone deeper than the viewer perhaps realised (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Drive my Car’ being another recently). Personally, I was surprised to find myself aggressively wishing for a sympathetic resolution – and it comes not as wish-fulfilment “happy ending”, but just the tide of life. It’s deeply moving.