Old Ma, a 73-year-old retired peasant who lives alternately with his married daughters’ families in rural Gansu, used to make and decorate painted wooden coffins for earth burials until the government’s prohibition of traditional earth burial and strict enforcement of cremation for the deceased put him out of business. In this and many other respects, Old Ma is very much at odds with the modern, secular world and has more in common with his grandchildren’s generation than with his own children. Indeed, whenever his grandson Zhi is not transfixed by the adventures of the mythological and supernatural cartoon characters which he avidly watches on television, he is busy helping his grandfather block up the neighbours’ chimneys to let them know what it is like to be cremated.
One day, walking by the shore of nearby Lake Caozi, Old Ma thinks he sees a white crane carrying away the soul of his recently deceased friend and co-worker Cao, just as in traditional Chinese folklore, and decides that he doesn’t want to be cremated. The souls of those buried in the earth will fly to heaven on the back of a white crane, but Old Ma is convinced that a “puff of smoke” from a crematorium chimney cannot possibly perform the same office, When he witnesses the police and the authorities digging up illegally buried people and villagers destroying the reed-beds by the shores of the lake which the cranes used to nest in, he loses the will to live and determines to find a way to ensure his own earth burial, even without the benefit of a painted coffin. His own children support the state‘s compulsory cremation policy, so he has to seek help from his grandson and granddaughter. But are they capable of carrying out his wishes, and do they really understand what he is asking of them?
Patrizia LIBERATI (Istituto di Cultura Italiana, Beijing) and Dr. Michael CLARK (King's College London)
Fly With the Crane highlights two major social and economic problems which were becoming increasingly apparent during the 1990s in China - first, the growth of the elderly population in the countryside and the rapid ageing of the rural population as a whole, and second, the growing imbalance and polarisation between those eastern coastal regions where rapid economic growth and urbanisation were taking place, and large parts of the rural hinterland which were being left far behind by economic modernisation and social change. To these essentially secular problems, Li Ruijun has added the growing psychological and spiritual tensions between traditional cultures and religious beliefs and the materialistic rationalism characteristic of modern Chinese society and the party-state, tensions which are experienced in a particularly acute form by many among the older generation of the rural population. In the film, these tensions and conflicts are symbolised by Old Ma's dogged belief in the traditional practice of earth burial to ensure the transmigration of the soul after death, in the face of indifference or opposition from his children and the threat of criminal prosecution by the state. His individual and largely inarticulate revolt against the march of progress thus becomes the dramatic focus for more universal and far-reaching conflicts between spiritual beliefs and materialistic rationality, between tradition and modernity and between the rights of the individual and the power of the state.
The directorLi Ruijun (b. Gansu Province, 1983) began to study painting and music when he was a teenager, but subsequently graduated from an institute of management. For several years now he has been working mainly as a TV director. His feature debut The Summer Solstice (Xiazhi, 2007) was screened in several film festivals both inside and outside China. His other feature is Old Donkey (Lao lütou, 2010), a very powerful reflection on old age. All Li Ruijun’s films to date show his persistent concern for the problems of ageing and the plight of the elderly in modern Chinese society, his preoccupation with the ultimate meaning of life and death, and a deep, abiding affection for his native province of Gansu, its people and their traditional rural way of life.
Li Ruijun’s Subjective CinemaBased on Su Tong’s novel Tell Them I’ve Gone With the White Crane, Fly With the Crane powerfully conveys to younger audiences the feelings of uselessness, impotent rage and futility that afflict old people in the twilight of their lives. Indeed, according to Li Ruijun, Su Tong was deeply affected when he first saw Li Ruijun’s film of his novel. It also suggests that a love of nature and a belief in the unity of man and his environment should form the basis of a saner, healthier and more balanced way of life, and can form deep and powerful ties which can bridge the gap between generations.
Patrizia LIBERATI (Istituto di Cultura Italiana, Beijing) and Dr. Michael CLARK (King's College London)
Fly With the Crane, Li Ruijun’s third and most accomplished film to date, is a spiritual fable which touches on many themes, including the generation gap, the vast gulf between city and country, and the conflict between religious beliefs and cultural traditions and the impersonal, materialistic modernity which the government believes is best for everyone. It also movingly conveys the director’s love for his own native province, its people and its folkloric traditions. In this film, death is an inevitable and therefore natural part of life, and far from being a taboo subject, it is discussed between the old man and the children in a straightforward, candid manner. The adults of working age are mostly too busy discussing what to do with their ageing parents, abandoning time-honoured cultural traditions and polluting and spoiling the local environment in the interests of short-term comfort and convenience. However, some of them are also sympathetic to the old rural habits and customs, and support their parents’ right to choose earth burial.
Patrizia LIBERATI (Istituto di Cultura Italiana, Beijing) and Dr. Michael CLARK (King's College London)
The film is shot almost entirely on location in Gaotai County, southern Gansu, using mostly non-professional actors, including many of the directors’ own relations, and contains many beautiful, elegiac images of the Chinese countryside and a vanishing rural way of life, as well as many symbolic anticipations of the film’s final ending. Many of the images are over-corrected for colour, with intense blues for the sky, vivid greens for the trees and foliage, and deep yellow-browns for the dry, sandy soil. Much of the concluding scenes are filmed in an extraordinarily long, slow, more than 180-degree panning shot of Old Ma taking his leave of his niece and nephew and of this world, as he returns to be at one with the yellow earth of the land he loves so much.
Patrizia LIBERATI (Istituto di Cultura Italiana, Beijing) and Dr. Michael CLARK (King's College London)
As the middle generations are busy making money, or just struggling to survive, it seems that only old people and children have time to ponder the deepest meaning of life. Do you agree?
Most of the actors are non-professional and the cast includes Li Ruijun’s parents and relatives. Besides financial constraints, Li said another reason for this choice was that he did not think professional actors could do justice to the characters and emotions of people in rural areas of China.Reflect on the use of non-professional actors in movies.
Compare the traditional earth burial (based on daoist and animistic traditions) and the buddhist cremation ritual as different approaches to dealing with the body after death.
Do environmental considerations matter when it comes to traditional ways of disposing of the dead? If so, in what way and to what extent?
How does the film depict the different sensory perceptions of people at different stages of the life cycle?
What features of specifically Chinese religious and cultural attitudes towards death are represented here?
See Li Manshan: Portrait of a Folk Daoist (2015 a recent documentary film about Daoist funeral rituals, music and chant in neighbouring Shanxi, which has many relevant points of comparison with Fly With the Crane and also shows the rural population attempting to find a compromise between traditional ritual practices associated with earth burial and the state's insistence on cremation.
