Grain in Ear
DIR Zhang Lu | China/South Korea | 2005 | 110mins
In Chinese and Korean with English subtitles.
SHOWTIMES:
Sun. Oct. 2 | 12:00pm | Granville 7 Theatre, Cinema 1
Tue. Oct. 4 | 7:30pm | Granville 7 Theatre, Cinema 1
Reviewed by Yu Gu
When director Zhang Lu went on his first trip to scout possible locations for Grain In Ear, he found the perfect place after driving about 45 minutes outside Beijing. They came across a small abandoned building next to a deserted train station. It was perfect, claims Zhang. The small brick bungalow is the home of Grain In Ear’s feisty yet reserved heroine, Cui Shunji, and her only son. Taking a walk through the train station, Zhang happily discovered that behind it, farmland stretched to the horizon. This formed the inspiration for his closing shot, the only time where the camera is in motion.
In China, there are about two million Korean-Chinese. They are considered one of China’s 50 national minorities. Zhang is also a part of this community. Aside from a few minutes of stage-time during Chinese new year variety shows, the Korean-Chinese community is essentially without the power that territory and unified culture afford to many other minorities. Cui Shunji is one of these Korean-Chinese who has settled in a small industrial Northern town and supports herself and her son by selling kimchi (Korean pickled vegetables) from a mobile cart. She develops some tentative relationships with three men around her, a married Korean-Chinese, a policeman and her neighbour.
On the surface, Grain In Ear deals with the interplay of dichotomies in modern China: men and women, rich and poor, good and bad, repression and freedom, stasis and movement. In a recent interview with Zhang, he expressed that all the males in the film are selfish and destructive while the women, especially Cui and even her band of prostitute neighbours, are essentially kind and nurturing. However, he also admits that these characters and relationships are not so simple. As Cui herself states in the film, she may not be a completely wholesome woman. What is striking about Grain In Ear is that Zhang complicates these personal relationships so that sex, economics and social class are all inter-related and inseparable. As a victim who is barely living throughout the film, Cui is forced in the end to commit an awful equalising act; albeit one that puts her on the same level as her previous oppressors. Zhang explains his film is essentially anti-terrorist. Not at all in the way of Bush’s political agenda, but on the scale of everyday life, how we as humans terrorise those around us.