Now available on DVD through Kino on Video, The Blue Kite tells the story of how a middle class family is affected by the Communist government's repressive practices and the brutal winds of change. The narrator of the film is Tietou (played by Yi Tian as an infant, Zhang Wenyao as a young boy, and Chen Xiaoman as an adolescent), but the film isn't told strictly from his point of view, as a "coming of age" story would be told. Rather, Tietou stands as a metaphor and a narrator for what happens to those with just natural rebellion in the heart, let alone political rebellion. Tietou is presented as a head-strong, stubborn, and troublesome child, from infancy to adolescence. He is nicknamed by an aunt "Tietou," meaning "iron head." It is Tietou's story that is most effective in showing the injustice of the Communist system. The boy isn't a counter-revolutionary, as so many of his aunts and uncles are accused of being, nor does the character demonstrate any overt restlessness with the Communist system in theory. Not even his parents, librarian Shalong (Pu Quanxin) and teacher Shujuan (Lu Liping), harbor revolutionary designs. They, like other members of their family, are supporters of the Maoist revolution. They even take time to pay homage to Chairman Mao in their wedding ceremony. But the cold mechanism of Communism's "Great Leap Forward" and the succeeding Cultural Revolution touch Tietou's parents and every member of his family, usually in violent and tragic ways.
Despite the scathing thematic attacks on Communism, The Blue Kite is also a tender portrait of a loving family and their neighborhood in 1950s-1960s Beijing. The film is divided in three loose acts (Dad, Uncle, and Stepfather), a subtle slap in Chairman Mao's face, who thinks himself the nation's true Father, albeit a brutal, bullying one. Throughout these acts, the family is torn apart by Maoism, but the possibility of the family, or at least the neighborhood, surviving history's turmoil remains hopeful. Hou Yong's cinematography perfectly captures the familial warmth of the light emanating from the village's windows at night. Hou proves he isn't afraid of the dark, capturing the intimate conversation between mother and son by the soft light of a single lamp. Some critics have made much of the film's other lighting style; flat, cold, and Kubrickian-the perfect lighting style for Communism. In many ways, the competing lighting styles reflect the central conflict of the film: the individual's near-impossible coexistence within a tight-knit, loving family and the cold bureaucracy of the state.
The Blue Kite won Best Film at the Tokyo Film Festival, and earned high critical marks from the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Boston Globe, and the Village Voice and the time of its release in 1993. And yet the film is still forbidden to be shown in China, a problem that has plagued films made by others in the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, including Chen Keige's Farewell, My Concubine (1993) and Zhang Yimou's To Live (1994). But as we see in The Blue Kite, history's winds of change do not ignore China, its government or its people. As China cracks open the doors to their closed society to commerce and Western ideas, capitalism may burst through and Tietou's rebellious spirit just might fly again.
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by Scott McGee
