Before the Flood, which is the most problematic documentary film so far, is indeed a film that seems like it wants to provide the raw material of daily life in the town of Fengjie before it was flooded. Honestly, it is not a readable and pleasurable film from an audience perspective. However, to criticize the film is not the main purpose of this article. Here, I would like to talk about the experimental structure, the organized content, and the complementary relationship between the director and the audiences.
As a verité-style documentary film, the director faithfully documented the residences of a thousand year old town that were forced to relocate from their hometown in order to make way for China’s greatest project, the Three Gorges Dam. This documentary film records local citizens who are not content with the local government’s bureaucratic mismanagement. The ancient town is going to be submerged in several months; everyone shows their anxiety, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction regarding the government’s evacuation policy, including unequal compensation, an unfair lottery for apartments, and a complicated beneficial relationship during the relocation process. All of them play a victim-witness double role in the film.
The opening and closing parts of this film are very poetic to some extent. The opening part starts with Libai’s poetry, Early Departure From Baidi Town. However, after this flood, all of the spectacular scenes will disappear forever. Here, Libai’s poetry depicts the natural views to the readers. At the end of the film, the most impressive shots are the explosion scenes. Having witnessed the collapse of the city, the dense smoke rapidly moves toward the camera and then devours the entire screen. This part is also very poetic to some extent. But it is a poetic collapse. The poetic feeling, no matter if it is the natural scenes depicted by the intellectuals, or the accumulated poetic human civilization left by our ancestors, will be soon destroyed. Another shot is the collapse of the church’s wall, after haggling and deceiving; the people finally dismantle the church. This story also symbolically and metaphorically shows the loss of the faith. The whole dislocation process is a trade between the citizens and the government, between the past and the future, between tradition and modernity, between the individual’s benefits with Chinese collectivism. Before the flood depicts different individual citizens of the town. Especially Xiang Haiyu, who joined the army during the Korean War and owned a hostel in Fengjie. He tries to best find a new place for himself and his wife, as well as his shabby hostel. When the camera follows him climbing up, down and under the bridge in New Fengjie, I felt a pain in my heart. The pain reached its climax when Xiang wept in front of the lens.
In this film, the director requests that the audience play an active role in the film instead of responding negatively. The director seems to want to make the film tedious and verbalized to some extent, and one question that often occurs to the audience is, why does the director made such a huge effort on documenting. Nevertheless, it is still a film that presents the reality of the past time. Bill Nichols divides documentary films into six modes: Poetic, Expository, Observational, Participatory, Reflexive, and the Performative mode. This film belongs in the category of observational mode. The opening long sequence shows the camera moving freely in order to follow the daily life of labor workers who used a large plastic bucket to carry fishes from port to the market. The camera faithfully records what happens. It ostensibly give the audiences the impression of recording the ongoing process of this event faithfully, but in my opinion, the director already picked the scenes according to his taste. The contemporary film that we watched this semester shares a similar feature. Most of which demands the audiences’ participation. “The filmmaker’s retirement to the position of observer calls on the viewer to take a more active role in determining the significance of what is said and done.” (Nichols, 111) The whole film follows an informative logic: to tell the audiences the truth. As indicated by the director, Li Yifan, “use a simple constructed way to criticize and refute an elite’s interpretation.” He did not impose any ideological conclusion on this event but provides the audience with a terrific feeling, and an overwhelming display of humanity and morality, which is echoed in the title of the film.
Works Cited
Bill Noichols. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2001. Print.
