We enter this film and the lives of a small collection of people of all ages in the modest Chinese city of Fenyang, which happens to be the birthplace of the film's evocative director and screenwriter, Jia Zhangke. It is 1999, 50 years after the Communist Party assumed power and the eve of the millennium Chinese New Year. The anchor character, a young woman named Tao, is leading some 20 people in exuberant dance to a western rock tune. So begins Jia's three act dialectic between past and present, children and parents, capitalism and compassion, filial and romantic love, and perhaps most of all between the balm of innocence and the agita of maturation.
Act I has begun. It features a love triangle among Tao (Zhao Tao, who in life is married to the director), a sympathetic mining equipment manager named Liang (Liang Jingdong), and a budding, self-absorbed entrepreneur named Jingsheng (Zhang Yi). Tao is like a child, full of innocence, seemingly clueless to her suitors' affections and the growing hostility amongst them. She likes things as they are - as might a prepubescent girl who wants to have boys as attentive friends, not boyfriends and certainly not lovers. She is content, as well, to be the dutiful daughter to her widowed shopkeeper father. The story takes off, and the pain begins, when she is forced to make a choice between the two men - and in so doing, leave the haven of her home.
This Act ends some 40 minutes later; don't be surprised but that is when the title of the film appears - as if it were the end of the film. But, already foreshadowed, it is 2014. Act II has Tao divorced, with her son living in Shanghai with his rich father and attending a very tony school. Capitalism, as embodied by Jingsheng, not only has polluted China's air and culture it has made a foul, mean-spirited person of her ex-husband. The broadside against Chinese mercantilism and materialism is unfettered and a bit of a surprise to see passing what censors may still be operating in government and the arts. Yet, Tao has reconciled herself to her now prosperous life as a divorcée who has not seen her son (named Dollar at birth by his father) in years. Her pain comes, however, when her father dies, when she becomes no longer a child herself. Her grief is profound, suggesting that it is not the loss alone of her father (a war veteran whose death signals the passing of a generation that believed in creating a new society which, in fact, became the warped version of Communism today) but the prospect of losing her childhood that causes her the greatest pain. This moment re-unites her briefly with her son, who is sent for the funeral; despite the attachment that is resurrected between mother and son he leaves and Tao goes on with her simple, protected, childlike life. But China has been transformed in the 15 year interval, and its growth and growing up are remiss of innocence. In this act, Liang returns to Fenyang (he was driven out by his rival) with wife, child and lung cancer - likely from working the mines in Inner Mongolia. His suffering, and that of his wife, stand in bold contrast to Tao and of course is unknown and of no matter to Jingsheng. Tao is sweet and generous to him, financially, but again she seems like a child giving a dutiful but inconsequential present to someone she once knew.
Act III fast forwards to 2025 and is set in Melbourne, Australia, where Jingsheng had moved his second wife and his son. A father-son conflict rages, with each full of enmity for the other. Their suffering is deep; there is no innocence to be found. Dollar is a college student who has turned his back on his heritage: he speaks no Chinese and pretends to not know his mother's name. But his heart has not been destroyed, as was that of his father, and it is brought to life in a relationship with his Chinese language teacher, a beautiful, elegant older woman, Hong Kong born Mia (Sylvia Chang). Mia too suffers from family, divorce and love. We are well beyond China at this point: this film is now fully about everything human and what can be the great tragedies of life, namely growing up, loving, loss, illness, narcissism and dying.
Yet one person is left standing -- in fact, dancing -- at the end. It is Tao in her native city, alone but not lonely and comfortable in her life and her own skin. Her innocence has not abandoned her. She seems to have suffered the least of all the characters we meet. It is as if the director wants us to believe that innocence may be the greatest shield from the agonies that a life can bestow.
Mountains May Depart is a mighty film. It continues to haunt me. See if you think so too.
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The opinions expressed herein are solely my own as a psychiatrist and public health advocate. I receive no support from any pharmaceutical or device company.
My book for families who have a member with a mental illness is The Family Guide to Mental Health Care (Foreword by Glenn Close) -- is now available in paperback.
I am completing a book about some secrets of psychiatric practice.
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