Pintor Iranzo, Ivan

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

Asian Alchemy. Ivan Pintor Iranzo
  
 
 
Asian Alchemy
Ivan Pintor Iranzo
 
 
 
The road home (Wo de fun qin mu qin, 1999), from Zhang Yimou
In 1982 Marco Muller organised a major retrospective of cinema from the People’s 
Republic of China since the twenties in Turin. In that context Xie Jin’s films seemed 
the most interesting and innovative. However, three years later the Hong Kong Festival 
programmed Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth, which marked a break with all previous 
production. Yellow Earth was the standard-bearer of the cinema of the so-called fifth 
generation of Chinese film-makers: they were Tian Zhuangzhuang, Zhang Yimou and 
Chen Kaige himself.
Since the early eighties the “three Chinas” had undergone transformations of all kinds. 
In Hong Kong the new wave of Ann Hui, Tsui Hark and Patrick Tam had given way to 
the choreographic Baroque of John Woo and the unusual films of Wong Kar-wai. 
Taiwan had spawned a new generation of film-makers such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, 
Edward Yang and Tsai Ming-liang, who had an enthusiastic reception from European 
critics. And in mainland China the academicism of the fifth generation had been 
disputed by the films of Jia Zhangke or Zhang Yuan, with urban concerns and a more 
documentary tone.
Recently Zhang Yimou has made two films, The Road Home and Not One Less (Yi ge 
dou bu neng shuo, 1999). His idea was to react against the Americanisation of the more 
commercial Chinese cinema and the academicism of his own last films. He was also 
trying to rescue the imaginary of mainland China from the cinema of Jia Zhangke and 
Zhang Yuan, who portray the Beijing that emerged from the Tian'anmen massacre. In 
Not One Less he took the films of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami as a model. 
The Road Home adapts a desire for simplicity to the Chinese tradition of the poetic 
story.
In The Road Home Luo Changyu (Hao Zheng) finds out about the death of his father 
and travels from the city to his home village. Zhao Di (Yuelin Zhao), his old mother, 
wants to have a funeral with a large and expensive procession. Changyu refuses, but 
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Asian Alchemy. Ivan Pintor Iranzo
the three days he spends with her overcome his resistance. Moreover they revive the 
memory of an almost legendary story, the love that bloomed between the young Zhao 
Di (Ziyi Zhang) and the late Luo Yusheng, then a young schoolteacher who has come 
from the city and disagrees with the reigning political ideas. 
Both the prologue and the epilogue of the film are shot in an opaque, cold black and 
white. Almost at the end, before the long procession, the voices of mother and son 
conjure up the father’s devotion to his task as teacher, whilst a sustained shot of the old 
school blackboard takes on the rank of an abstract, stripped, empty landscape. As in 
Taoist painting or The Book of Changes (I Ching), emptiness is the condition for 
transformation, mutation, the activity that springs from the tension between opposites. 
Past and present, the opinions of mother and son are the extremes that in this case are 
resolved in the denouement that provides the procession, the road home.
The poetics that inspire the love story between the two young people are apparently 
something else, the poetics of sensibility and a range of colours which is gradually 
reduced to a red stain on white. Nevertheless the guidelines of the story are also 
transformation and the reconciliation of opposites. The bright shades of spring pervade 
Zhao Di and Yusheng’s first meetings. Autumn falls on the village when Yusheng is 
forced to return to the city, and the hues dissolve into ochres, browns and whites. Zhao 
Di goes out to await his return on the set date, braving the winter storms and wrapped 
up in her best coat, hardly a crimson trace on the unending white of the steppe.
The colour red, symbol of happiness in Chinese folklore, is one of the centrepieces of 
Zhang Yimou’s cinematography, from Red Sorghum (Hong gao liang, 1987) to Keep 
Cool (You hua hao hao shuo, 1997). In Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao 
gao gua, 1991) it is associated with duty, prohibition and the sensual world of the 
concubines. In almost all civilisations red is the colour of war and passion, fire and 
blood. In the Bible Ezekiel speaks of the sisters Ohola and Oholiba who committed 
impure acts with the Chaldean warriors, painted red. Red is the background for the 
paintings in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii and the most precious cloths reserved 
for the hierarchs were purple.
But red is also the colour of Ulysses’ oars, the armour that takes Parsifal on a search for 
divine grace and the trace of the little bird wounded by Lancelot’s dart on the snow. 
Like that bird, Zhao Di falls ill and like Parsifal she sets off on the final quest, for 
Yusheng. It is the cinnabar red that makes the transformation possible. In the language 
of alchemy matter suffers until the shadow, the nigredo, disappears. That state is 
followed by the new day, leukosis, albedo. But that state of absolute whiteness is ideal, 
abstract and does not make true life possible. To enliven it blood is necessary, Zhao 
Di’s body beaten down by the snow.
That blood, red, corresponds to rubedo, Life. The incorporation of blood allows the 
definitive conciliation of the opposites, so that the soul is integrated and the work is 
done, the opus magnum of alchemy. That description of the alchemical process with 
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Asian Alchemy. Ivan Pintor Iranzo
Western terms is not just a metaphor to explain the relation between the red and white 
in Yimou’s film; alchemy is of crucial importance in Chinese thought (1), which 
identifies two essential elements, yin —the female principle— and yang —the male—, 
which are to be found in all substances and beings.
The practice of alchemy in Chinese tradition is far from any wish to become wealthy 
with gold. Nor is it a mythological or pre-logical phase of chemistry. On the contrary, it 
is much closer to the Taoist principle of integration. And that is the process which, in 
this case,  reconciles the lovers and the opposition between past and present, which 
corresponds to the abstraction of the blackboard. The old mother Zhao Di, in whom all 
contradictions have been eliminated, is also the one who brings about the change in 
Luo Changyu.
The difference between the two times, past and present, which eventually resolve their 
opposition, is at the beginning of totality. The story of the present is elliptical, 
discursive. The story of Yusheng and Zhao Di’s past, on the other hand, is a mythical 
story, without incidents or identifications, which conveys the impression of the original 
“Once upon a time”, of having been told a thousand and one times by the fireside. That 
is why we can tolerate and even admire resources in The Road Home which, in another 
context, would be despised: Bao Shan’s pounding music, the revelling in the beauty of 
the actress Ziyi Zhang or the lack of participation by the audience which heightens the 
immediacy of the tale.
With this film and Not One Less, whose plot line recalls Kiarostami’s Where is the 
Friend’s Home? (Khaneh-ye doust kodjast?, 1987), it seem we can say that Zhang 
Yimou has managed to portray popular rural tradition in mainland China. The question, 
as many French critics have pointed out, is still whether we can add Zhang Yimou to 
that group of directors who have constructed an imaginary of their places of origin: 
Nanni Moretti of Rome, Aki Käurismaki of Finland or Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-
wai of Taiwan and Hong Kong respectively. The only thing we can be sure of is that in 
The Road Home the poetry of transformation, of red on white, of the eternal wounds of 
love and time, imposes itself on the present imaginary of the Republic of China.
Notes:
(1) In Alquimia asiática (Paidós, Barcelona, 1992) Mircea Eliade points out that the 
first Chinese alchemical text is found in Han Shu XXV, 12 recto, line 8. She also 
mentions one of the most important books in the Chinese alchemical tradition, Ts'an 
T'ung-ch'i by Wei Po-yang.
 
 
 
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Asian Alchemy

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