Acclaimed Film--Web of Suspicion

Chinese movie audiences will soon be getting a look at the most politically daring film that has been made here in many years--a film whose theme is that sometimes police and Communist Party officials in China are too nosy.

So far, the movie, “The Black Cannon Incident,” has not been released to the Chinese public. But over the last few months, many Chinese have seen the movie at special “restricted showings,” often sponsored by their work units. Chinese newspapers and film magazines have begun to discuss the movie in neutral terms, avoiding any wholesale condemnation.

The actor who plays the movie’s protagonist, Liu Zifeng--whose furrowed brow and bumbling sincerity make him appear to be a Chinese Woody Allen--recently was named best actor of the year in the Golden Rooster awards, China’s equivalent of the Oscars. The Chinese government itself included the film in its own list of the best Chinese movies of the year.

There have been occasional reports that some leading Communist Party officials wish the movie had never been made and would like to ban it. Nevertheless, it appears that things have gone far enough now that the regime will swallow hard and let the nation see the movie.

Controversial Story

“The Black Cannon Incident” tells the story of a disheveled, middle-aged translator named Zhao Shuxin working for a Sino-German business venture in China, who is suspected of spying for foreigners.

At the beginning of the movie, Zhao sends a telegram to a friend which says, “Black cannon missing. 301. Find.” He later receives a reply, “Black cannon delivered.” A worker in the telegraph office informs China’s much-feared Public Security Bureau of this strange behavior, and the police officials in turn pass on the information to the Communist Party committee in the factory where Zhao works.

For much of the movie, party officials carry out a secret investigation of Zhao, who is never told what he has done wrong. Under a huge, surrealist black-and-white clock in a room at the factory, the Communist Party committee spends endless hours discussing Zhao’s case.

Zhao is transferred out of the translating job that allows him contact with foreigners--all for his own protection, the party officials say. The result is a disaster for the factory. His replacement, who is politically trustworthy but whose language skills leave something to be desired, botches an important translation, causing a fire in the factory.

Provoked Comment

In the end, it turns out that the event that prompted all the surveillance was utterly innocuous. The purpose of Zhao’s telegram had been not to deal in arms or secret documents, but to locate a missing piece in a Chinese chess set.

“The Black Cannon Incident” has already provoked an extraordinary amount of comment in Chinese newspapers, film magazines and literary journals.

“It is frightening that our lives are lacking in the good custom of respecting individuals, including their private lives,” said one reviewer in the Communist Party newspaper Economic Daily last April. “A person’s eccentric hobbies can be painted with a political tint and evolve into a political incident.”

One of China’s leading literary critics, Li Tuo, wrote recently that the movie “specifically probes into the question of the lack of trust in and suspicions toward intellectuals, which is still quite common today in China.”