‘Frozen’ Gives Bleak View of Today’s China

On June 20, 1994, a 23-year-old Beijing performance artist committed suicide, and a young filmmaker, using the pseudonym “Wu Ming”--which translates as “No Name”--was inspired to make a film that probes the reasons why.

The result is “Frozen,” a stunning, spare and demanding film that takes us into the world of Beijing’s artistic avant-garde. Wu is too subtle, too evocative a filmmaker to come up with easy answers, but by the time 90 minutes have passed he has left us with an understanding of why a young artist would seek death.

Of course, the most obvious motivation is the despair that swept over young people in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Surely, that is what the performance artist’s girlfriend (Ma Xiaoquing) is referring to when she remarks that her boyfriend (Jia Hongshen) killed himself “to show that he lived amidst murderers.”

But Wu, who made his film independently--i.e., illegally--gives a larger picture, a panorama of a new Beijing that’s drab, sterile and impersonal. It’s a place where, despite economic growth, Jia’s Qi Lei is too poor to live anywhere but in a tiny, stark apartment with his older sister (Bai Yu), a physician and surgeon, and her husband (Li Geng). Qi’s sister, easily 10 years older, tries hard to understand her suicidal brother and remarks to a colleague that her brother’s generation has had it “so easy.” He counters that maybe young people have had it too easy, that they haven’t experienced enough pressure and that this can lead to depression.

The colleague could be right, but Wu, in an interview last July in Beijing with film critic Berenice Reynaud observed that “historically, in China, economy and culture have advanced in opposite directions. When the country’s economy gets better, the cultural sphere experiences problems. The government wants to concentrate on economic development, and it is really afraid to see people getting original or different ideas.”

Qi, who is also a woodcut artist, decides to simulate death in his work with the advent of each season--an “earth burial” for autumn, a “water burial” for winter, a “fire burial” for spring and an “ice burial” for summer requiring large slabs of ice--but says for the last he intends to die for real of hypothermia. Tall and handsome, Qi would seem to have much to live for--he’s young enough to hope for real change to happen in his country--but he has become intoxicated with the whole notion of death.

Wu takes us through Qi’s daily life once he’s announced his intention to die on the first day of summer and thereby introduces us to a series of people who either try to dissuade him or to get him to think through what he’s planning to do. Wu lets us draw our own conclusions about Qi, his motivation and his decision.

Wu then packs a surprise twist in the final sequence and suggests that when people start setting drastic courses of action in motion they can start believing they just have to go through with it.

“Frozen”--a title open to various meanings--is bleak, to be sure, but it is not without humor. Mixing professional and nonprofessional actors expertly, Wu gives us that kind of here-and-now sense of reality about China that seems possible only through its independent cinema. With difficulty Wu managed to get his film, including the negative, to Holland for post-production. As is the case with virtually all Chinese films with any real edge, “Frozen” can not be seen in China.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: adult themes and situations.

‘Frozen’

Jia Hongshen: Qi Lei

Ma Xiaoquing: Shao Yun

Bai Yu: Sister

Li Geng: Sister’s Husband

Zhang Yongning: Lau Ling, art critic

An International Film Circuit presentation produced in association with the Hubert Bals Fund (Rotterdam). Director Wu Ming. Producers Shu Kei, Shu Kei’s Creative Workshop; Xu Wei, Another Film Co. Executive producer Pang Ming. Screenplay by Pang Ming, Wu Ming. Cinematographer Yang Shu. Editor Qing Qing. Music Roeland Dol. Art director Li Yanxiu. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.

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