Transmigration (a.k.a Samsara)

(Lunhui, 1988)

Film

Together with The Black Cannon Incident (1985) and Dislocation (1986), this film belongs to Huang Jianxin’s first urban trilogy. Adapted from a Wang Shuo novel, the film concerns disillusioned youth in a post-socialist China that is undergoing rapid cultural and economic change. The protagonist, Shiba (played by Lei Han), is alienated from the past yet disaffected about the present. The search for a self-identity involves a painful process of self-exploration and denial. To outsiders, Shiba is the beneficiary of a revolutionary elite family and a successful entrepreneur. From his perspective, however, his dead parents’ background is no longer meaningful, and his illegal business brings him money but also threats. The question of his self-identity also figures in the relationship between Shiba and a female dance student (played by Tan Xiaoyan). Shiba is hardly an ideal man to the young woman, but she is attracted to his anti-heroic persona.

Their marriage is short-lived as Shiba fails to find a place in proper society and wallows in cynicism. The film uses colour to suggest his moments of psychological confusion. Shiba paints the walls of his house red to indicate his love towards the woman and then black as disillusion overwhelms him.

A compelling mise-en-scène at the end of the film finishes the failed soul-searching journey. Shiba adjusts a lamp to project his shadow on the black wall. With two fists rising up from a lean masculine body, his silhouette appears larger than life. After a series of shots/reverse shots of Shiba and the moon, he jumps over the rail and plummets into the darkness. The death of the man, as the subtitles indicate, is followed by the birth of his son—hence the transmigration of the soul.

Further reading

Kuoshu, Harry H. (1997). ‘Beyond the Yellow Earth: The Postsocialist City as a Cinematic Space of Anxiety’. American Journal of Chinese Studies 4.1 (April): 50–72.

Pickowicz, Paul (1994). ‘Huang Jianxin and the Notion of Postsocialism’. In Nick Browne, Paul G.Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack and Esther Yau (eds), New Chinese Cinemas. New York: Cambridge University Press: 57–87.

Wang, Yuejin (1991). ‘The Rhetoric of Mirror, Shadow, and Moon: Samsara and the Problem of Representation of Self in China’. East-West Film Journal 5.2:69–92.

CUI SHUQIN