‘The Shadowless Tower (‘Bai Ta Zhi Guang) Review: A Divorced Food Critic Reconsiders His Existence In Affecting MinorKey Drama

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The central characters of The Shadowless Tower are orphans, disconnected, cut off from the roots that give them emotional and spiritual anchorage. The loss of her elderly mother leads a divorced and middle-aged food critic to search for the father she's been estranged from since childhood, which knocks her out of her consciousness and forces her to reassess her relationships. Chinese writer Zhang Lu's key drama will be too dull and slippery to enter the festival, but the sense of melancholy will stay with you.

The structure that gives the film its diagonal title is the Yuan Dynasty White Pagoda, which towers over Beijing's Xicheng district but is believed to loom over the distant Tibetan plains. Perhaps feeling trapped and adrift in an aimless life since her divorce two years ago, ex-poet Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing) sees this important architectural feature as an anchor in his life, not just a bit of where she grew up. . They say

With his ex-wife's approval, Wentong sends his beloved and wonderful 6-year-old daughter to live with her older sister and her husband. As they visit the grave together, Wetung wonders who put the fresh flowers on his mother's grave. His father-in-law, Wentong, hints that it is his father, Gu Yunlai (Tian Xuanzhuang), who was separated from his family in disgrace when he was five years old. Yunlai lived alone in the coastal town of Beidahi for decades.

Wentong didn't seem to think much of his father all these years, even though the old man's absence left a void in his life. Yunlai said that he drives 300 kilometers to Beijing every year just to see his two sons on their birthdays, and when Wentong's mother-in-law published a newspaper with a phone number in her hand, he was surprised by the idea of ​​the establishment. Contact came slowly.

Meanwhile, Wentong forms a temporary relationship with Ouyang Wenhui (Huang Yao), a flirtatious photographer in her early 20s, who takes pictures of the restaurant's dishes to match her items. She takes the lead in their slow-starting romance and checks them into a hotel overlooking the White Pagoda. But his overbearing politeness and perhaps her assumed resemblance to the father she never knew continued to hinder the physical expression of feelings between them.

When Wentong learns that Wenhui is Beidaihe, they suggest they visit the coastal town together, slowly sharing that his father lives there and revealing the tragic circumstances that led his mother to end the marriage. Wenhui shares details about her past that give insight into her attraction to Wentong.

The director casually nods to Lee Chang-dong's Burnout from the start, a Korean drama about loneliness, indolence and the mystery of life, even though the two films have little in common.

This was especially true in the beautiful scenes where Wentong goes to Beidahi, watches his father ride a bicycle along the beach to fly a kite, or walks into the old man's house when he leaves, and they look effortless. . Yunlai seemed to instinctively know that the boy had come to visit instead of feeling threatened by the presence of someone in the house and found an indirect way to cheer him up. Casting Tian, ​​the director of beautiful modern Chinese classics like Blue Kite and Springtime in a small town , the estranged father, is a nice touch.

In the end, it took Wenhui's persistence to build bridges between father and son, which may not lead to a reconciliation but one that opens the door to future reconciliation.

Never guaranteed that Wentong would ever escape his locked-in sensibilities, a series of mysterious discoveries revealed his desire to connect with the world in more critical ways. These include sad scenes with the depressed tenants of his mother's apartment building, where Wentong lived after their divorce. A time of meditation with a stubborn sister; And a friendly visit to his ex-wife in the hospital.

There isn't much to do in the Shadowless Tower and almost two and a half hours of damage couldn't be done. But as Piao Songri's DP camera follows his lead slowly and fluidly, played by Xin's soulful artistry, the unsettled sense of all he's destroyed and his newfound self-awareness can propel him forward with greater clarity.

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