‘Youth (Spring) Review: Wang Bings Absorbingly Dense And Detailed Doc Portrait Of Eastern Chinese Garment Workers

© Courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter

The first thing people say about respected documentary filmmaker Wang Bin's work is that he makes funny but long films. Seems like a very, very long time. His first feature West of the Tracks ( Tie Xi Qu ), about a ruined industrial site, was shown in two different versions, one of five hours and the other of about nine hours. "Crude Oil" , as the name suggests, is a 14-hour portrait of oil workers.

Two of his films will be shown in Cannes this year: "Youth" ("Spring"), participating in the main competition, and a special screening of "The Man in Black" , then at three and a half hours and 60 minutes , respectively, they are almost short by Wang's standards. Length aside, "Youth" ( the subtitle "Spring" heralds the release of a film series in parentheses) is always engaging, even if it's not easy to figure out what the whole package means. shorter Like Frederic Wiseman, Wan is a noble documentary god who moves with a mysterious, frozen image, but sometimes works miracles.

Like Wang's documentary Bitter Money (2016, a tight 156 minutes), Youth (Spring) focuses on garment workers in eastern China. Most of the film takes place in a few streets in a specific industrial area called Zhili, Huzhou Prefecture, Zhejiang Province. For centuries, the region has been famous for its silk and textile production, long before the industrial revolution began in Europe. Garment manufacturing and ancillary industries continue to dominate the regional economy, but things are a bit different in Zhili.

As detailed in the film's press releases (and, alas, almost nothing in the film, though knowing that would have heightened viewer interest), this is one of those rare areas where, instead of an all-powerful state, it's small. -well-known retailers are run by a branch of the garment industry, which mainly produces children's clothing for the domestic market. There are thousands of shops around, usually "Shop 110", "76" or whatever, often run by actual independent traders, who negotiate with the work crew how much the machinists will be paid per piece, based on difficulty. Work . built (Incidentally, this system worked in various forms for hundreds of years in various historic textile areas, including the Northeastern United States, when the region had a thriving textile industry).

Much of the film, especially in the last few hours, is devoted to watching this delicate back-and-forth negotiation between boss and employee, sometimes surrounded by interested naysayers, about whether or not an item of clothing is worth 11 yuan. 10 yuan a piece. (10 Chinese yuan is about $1.42). Wang is not interested in whether this is a fair price in the context of the global economy. (Of course, this pales in comparison to what an American worker would earn for the same fee.) Instead, it's about the drama of interactions; Even if you don't speak Mandarin or the local dialects, some young workers, some teenagers, may not be able to negotiate well in front of their local bosses, who view their earnings with doe eyes.

This attention to detail from Wiseman and the way he reveals larger truths about communities and institutions is the essence of Wang's practice here. In a sense, all of human life takes place here in these overcrowded, overcrowded, dirty laboratories. As the tailors work up to 18 hours in industrial equipment, they argue, flirt, argue, laugh, joke and make fun of each other. First, a fight breaks out between two young men when one throws an empty spool of thread at the other, which a colleague correctly calls a silly cockfight. Later, the young man tries to reconcile with his ex while going through the overprint piece by piece.

I watched the movie sitting next to Time 's Stephanie Zaharek, a home seamstress like myself, and we both said we hoped someone would still cut their finger on a serger afterwards, especially given how quickly some workers zip pieces together. through their machines. Indeed, the film sometimes feels like a disaster film in the making, as the workers often burn themselves sewing, risking a fire at any moment, especially since they work with so many synthetic fibers that are flammable. (The man complains about how awful it is to work with them these days.)

On the other hand, those people who understand the craftsmanship of what they make could be a major focus of the film. There is something mesmerizing, almost soothing ASMR, about watching them line up and sew pant leg to pant leg without a single pin and straight stitches on sandwiches of fiber outerwear. Increased interest in the global environmental impact of the garment industry and the industry's treatment of workers in developing countries has seen a surge in documentaries and feature films about garment workers. It is a great contribution to this subgenre.

Yet it is also external, in the sense that justice or injustice is not discussed. Wang is more interested in the people themselves, with all her colorful, multifaceted, pseudo-designer clothes. We, the public, need to draw deeper conclusions. And at a film festival, sometimes more concerned with who wears what on the red carpet, it offers plenty of insight into the other side of the fashion world.

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Dr. Willard Larkin - Sensory Information Systems