CrosscurrentSome works of art, especially in countries beset by heavy censorship, must work in circuitous allusion—poetic, cultural, historical—to say what they feel needs to be said. Those who have been watching the state-approved films by Chinese director Jia Zhangke (including his latest, Mountains May Depart) and films by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (including his latest, Cemetery of Splendor) will be familiar with how charged this expressive need and tactic can be. At its best, films such as these burst upon the viewer like the revelation of a secret language whose codex we can spy and begin to piece together—and whose surface qualities, even if cryptic, are felt to be all the more powerful for the sub-currents discernible below and charged from within.But the downside of such a cinematic language results in a picture like Crosscurrent, directed by Yang Chao, which is the Chinese film in Berlin's competition this year.
- 2/20/2016
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
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