A Touch of Sin

Jia Zhang-ke’s A Touch of Sin is a magnificent, dense, moving, poetic -- okay, bloody heroic -- film about four individuals who revolt against their oppressive lives in contemporary China.  It’s one of those films whose backdrop is so rarely seen and fascinating we’re tempted to ignore the narrative for it. But the stories are too strong to  miss.

In a small northern town a loner in a green coat campaigns against the local politicos who have grown obscenely rich by skimming off the money from their sale of the collectively owned mine. The two main symbols are the Mao statue in the town square, all but ignored now, and the Maserati the boss bought and leaves outside his factory. The hero snaps and guns down everyone in his way to the boss, whom he kills at the Buddhist temple.

The second hero returns home on his motorcycle in a Chicago Bulls cap, to find the region scarred by high rises and the Three Gorges hydroelectric plant. The scenes seem like the usual awkward homecoming, till we learn he’s just killed three men.

In the fourth story a young man leaves his factory job when he’s expected to give his salary to a co-worker who badly injured his hand in a work accident. The boy works as a waiter in a high-priced brothel, where he’s attracted to a young whore who reveals she’s working to provide for her little daughter. Seeing no escape from the web of poverty and corruption the lad kills himself. 

In the third story a sauna receptionist has broken off with her married lover. When a wealthy man flogs her with his bankroll to bully her into sex she kills him and wanders off bloodied and distracted. She returns in an epilogue, rehabilitated, applying for a job in different part of the country. When she watches a street theatre company the lead peers out at the audience and asks: “Do you understand your sin?” But the camera holds on the audience, everyday faces, not the ones whose stories we have stumbled into. The implication is that while we have watched characters driven by ideals and desperation into sin perhaps there is a heavier sin among those prosaic citizens who have quietly put up with everything. If our four heroes have committed “a touch of sin,”  the collective sins of omission weigh heavier still.    

A recurring theme is the distinction between man and animal. Apparently even animals commit suicide. The first hero wraps his rifle in a tiger cloth -- to the roar of the cat -- when he sets out on his vigilante mission. Supposedly holy snakes attend the sauna hostess’s suffering and escape. The waiter and prostitute free a few goldfish in a liberation they are unable to achieve. But the sinners by omission may be like the workhorse the first hero passes, being mercilessly beaten by his master. When the hero kills the tyrant the horse trots off with his load. Unlike workhorses, man has to fight his oppressors himself. Or escape one way or another.