Blind Mountain (Yang Li, 2007): China

Writer-director Yang Li’s second feature, Blind Mountain (Mang shan) is visually stunning and tells a compelling story. Yang Li’s first film Blind Shaft (Mang jing), about two illegal Chinese coal mine workers’ plan to kill a coworker and extort their employer, won many awards in 2003 and 2004 and Blind Mountain seems fit to do the same. This time around Yang Li focuses on the practice of kidnapping women and selling them as brides.

Bai Xuemei (Lu Huang) is a recent college graduate whose parents are in debt and whose younger brother is having trouble paying tuition. After a slump she lands a job at the Chinese Medicine Company. Xuemei travels to the to a remote mountain location in the countryside, believing that she will be buying medicinal herbs from farmers.When they arrive, she is left to look after her boss’s belongings and while she waits she enjoys some water. She wakes up in a strange room and panics. Xuemei soon finds that she has been purchased from her so called employers by local farmers as the bride for the son of the family. Things do not look good for her and she can’t find anyone that seems willing to get involved with “family affairs” enough to help her. She even meets with other brides that were kidnapped who tell her that it is better just to adapt than to try to escape, though one of them does tell her the best way to get out of town. After one failed escape attempt, Xuemei appeals to the village chief, who dismisses her almost altogether. She does however, find some semblence of hope in her husband’s cousin, Decheng. He is the school teacher of the village and the only other person that attended highschool.

While Blind Mountain posesses an immersive and compelling storyline, the cinematography was what really stuck with me. Long shots of the Chinese mountain country really display how isolated the village and Xuemei really are from the rest of the world. With each escape attempt the tension of the film builds and her desparation increases. The harder she tries, the worse it gets for her and the more it seems that no one around can see what is wrong with the situation.

An awesome film, visually as well as intellectually and emotionally, Blind Mountain is one of the better movies I have seen at the festival this year. A must see for the Santa Barbara Film Festival.