The Blue Kite: Government's Political Victimization of People Released in 1993, Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite is considered to be one of the several controversial films that were produced by China's Fifth Generation filmmakers. Told from the perspective of a young boy, Tietou, the movie tells his family's struggle to survive over three remarkable periods in Chinese history the Rectification Movement, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Unlike the work of other fellow Fifth Generation filmmakers, there is nothing theatrical about this film but a focus on mundane and trivial life. Intentionally wrapped in a typical family context, the movie gives viewers chances to see great events through the pathetic lives of specific ordinary people caught unawares in the toils of history. By using subtlety to depict political chaos, Tian sophisticatedly portrays the Party's victimization of its people, partly to criticize the revolution but mostly to draw strong empathy from the audience.
The very first victims are the people who are directly involved in the revolution itself. Tietou's birth dad, Shalong, is a good librarian and a faithful employee but is accidentally mistaken as a rightist in a meeting as part of the Rectification Movement. This causes him to be sent to a labor camp and eventually killed in a tree accident. Next, Tietou's uncle-dad also dies because of exhaustion while trying to overwork to improve his application to the Party. And lastly, Tietou's stepdad, a former government official, dies of a heart attack while being accused by the Red Guards during Cultural Revolution. Subtle as it is, the movie shows that all three deaths in the movie are not directly caused by the violence of the revolution but rather by the jobs that those people previously did, thinking they were loyally serving the country. Normally, citizen actions are reasonably limited in order for governments to achieve their goal of preserving the values of the state, but unfortunately, in this chaotic time, the values of the state change way too fast for people to catch up with. Political beliefs that are proper one year might be deemed counterrevolutionary the next, which leads to the punishment of many innocent citizens. In the movie, the audience can see that the political party is really arbitrary by the way that they make people relentlessly chase after their rules. Remarkably, during the first part of the movie, Uncle Li is tormented with guilt because he is made to report his own friends, Shalong being one of them. This demonstrates the party's belief that it is easier to dominate citizens if their collective spirits are broken. The bleakness of the shots of the scenes in the movie reflects the uncertainty of life in that society. It is a troubling climate, where the greatest difficulty to survive lies in determining what is proper behavior and what is likely to get you taken away for "reform". Accordingly, the movie shows how cruelly...
