ScreenWize

When Canadian born filmmaker Yung Chang decided to visit the homeland of his Chinese grandfather on the banks of the Yangtze River, he was stopped in his tracks by a powerful image. As he approached the riverside to board a cruise ship for a tour of the area about to be flooded by the Three Gorges Dam project, a marching band appeared out of nowhere, dressed in gaudy uniforms and playing Yankee Doodle Dandy. For Chang it was the beginning of a four year journey that would document some of the changes taking place on the world’s third largest river, one so significant in Chinese history that it is simply known as “jiang” – the river.

The success of documentary filmmaking usually depends upon access – to important people, to unseen spaces, to different times. Up The Yangtze succeeds because Chang gets the most intimate access to two young people adjusting to the impact of the flooding and relocation (and more generally the social and economic transformation going on in China). He follows these two as they start work on a ship owned by Farewell Cruises – a company showing tourists the gorges before they disappear. The first is the shy and traditional Yu Shui, given the name “Cindy” by her boss on the ship. She’s from an impoverished, uneducated family who eke out a muddy living on the banks of the river, and who can no longer afford to pay for Yu Shui’s education. The second is Chen Bo Yu, a middle class city boy - renamed “Jerry” - who we meet drinking in a karaoke bar with his friends. He’s much like any western teenager: cocky, ambitious and acquisitive. He’s proud of his good English and good looks and reckons fame and fortune is just around the next corner.

Cindy and Jerry are clearly the two faces of modern China, and Chang follows them above and below decks, and interviews tourists and locals along the way to give us a rich insight into the forces at work in the three gorges. The dam itself is a looming backdrop to the story. The unimaginably vast construction work rumbles on, the water level rises, and the locals try their best to adapt. It’s an insightful and beautifully shot film, never overtly pushing any political point. Chang is more interested in the people he believes have fallen between the cracks - those too poor to cope with the changes – and the film is dominated by the beautiful imagery of disparity.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon