Editeur - Casa editrice

  Asia
Cina
Tibet

Anno - Date de Parution

Pagine - Pages

Titolo originale

Lingua - language - langue

Edizione - Collana

A 'Mountain Patrol' Struggles to Save Antelopes From Poachers (and Fashionistas)
The New York Times by MANOHLA DARGIS Published: April 14, 2006

The mountains that rise from the Tibetan plateau make a suitably dramatic backdrop for this story about the murderous cost we humans exact on the natural world. Based on depressingly true events, "Mountain Patrol: Kekexili" tracks the heroic efforts of a small group of Tibetans struggling to keep the Tibetan antelope, or chiru, from extinction. Although hunting the antelope was made illegal in the 1970's — you need to kill the animal to harvest its wool, which is turned into a rare commodity called shahtoosh — the population dwindled precariously, beginning in the late 1980's and early 90's, because enough wealthy consumers had no qualms about hitting the boldface scene with shahtoosh on their shoulders and blood on their hands.

If that sounds like a recipe for piety and sob stories about cute critters, think again. Written and directed by Lu Chuan, whose first feature was the well-received "Missing Gun," "Mountain Patrol" is as tough and unsparing as its backdrop, a blood-boiling environmental thriller with a dash of Sergio Leone. Although the traffic in endangered wildlife gives the film its headline hook — you need to kill three to five antelopes to make one shahtoosh shawl — the story that briskly unfolds has as much to do with man's inhumanity to man as to his fellow creatures. Which is why, given China's historic and violent aggression against the Tibetan people, it's hard not to read the film on several levels at once.

The way into this unlikely nail-biter is through a young Beijing photojournalist, Ga Yu (Zhang Lei), who lands in this otherworldly region in 1996, armed with a camera and a well of idealism. His quarry is a mountain patrol, led by a former soldier, Ri Tai (Duo Bujie), that tracks poachers who, with their automatic weapons and hired skinners, leave thousands of antelope carcasses across the plateau. More action-oriented than expository-minded, Mr. Lu never explains why a Chinese journalist would find this story especially newsworthy. Ga Yu simply shows up, slips into his new environs (it helps that he is part Tibetan) and proves himself a quick study, whether learning the proper way to cut meat — draw the knife toward your body, away from your companions — or hopping a ride with the patrol.

Mr. Lu has an appreciable sense of narrative economy, and it isn't long before the photographer is on the desolate road with the patrol in Kekexili, a region in the northwestern part of the plateau. Filled with astonishing vistas and a minimum of chatter, this is the kind of film that invites you in with beauty, only to surprise and even shock you with a sudden burst of violence. The images of the men driving their trucks and dwarfed against the mountains recall, however fleetingly, the sweeping sight of pioneers framed against a different range in John Ford's "Wagon Master." Mr. Lu, a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, has clearly watched his share of westerns, which is why still other scenes evoke Leone and, when two men, gasping for oxygen and spitting blood, chase each other until they drop, even Erich von Stroheim.

Despite the sporadic film-school allusions, "Mountain Patrol" has its own very specific take on things. Films about environmental catastrophes tend to wax preachy, putting pedagogy and scolding above art. This one, for all its sorrow and the throb of righteous anger it provokes (only about 50,000 antelopes remain), is more than anything a work of creative imagination. Filled with strange and horrible visions, it draws you in again and again, not with characters, who all remain at a psychological remove, but with set pieces that distill the story's life-and-death struggle to its essence. The extraordinary scene of one man sinking into quicksand is characteristically potent, a reminder of the fragility of human life and the unblinking power of the world we dominate, to our peril.

Written (in Mandarin and Tibetan, with English subtitles) and directed by Lu Chuan; director of photography, Cao Yu; edited by Teng Yun; music by Lao Zai; production designers, Lu Dong and Han Chunlin; produced by Wang Zhongjun; released by National Geographic World Films, Samuel Goldwyn Films and Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia

WITH: Duo Bujie (Ri Tai), Zhang Lei (Ga Yu), Qi Liang (Liu Dong) and Zhao Xueying (Leng Xue).

Vincitore nella categoria ‘Miglior film’ dei Golden Horse Award 2004 con Kekexili.
Cao Yu laureato al Department of Film Photography della Beijing Film Academy nel 1997, ora lavora con gli Beijing Film Studios. Prima di girare Kekexili, vinse il premio Young Artist Fund alla 54esimo Festival di Cannes nel 1997 grazie al lavoro presentato per la sua tesi di Laurea: “Waiting to Dodge”. È stato il DP del film, “Flying like a Feather”, che vinse il Comitato per i Premi Speciali al Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Locarno nel 2001. I suoi lavori nel campo pubblicitario comprendono: "A Crucial Moment" per la China Telecom; Cellulari Motorola C388 e C289; Cellulari Siemens Mini8088, che hanno vinto il premio per la miglio Fotografia al Festival Pubblicitario di New York; "Team China" per la Pepsi. "World Cup" per la Coca-Cola; "Children’s Friend" per McDonald's; e "Xrisp" per i Gelati Nestle.

Cao Yu graduated from the Department of Film Photography at the Beijing Film Academy in 1997 and is now based at the Beijing Film Studios. Prior to shooting Kekexili, he won the Young Artist Fund of the 54th Cannes Film Festival in 1997 for his graduation work, Waiting to Dodge. He was the DP of the film, Flying like a Feather, which won the Locarno International Film Festival Committee Special Award in 2001. His commercial advertising work includes: "A Crucial Moment" for China Telecom; Motorola C388, C289 mobiles; Siemens Mini8088 mobiles, which won Best Photography Award in NY Advertisement Festival; "Team China" for Pepsi. "World Cup" for Coca-Cola; "Children’s Friend" for McDonald's; and "Xrisp" for Nestle ice cream.