Tearjerker melodrama that resonates close to heart

'Aftershock' dramatises the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that ravaged northeast China, with casualties well-above 200,000.

ISLAMABAD: It is indeed encouraging to know that there exist those who can appreciate film and world cinema at that and not just the commercial fair that is so often plastered everywhere.

In near weekly engagements, the South Asian Free Media Association (Safma) screens films, both foreign and domestic, at their office in F-7. This week, Safma brought the Oscar-nominated Chinese film Aftershock to the screen. Being one of the highest grossing domestic movies in China, Aftershock, directed by Feng Xioagang (The Banquet), dramatises the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that ravaged northeast China, with casualties well-above 200,000.

In the midst of this act of God is the story of Yuan Ni and her family, a working class provincial family. Putting her twins to bed, she spends the night with her husband on the road trying to beat the cooped up mugginess of a small apartment in the throes of a humid Chinese summer. The devastating earthquake strikes suddenly in the night. The ruin is shown in stark brutality in an impressive sequence that rivals and even outdoes the best disaster movies.

Where once stood a thriving cityscape, there is now a dusty pile of rubble. Attempting to save their sleeping children, Yuan Ni’s husband makes a dash for their apartment but is caught in the collapsing building and perishes.

The twins are trapped underneath a concrete slab, leaving their mother faced with an impossible decision – saving either child will result in the other’s death. Choosing her son, Yuan Ni, tormented by her decision, lays her daughter’s lifeless body to rest. She must struggle with her son who is now handicapped.

As the affected people are evacuated to aid centres, the limp body of Fang Deng, the daughter, twitches to life, setting up the plot for a melodrama that spans nearly a quarter of a century returning full circle in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

The film, though impressive in scale and sincere in its attempts to fictionalise the tragedy, tends to give itself very freely to its genre, embodying the melodrama in both spirit (the wrenching tear jerker it becomes at times) and plot (twists, turns and coincidences aplenty).

But regardless of the confines of the genre, the film still manages to be poignant; thanks in part to its very heartfelt acting. Xu Fan plays the tortured mother with real emotion – her unforgiving story and her guilt both palpable and unaffected.

The film does tend to drone on at times, with economy lacking from its presentation and the applauding manner in which the army is presented borders, at times, on propaganda. But then, being a domestic movie, it was playing to the audience and patriotic sentiment.

The emotional resonance of the film is particularly felt when one remembers our own earthquake in 2005 and also how common certain values can be.

Safma’s event provided an opportunity to watch an otherwise inaccessible movie and such screenings, if made open to the public, would certainly present another side to cinema that is not all spectacles.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2010.