Thread by @dylanleviking

Guan Hu's 管虎 Dirt 头发乱了 (1994) was made possible by hundred grand from a trading company attached to a state-owned chemical manufacturer, eighteen grand of which was paid to an obscure state studio to claim the film—but it was still held up for over a year before release.

Yingjin Zhang gives us the financing story in "Rebel without a Cause? China's New Urban Generation and Postsocialist Filmmaking." Compared to earlier films like, say, Rock Kids 摇滚青年 (1988), which celebrated within the boundaries, this was an attempt at a countercultural film.

Unlike Beijing Bastards 北京杂种 (1993), it's not a celebration of provocation, but a sad, nostalgic film. A young woman (Kong Lin孔琳) returns to Beijing after leaving for Guangzhou as a kid, reuniting with her old friends: one a rock musician (Geng Le 耿乐), the other a cop.

I love this part. Ye Tong 叶彤 and the cop (Zhang Jiayi 张嘉益) in his old house. He's recovering from being stabbed by another childhood friend, just escaped from a labor camp. The old friends, around the projector... They're watching crowds on Tiananmen Square, years before.

It's like there's horrible emptiness in the present, which Ye Tong is discovering instead of whatever she hoped to find after returning from Guangzhou. Going to medical school is meaningless, music is meaningless... Even fucking is just an attempt to recapture youthful emotion.

That same night, the cop—Weidong 卫东—is beaten into a coma trying to help a girl. Shortly after that, the rocker—Peng Wei 彭威—leaves for Shenzhen. There's no going back to the old days, whether it's childhood memories or the socialist past of the film strip.

Looking at the child (born to the cop's sister, product of a hookup with an ex-lover): "He won't even know who Chairman Mao is." It's hard to tell if it's gleeful or just amazed or what... When she goes to rebuild the practice space, she's told: "This is all getting torn down!""

It's ironic, I guess, since the film opens with the Chairman's "The world is yours" quotation. They didn't inherit the nation. That system of belief was steadily dismantled, just like the Beijing alleys themselves. There's no possibility of returning home, in any sense.

And the film closes with Ye Tong leaving. Weidong watches her go from his wheelchair, pushed by another childhood friend, interrupted by children singing, "We are the inheritors of the communist cause / And the glorious revolutionary tradition of the last generation..."

Yingjin Zhang writes: "This rebellious film thus ends with a vision of history and memory in ruins..." Ye Tong leaves behind nothingness to return to nothingness. Tragedy and joy both flattened to just getting through life, the past given up to get on with the present...

I don't really love the Important Sixth Generation Films of the 1990s, but I really like this, even if the music is corny ("Breed" playing in the background of a scene is the best thing on the soundtrack). You should watch it for yourself: