Youth labour in textile factories in China’s Zhejiang province is the central focus of Wang Bing’s social realist documentary that shows us what it’s like to be toiling away to make ends meet.
Review #2,708
Dir. Wang Bing
2023 | China | Documentary | 212 min | 1.78:1 | Mandarin & regional dialects
NC16 (passed clean) for some coarse language
Cast: –
Plot: Zhili is one of the centres of China’s textile industry and all the people around the rural areas flock there for work. They toil away tirelessly, live in squalid conditions, and have to fight for better pay conditions.
Awards: Nom. for Palme d’Or & Golden Eye (Cannes); Nom. for Best Documentary (Golden Horse)
Distributor: Pyramide International
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Youth Labour; China’s Textile Industry; Work Conditions
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slow
Audience Type: Niche Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
First shot in 2014 and for a period of five years, Wang Bing’s latest continues his documentary immersion into the marginalised communities in China.
Running at 3.5 hours, which is the standard operating procedure for one of the finest documentarians of our time, Youth (Spring) may be long-drawn and repetitive, but unless you have an aversion to the director’s established slow cinema style, his cinema of endurance should prove to be quite rewarding by its denouement.
I completed the film in five separate sittings but I still think it would work equally well with an hour or so shaved. It may be the filmmaker’s guiding philosophy but I have always maintained that less is more.
The central focus of Youth (Spring) is the textile factories in the town of Zhili in the Zhejiang province in Eastern China, where numerous youths engage in the production of casual wear, sold mainly to the domestic market.
“You sell as best as you can, but our pay is our pay.”
They come from the rural areas of Yunnan, Anhui and Henan, hoping for the opportunity to toil away to make ends meet. They don’t make a lot of money, but some money is better than no money.
And so, they continue to toil. When overtime is a godsend to these people, it begins to dawn on the viewer that any concern about the exploitation of labour seems unfounded.
Wang’s camera captures it all in a raw, unfiltered social realist style, be it heated arguments between employees, intimate moments shared by friends and lovers, or the sheer din of the machines.
While Youth (Spring) doesn’t quite hit the masterful heights of, say, the even lengthier ‘Til Madness Do Us Part (2013), whose immersion of the viewer into a mental asylum in China compels with greater force due to its subject matter, it should still give Wang’s fans something to look forward to.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 