"Beijing Bicycle" (Language - Mandarin) (2001) - Movie Review

It is absolutely remarkable to develop a short story per se movie out of a bicycle which for most of the people an easy commodity. At the same time it is incomplete and unsatisfying to finish the story with no conviction or conscience on its own. While I was constantly thrilled, amazed and sympathized with tragic emotion for Guei (Cui Lin), the movie generates pessimistic view towards being a hard working noble young man.

Guei comes from country side to the big city for making a living. He gets job at the courier company which provides bicycle to him for faster delivery. The management policy says that once the earning pays off the bicycle, it will be Guei’s. With hard work, Guei is 70 yuan short from achieving his goal. With fate playing against him, the bicycle gets stolen. Apart from that he gets fired for not delivering the envelope during that time. With will in himself, he gets the word from the manager that if he gets the bike, he should be taken back. We then see a young school kid Jian (Li Bin) who is riding Guei’s bicycle. We suspect him of stealing the bike. How the bicycle plays an integral part in these two people’s life forms the remaining story.

There is so much cinematic depth to the way of story telling in the movie. And the performance of Cui Lin as the stubborn, hard working and emotional Guei is surprising and moves us when he holds bike so hard that the people who try to get it from him cannot able to separate him. He cries out of frustration, agony and misery. And we melt with him instantly. There are similar tight points which tells how uncivilized the kids in the film are and how violence becomes the first option to settle anything. Director Xiaoshuai Wang creates so much anger and negativity towards Jian who is emotionless, ruthless and of all dominating and irritating. But when he is confronted by his father for stealing the bike, he shows his side of story. We feel so wrong with ourselves for coming to a judgment on this kid, who is still a kid. This is where I expected the movie to take the positive note and substantiate the ill treatment Guei receives in the first half. Instead Jian does the action of a man who seems to have anger as his only choice of expression.

There is so much anger in this kid that there seems to be no more sympathy towards him. His father understands and he readily accepts when he is confronted back by Jian for concentrating too much on his sister. And he believes Jian. Jian on the other hand does not even confide with his little sister who comes supporting. It is tough for a kid in a family who has a living based on financial constraints but with an understanding father and a lovable sister, what is the justification for the actions of Jian? Even if the circumstances are plausible, what is the need to show a negative character? And they do not stop with that, all the action of Jian leads to cruel torture of innocence in poor Guei. Guei gets beaten, called a thief and finally the only thing he loved the most gets brutally savaged. And when he chooses violence to stop it, there lays the failure of being a hard working nice fellow. Why does some one need to say that? So basically the story suggests that even though you do all hard work and good ness in life, end of day you will be crucified and be a victim of injustice? What sort of message does this imply? What is even scarier is that they do it convincingly. The end is very much possible and true. While I am not against showing the truth and reality of life, it should achieve some purpose and here it creates negativity and injustice all over the end.

If we remove the ending, this is one master piece of short story telling. The last thirty minutes hardly has any dialogue. It is all actions. How humans as such fight for a woman is dealt with beauty. And the appearance forming the deception is told with the subplot of Guei in subtle manner.

It is so sad to see such a beautiful movie propagate something so depressing without any conviction of characters. If creating sympathy towards Guei is the ultimate aim, they easily do it after his struggle for getting his bike back. Jian’s character even though started with so much darkness redeemed in one scene but directly went back to the immoral mode within minutes. A movie can fail in any aspect possible, story telling, editing, characterization and direction, but a movie without any redemption and conviction is even merciless. After “Swimming with Sharks” this is the second movie which made me feel sick and depressing. Sick due to the moral in the end of the movie and depressing that such a good movie carried that moral.