Steinesongo Too many fans seem to be blown away

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU A very bleak story. Two miners are teaming together to entrap a young teenager, underage if possible, on the run for any reason whatsoever into coming to work with them underground. The mines are managed by bosses who do not want problems. So they have some kind of premium, or contract for the casualties of accidents, 30,000 yuans per dead. The two miners who want to be rich as fast as possible kill the third one as soon as they can, pocket the premium and run away to the next mine, and the next escaping teenager. It is a simple business, and yet it is not that simple. It is dark in the mines and you do not see very well. So one day, circumstances will reshuffle the pack of cards. One of the two will be impatient and the two will end on the wrong side of some road, of some dynamite. And guess who is going to get the money, and the two urns with the ashes? The film is not interesting because of that, because we more or less know what is going to happen. That kind of undertaker's job cannot last very long. What is interesting is the realistic vision of China's industrial and mining areas today. People have to move away from their families to find work. They have to pay for their schooling or the schooling of their children. They also have the opportunity to work whenever they want. Working conditions are hard. Living conditions are hard too. But It is not that long ago that we had the same situation in Europe, and the present situation in China is what we had in Europe at the end of the 1950s or even beginning of the 1960s. It is only in 1968 that the situation really improved in France with a 13% average pay rise in May 1968. It is exactly what is happening in China this year with a minimum 20% hike on the minimum wage all over China, and the more developed a province the higher the hike is. It may create some inflation. It may cause the yuan to go up slightly. It may make exports slightly more difficult. But the country is dynamic enough not to recapture in productivity what they lose in labor cost. They are catching up so fast that we may not even see them overtaking us. And that is the interest of this film. It does not show a bleak situation centering on exploitation, the hardships and suffering of the working class. It centers on what the desire to catch up with wealth may produce in some minds, even may make some become criminals. A society like this one that is growing, as for their industry, at a 13.9% rate may make some dizzy and envious and impatient to reach the object of their dream faster than honestly possible. An interesting film that shows China is also catching up in that industry too.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

kintopf432 I knew literally nothing about this film going into it, and I found its opening sequence – with the gritty cinematography, the squalid, almost alien setting, the inky darkness of the mine, and the sudden shock of violence – to be quite engaging and sinister, even frightening. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that the film was to be none of those things. "Mang jing" might have made a great satiric or absurdist horror film – its concept is fascinating and macabre – but Yang Li's treatment of the idea is surprisingly bland. Oh, it limps forward with subtlety and reasonably good taste, but in the end it's barely memorable for any specific element. Even its politics, which the promotional text (oddly) suggests is to be such a huge factor in the overall mix, turns out to be rather tame and unremarkable. Disappointing, really. 5.5 out of 10.

Roland E. Zwick Written and directed by Yang Li, "Blind Shaft" provides us with a fascinating twist on the serial killer scenario. In most such films, the killer is usually relegated to the role of a shadowy antagonist whose basic function is to allow a brilliant investigator to outwit and outsmart him and bring him to justice in time for the closing credits. Not so in "Blind Shaft." For here the killers themselves take center stage and there isn't a single law officer in sight to foil the plan or mitigate our fear about what is going to happen.Song and Yuan are two struggling Chinese laborers who've come upon an ingenious but grizzly scheme to make money. They befriend a stranger who is desperate for employment and convince him to come work with them in a nearby mine. All he has to do is agree to pass himself off as a relative of one of the two men. When they have their unsuspecting victim alone in the mine shaft, Song and Yuan cold-bloodedly murder him, claiming that the death was the result of a mining accident. Eager to avoid a scandal, the boss of the mine invariably pays a generous sum of money to the dead man's "relatives," whereupon Song and Yuan take their ill-gotten gains, lure another man into their trap, and head off to another mine to repeat the scenario.What separates "Blind Shaft" from so many American tales about serial killers is that Song and Yuan are not portrayed as writhing, eye-rolling, hand-rubbing psychopaths, devising elaborate schemes to torture their victims and antagonize the authorities. Rather, these two killers approach their "business" in the most banal, matter-of-fact (i.e. "businesslike") way imaginable, making them all that much more chilling and believable. We feel we really could encounter people like these in our own lives. Their acts of murder are no more extraordinary to them than folding their clothes, ordering at a restaurant, or consorting with local prostitutes. In fact, the film spends far more of its time observing the mundane minutiae of their day-to-day existence than detailing the mechanics of their crimes. To these two men, killing is a means to survival (much of the money they earn from their killings they send back to their own relatives), and no moral or ethical code or twinge of compassion is allowed to stand in the way of ensuring that survival. And if it does… It is their utter disregard for human life, their indifference to the intrinsic value of the individual that make them and their story so discomfiting and disturbing. Yet, even in this darkest of scenarios, Li gives us a glimmer of hope. When the latest intended victim turns out to be a naïve 16-year-old lad looking for money so that he can resume his studies, one of the killers begins to have second thoughts about what they have planned for him, primarily because he himself has a son who is also a student. The film, thus, becomes a gripping and fascinating study of whether or not even the most amoral person has a line beyond which he will not cross. Yet, what is most unsettling about the film is the way in which the two killers can treat their victim so "humanely" - they even insist on paying for a visit to a prostitute so that the boy won't die never having had sex - all the while knowing full well what they intend to do to him. What monster in any horror film could be scarier than that? "Blind Shaft" is not a thriller in the conventional sense of the term. It relies less on plot and more on observation, as we follow this fascinating trio through the brothels and marketplaces of rural China, seeing a world and a lifestyle wholly unfamiliar to most of us. Li remains utterly objective and detached as he records the doings - sometimes major, sometimes trivial - of Song and Yuan as they go through their day. Stylistically, the director brings an almost documentary feel to the story, and by dedicating as much screen time to the trivial details as to the murder plot itself, he conveys the sense of moral equivalence and bankruptcy that defines the characters' way of thinking. With no melodramatic background music to cheapen the suspense, Li allows the horror to develop naturally, out of a situation in which conscience and basic human compassion have been essentially drained. As we get to know this kid, and as his two intended killers get to know him as well, we can do little but watch helplessly as the elements of the plot move inexorably to their foregone conclusion. Through this approach, "Blind Shaft" generates a kind of "suspense" that the typical slick Hollywood thriller can only dream of achieving.With brilliant performances from the three leads, Li forces us to look into the darkness that often lurks in the heart of Man. It is a frightening but unforgettable vision.

bob the moo Song and Tang are two conmen who make their money through murder and deception. They live among the unemployed drifters of China, latch onto lonely young men, convince them to pretend to be one of their relatives and then the three get a job together in a mine. After a few days, Song and Tang kill their companion and make it look like a cave in - extorting the bosses for compensation in return for silence. They have been doing this for a while to good profit and plan to continue when they pick up the sixteen year old Yuan, creating a moral crisis for Song.I was not sure what this film was about when I sat to watch it but the fact that it had been made as an underground film (literally) without the permission of the Government and that was enough reason for me to give it a bit of my time. As one would expect from such a film, the plot is a mix of narrative and comment. The comment is delivered in the form of us seeing the working conditions and the poverty `enjoyed' by the citizens who are outside of what we would consider the `proper' economic system. In this regard the film is interesting if not totally gripping. The narrative is just as gripping but it is less satisfying as it seems to be secondary to the other aspects of the film. The characters do just enough to carry the story along, in fact they win over the audience well enough for us to care about all the main players - essential in a film that is driven more by them than by action.To that end, the cast (a mix of professionals and non-professionals) deliver the goods pretty well. Yuan's innocence and dedication to the characters is key to the film and Wang carries this off well. The elder Wang is also good but has a simpler character to deliver - however it is to his credit that his `bad' guy never lost my interest. Li is the best thing in the film even if he goes through an fairly recognisable crisis of confidence. Yang Li's documentary background shows through with the realistic direction and the great use of locations - all the more impressive as many of them must have been difficult to shoot in.However, the lack of events means that the narrative is a little less than satisfying when it comes to the end. We more or less know where it is going and the film uses the ending as much as a closure to the narrative as it is a further comment of the people's place within the system. Despite this it is still worth seeing even if it may not match the hype that the awards and reviews on this page would have you believe. Overall a good film that is worthy with good direction and acting even if the commentary of society and narrative don't sit as well together as one would hope.