Closing out a triptych that previously ran through “Youth (Spring)” and “Youth (Hard Times),” Wang Bing’s final panel in his granular account of Middle Kingdom sweatshops wraps the trilogy in paradox. Running a scant 2.5 hours, “Youth (Homecoming)” is not only the shortest entry of his 10 hour saga; it’s also the most abundant, ending the series on a high note while calling into question the degree of emphasis of the earlier two iterations. Still, this is good news for the casual cinephile or Sinophile curious about this expansive undertaking, but less able (or willing) to buckle down for the half-day commitment. While “Youth (Homecoming)” certainly benefits from the seven hours of weaving-machine whir that preceded, the film quite ably stands alone.
That’s entirely by design. Whereas the previous two volleys embedded within the visually monotonous tombs to youthful ambition that make up the garment district of Zhili City, “Homecoming” only uses them as bookends, replacing notes-on-a-theme inertia with something close to momentum. We follow a handful of workers as they hit the road, returning home for the New Year celebration, and with that change of scenery comes variance — different textures and unfamiliar sights and sweeping mountain ranges a world away from the cramped quarters of the sweatshops that dote the ironically titled Happiness Road. This is a vacation movie of a sort, one that rewards prior investment — with the sudden visual break certainly more potent when set against all that came before — without fully requiring it.
The circular narrative picks up and leaves off in Zhili City, following the economic migrants as they first return to the provinces before making their way back with even younger recruits in tow. While Wang structured his earlier efforts around concentric vignettes that rarely intersected, here he narrows focus to a few extended clans. The filmmaker and editors construct the first hour like a game of hot potato, starting on a 28-year old named Xiao Dong and jumping with each successive scene to another member of the man’s family, each one introduced with a title card linking them to the prior focus. With a surprising degree of playfulness we leap from “his wife” to “her brother” to “his father,” and so on and so forth until we find ourselves back to the start — a game of documentary round robin that mirrors the gravitational pull of Happiness Road. The migrants can check out any time they like, but they can never leave.
At first, they share in that playfulness once production winds down and the New Year’s holiday looms. As the workers dawdle around their dorms waiting to take off, they face an issue heretofore unseen: free time. We see that issue take root with a young couple (“Xiao Dong’s sister” and “her husband,” for those keeping track); while the brother-in-law would rather drink with boys, the missus pines for family hours. That tension only resolves once the pair board a crowded train. Though the rail car is no less cramped than the workers’ dingy living quarters, we can notice a pall lift in near real-time, watching fists unclench and affects loosen as the locomotive carries the workers further and further away.
That sense of hard-won relief continues once we reach the Yunnan Mountains, protecting us from vertigo once Wang’s handheld camera gives way to a dashcam traversing terrifyingly steep and narrow roads. At the end lies Muja Village, and with it, all the family members too old or infirm to leave for the city. “You’ve mad money,” says an elder, with words that sting given all we’ve seen before. “Time to come home and celebrate.” That they do – lending the overall film an appealingly ethnographic flair as it moves from marriage fetes to village feasts to all manner of ceremonies. Unsurprisingly, time’s forward charge moves a bit slower high up in mountains. If the young workers who migrate to Zhili represent a generation crushed by the grinding gears of capitalism with Chinese characteristics, the families left behind still decorate with banners of Mao Zedong. Those are among the only decorative elements in otherwise supremely utilitarian dwellings, a fact that makes clear why these vacationers cannot stay.
Despite the more narrow focus — a product born mostly out of necessity, given the fact that Wang couldn’t exactly be everywhere at once — “Youth (Homecoming)” doesn’t just follow one family. This is a social and generational fresco, one that requires a commensurate set of subjects. As in his two previous entries, Wang looks for narrative echoes, seeing questions from one vignette resolve themselves much later in another. Here, family takes the fore. The young migrants wrestle with filial responsibility for those they must support, and they look queasily towards their own futures, wondering what kind of joy could Happiness Road afford to a child.
Wang never resolves those questions, because how can he? And all that thin mountain air only goes so far; time moves forward, “Youth” recedes, and the babyfaces the filmmaker first captured in 2014 return with babies of their own. The weave keeps on turning, faster and faster still. Best we can do is capture the spin.
B+
“Youth (Homecoming)” premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
