Oxhide II
Written and directed by Liu Jiayin
China, 2009
Liu Jiayin, only in her early thirties and with two features films, has already become a darling of the art house cinema crowd — her work traveling the festival circuits, winning awards, and establishing her name among the ranks of Tarr and Benning as well as drawing comparisons to Bresson and Ozu. However, the awards and name-dropping come with the territory of making a niche film, partially tailored to a mentality of extreme minimalism including long takes, little action, and much experimentation. If not already alienating, her second film, Oxhide II, is a mere nine shots, each in 45 degree increments around a work table in a cramped living space featuring only the director and her parents (!) as actors and the preparation and eating of dumplings as the only action. While maintaining her rigorous attention to detail, composition, and blocking to make any film academic or critic escalate into a fit of excitement, Jiayin molds the cold technicalities of experimental cinema around the warm narrative surrounding her family. We see her technical proficiency, yet we also see humans with affections so grasping and familiar that it has been labeled a docudrama. Thus, it is even stranger to reflect that every word, every movement, every little thing in the film has been carefully choreographed by Liu and practiced by her family months in advance: a precision unheard of by even household name directors.
We are introduced to the table, the true subject of the film, in the first shot as Jiayin’s father Zaiping uses it to craft and sew the oxhide of the title. We see only his hands and part of his torso, the camera using its 2.35:1 aspect ratio to see the work, not the worker. He exits the screen completely at one point, the shot empty of human activity for a brief moment before returning to its task of voyeurism of assembly. The mother Huifen’s arrival is marked by a sharp sound of the door opening, groceries rustling, and her curious voice: sounds and offscreen action add a dimension of suspense and mystery to even the most rote activities, a minimalistic psychological choice comparable to Peter Kubelka’s experimental work Arnulf Rainer, as moments of prolonged darkness deny or suspend our (dis)pleasure of light and sound. The first shot ends after twenty minutes, the table now being prepared to make dumplings for dinner and Liu’s composition changed to accompany the space occupied by her father’s hands working the dough and her mother’s preparing the vegetables. As each shot changes with diminishing length, we become privy and excited about the new perspective we are given, every time accompanied with bodies within, just outside, or toying with our view. Jiayin’s arrival aggravates the ongoing casual discussion of Zaiping’s business; he is confident that it will not ultimately fail, yet laments, “… you two never support me.” Outside this brief insight into the socioeconomic undercurrents of the story, the only other interactions among the characters lie in teaching Jiayin the correct method of assembling the dumplings and Jiayin’s treading ground between obstinacy and obedience. The remainder of the film is a series of moments, surprising the audience with a shot high above the working hands to observe their faces together and another below the table to observe the flames as the dumplings boil. The last shot is the moment of triumph — we observe them at table height eating their project transfigured and processed right in front of us. We have returned once again to our original position, to hands at work as they eat their food in the same fervor that processed it. Yet Jiayin toys with us still, blocking view of her own face and hands while bemoaning the finished product: “You put the fatty bits in!” After our journey alongside the family for 133 minutes, the dumplings aren’t even that good.
Liu’s minimalism in shot duration and static camera placement is not an intrinsically new phenomenon as practitioners of the “slow cinema” movement have evoked even more powerful narratives with these devices much before 2009. The comparison to Ozu is recognizable in technique and subject matter, shooting family life in intimate spaces even in his silent features. What makes these methods acceptable here is its intense study of form and function and of familiarizing and defamiliarizing one within the space it is shot. Peter Labuza recently wrote of Béla Tarr’s ability to effectively create a world through his camera’s pans, that the camera must do the work of God before leaving the audience its narrative. Liu’s static shots on digital video are not nearly as beautiful as Tarr’s, yet when we are so intimately familiar with a space, only for a character to disappear and return with an object never before seen to be placed in front of our interesting subject, could we not invoke the same metaphor? The Liu family creates as well, only at a much slower pace and to a more practical end. What remains even further inventive is Liu’s use of cinemascope, the ultra-widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio of shooting to show less. The cinemascope format has been the standard to shoot movies with “epic” ambitions, filling the vast horizontal space with armies, dance performances, or sprawling architecture; yet Liu places the camera close to her action such that vertical space, context for the bodies, is sacrificed for horizontal space, favoring the table, its contents, and the study of hands working with them. This makes for a series of continued images unlike anything I have seen before — new and unique not necessarily belonging to the same category as game-changing and effectual, yet Liu has peaked the curiosity of all who have joined her family for dinner.
However, Oxhide II should not be thought as experimental cinema. Such a claim is pejorative to its active narrative, its warm humanism, and its stark characterization.The characters in Liu’s story have a goal and we wish to see it through; they bicker and banter about work, food, and the task at hand, giving verisimilitude to an average family meal. After being instructed to cut the chives 4 millimeters apart, Jiayin hovers over with a knife, intent on not deviating from the instructed amount until scolded for taking it so literally. Jiayin calls to our attention the film’s attention to every sound as she jovially points out the difference between her parents’ methods of snapping the dough apart. Huifen corrects Jiayin’s stirring while Zaiping demonstrates filling the dumplings. Not one part of our curiosity of the process is left without a human commentary: struggle and laughter are realistically interspersed to continually engage and entertain. While the running time seems daunting for such a simple picture, this was perhaps the shortest two hours I’ve ever felt with a film, especially engaging in real time. All pretension is laid aside for a true simplicity expected of minimalist cinema: distractions eliminated for reflection and a pure engagement. Oxhide II is a cinema of spectacle, of watching the films of the Lumière brothers with attention to the wavering trees. It is a study of hands and bodies in movement, of intimate space, and an inventive return to what we wondered during the age of the photoplay.
Zach Lewis