This was another recommendation from our cinephile friend, a Chinese film so obscure that it’s almost impossible to get any information on it from the English-speaking net. The two directors Zhou Shen and Liu Lu seem to be unknowns, along with the entire cast. As it is billed as a comedy, I initially despaired at being able to get anything out of its sense of humor, but frivolous poster aside, this is actually a film that gets very dark.

Set in 1942 when the Nationalist government was still in power, the film is about a small school located in a very rural area. There is a headmaster and three other teachers but they have also registered a fifth teacher to get more funds from the government. This helps pay the costs of the donkey which they need to fetch water and which is taken care of by the headmaster’s daughter. One day they receive notice that the education ministry is sending an inspector to verify the existence of this fifth teacher. Desperate, they convince a local uneducated metal-worker to pose as the teacher and have the lone female teacher teach him a few English phrases to put up an act. It seems like a crazy scheme that shouldn’t work especially as the inspector claims to be educated in a Western university. It turns out however that the inspector is as fake as they are and doesn’t speak a word of English. Not only does he buy the pretence but he actually recommends the teacher for a special US-sponsored fund.

It’s easy to imagine this as a light-hearted, Hong Kong-style comedy of a scam taken to ridiculous extremes. If this were so, that would make for a completely uninteresting work. Instead, this is actually a very cutting portrayal of the nature of corruption both on an institutional level and on a personal one. What is especially impressive is that each of the characters is distinct and the nature of their corruption different. The headmaster for example seems genuinely idealistic and wants only to educate the local children. However he is prepared to accede to one moral compromise after another in order to prevent his school from being shut down, commenting that when one is engaged in a great work, one should not quibble with tiny details. Naturally that the government itself is also corrupt is expected and I am amused that the film uses the Kuomintang government to avoid seeming to blame the Communists but it’s impossible to make a film about corruption without bringing to mind the government that is actually in power.

To me the most fascinating character in this film is the female teacher Zhang Yi Man. The film portrays her as being a libertine who freely uses sex to get what she wants. Society and eventually her fellow teachers punish her for it but I was shocked that the film itself never judges her badly at all for it and she remains something of a child-like figure even to the end. This makes me feel very hopeful for the progressivity of Chinese cinema. The scene in which she is subjected to intense bullying is tough to watch. It’s the clearest indication yet that this is no light-hearted Hong Kong comedy and the stakes are serious. In many films like this, eventually it reaches a point where the farce gets so unreal and ridiculous that you have to wonder why the characters keep trying to keep it up. I really like that in this case they are forced to keep it up at literal gun-point as an example of the extremes that greed for money can drive people to.

Apparently this was adapted from a play and the smallness of its stage is evident. We never see any of the school’s students for example and never venture out of the compound. Yet it makes great use of its limited resources to create a very cogent study on the nature of human corruption. It’s great writing, great filmmaking and I’d recommend it highly.