Courtesy Film Movement
Though the messaging of director/writer Ruijun Li’s slow but poignant Return to Dust is not what you’d call subtle, the sweeping shots of rural China as contrasted by the encroaching modernity of the cold, unfeeling city and its accoutrements begin to feel like a siren call for simplicity. It’s not hard to find beauty in Li’s measured tale, and though the filmmaker takes his time in hitting his conclusion, its themes reveal themselves to be universal as they illustrate that love needn’t always be a sexy explosive fire bolt—maybe the better stuff comes as a slow burn.
Simple or no, Li’s minimalist film does feel like it was informed by the filmic epics in its cinematography, particularly in the grand scope of how it portrays familial frustrations and country vistas—the lands that sprawl out seemingly forever beyond the confines of one tiny village; the people who stay there, leave there, resent it or love it. In this village, aging farmer Ma (Renlin Wu) is entered into an arranged marriage with the weakly and timid Cao (Hai Qing). Both families seem thrilled to foist off their outwardly stranger relatives, hiding cruel indifference behind a somewhat common Chinese cultural norm and leaving the pair to await condescension at nearly every turn.
Ma, for example, is defined by slow, introverted movements and obliviousness to the pace of the world around him. This seems to drive the people in his orbit mad, but he’s almost secretly capable and wise, which he most often proves by keeping his mouth shut. Cao, meanwhile, suffers from incontinence and epic timidity, but the light in her smile eschews the idea that her issues make her lesser. As houses long abandoned are torn down throughout their village, Ma and Cao begin to build their own home using the old ways: mud bricks and straw insulation. The land around them once thought inhospitable accepts the seeds they plant. It, like Ma and Cao, flourishes once it has the proper attention.
No spoilers, but the conclusion of Return to Dust—one that feels all at once so heartbreakingly disappointing for its characters while ultimately unavoidable, and one openly critical of the Chinese government—was reportedly censored in China with a text crawl. Its US release, which remains untouched, will play in a limited engagement at the Jean Cocteau Cinema from Friday, Aug. 4-Sunday, Aug. 6.
8
+Gorgeously considered; powerful
-Slow to a fault at times
Return to Dust
Directed by Li
With Renlin and Qing
Jean Cocteau Cinema, R, 131 min.
