One of the earth-shaking feature debuts in the history of Chinese cinema, Kevin Feng Ke’s Letters from Death Row [Ba Bai Bang] provides an unique perspective on China’s death row inmates that rejects both sentimentality and voguish cynicism. Its unflinching, but also warmly accommodating, outlook on prison life attracted Taiwanese veteran filmmaker Hsu Hsiao Ming (a long time collaborator of Hou Hsiao Hsieh and Peggie Chiao) to take on the role as executive-producer of Ke’s film. Ironically, the Chinese title is as much as a response to Truffaut’s debut The 400 Blows as it means 800 Blows in Chinese.
The overall impact is powerful and undeniably moving. The fragile, impossible love that suggests itself delicately between the two prisoners, as they broadcast letters over the radio, takes on a real poignancy with the reality of death possibly only a day or two away. For the same reason, this is so much more than a simple love story, it's also a meditation on how the knowledge of impending death forces us to question our lives, and how everything - such as the touch of another human being takes on a new and sharper focus.
Interestingly and importantly it is not a judgmental film. The camera instead holds a steady eye up to the lives of these prisoners, whose lives literally hang in the balance, and invites the audience to draw its own conclusions on the effectiveness and/or moral justification of capital punishment.
That said, the "steady eye" approach does give the impression of certain scenes going on for a bit too long, which for some people (especially buyers) can test patience. Clearly the film is what it is - slow-burning and contemplative, rather than fast and action-packed. It needs to be more pace, for example one of the opening scenes with the top dog acting as "judge" needs to be much brisker and perhaps even broken up to give more sense of fluidity.
One discovers in this picture a raw and complicated emotional core which, as in the films of John Cassavetes, Maurice Pialat, and the Dardenne brothers, among others, reveals upon closer examination a remarkably rigorous visual aesthetic, and a facility of direction which lifts both seasoned actors and debut amateurs to the level of greatness.
- Piers Handling
