Hi all,
Want to share my NYR Daily piece on Diao Yinan’s The Wild Goose Lake with you: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/03/14/into-the-uncharted-zone-diao-yinans-the-wild-goose-lake/. You can find out if it is still shown in theaters near you: https://www.filmmovement.com/the-wild-goose-lake.
Source: New York Review Daily (3/14/20)
Into the Uncharted Zone: Diao Yinan’s ‘The Wild Goose Lake’
By Jiwei Xiao
The story of Diao Yinan’s new film, The Wild Goose Lake, is simple, almost allegorical: a man of the underworld is thrust onto a perilous journey to death to redeem himself. Zhou Zenong (Hu Ge) leads a gang that specializes in stealing motorbikes in the streets of Wuhan. After mistakenly killing a cop on the road, Zhou knows he is doomed. So he hatches a scheme to turn the hefty bounty on his head into a final gift for his family. After a botched attempt to get his wife (Wan Qian) to report him to the police, another woman Liu Ai’ai (Gwei Lun-mei), a “bathing beauty,” steps into the accomplice role and helps him finally accomplish the mission against tremendous odds. The film ends with Ai’ai and Zhou’s wife walking together side by side, carrying a bag of cash.
Zhou Zenong is resigned to his imminent death not because the crime squad is particularly capable. In one scene in which Captain Liu (Liao Fan) gathers his team to set up the operation, the officers are so unconfident about using firearms that they ask for retraining. What really makes Zhou sure about his sealed fate is his realization that he has committed an unforgivable crime and that he cannot escape an all-out man hunt in a surveillance society. Continue reading