A Touch of Sin

A TOUCH OF SIN IS A CRUDE SLICE OF CHINA TODAY

If you want to understand contemporary China, you can take a tour, read books, or for real depth, you must see A Touch of Sin (Tian zhu ding), directed by Zhangke Jia. In French realism style, four main characters are portrayed as if in real life, without commentary or even clear divisions between separate stories, based on events well known to Chinese: (1) A rural villager in his 60s who believes that the local millionaire is corrupt. (2) A 30ish migrant worker is trigger happy, shooting anyone to survive. (3) A 20ish receptionist in a massage parlor, after attracting love from a married man who fears divorcing his jealous wife, has to fend off a patron who demands sex with her. (4) A late teenager accidentally cuts himself at a garment factory and then tries to seek employment elsewhere in a big city. Rural areas, small towns, and metropolises lack a sense of law and order; power is wielded by the one with the gun or the goons. Traditional Chinese customs persist to unify, but ruthless capitalism rules. Character development is extraordinary, particularly in revealing an intense alienation and rootlessness which Karl Marx decried as the hallmark of exploitative capitalism. The film serves as an indelible critique of how China is “building socialism.”  MH

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