Qi Qiu – Balloon Directed by Pema Tseden
Qi Qiu – Balloon
Directed by Pema Tseden
Cast: Sonam Wangmo, Jinpa, Yangshik Tso
Place of origin: China
Year 2019
Author review: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
“What is useful to if not gives birth?”
The Four Harmonious Brothers are a tale of Buddhist mythology.
In front of a tree, there were four animals: elephant, monkey, pheasant and hare. They were discussing who was the oldest. The results were accepted by all and they became friends. They learned to support each other: the elephant carried the monkey, on whose shoulders stood the hare and on it the pheasant.
They are the four harmonious brothers. They were an inspiration for the inhabitants of the forest.
Their brotherhood, mutual help, without hierarchy or individuality was a model.
This Buddha story is the allegory of harmony among different species. The family is the typical example: two distinct persons, originally from heterogeneous backgrounds, get married, live together and have children. In addition, the elderly belong to the household, because they need new generations to care for them.
The Buddhist harmony of the family is destroyed when external influences, false modernists are infiltrated in ancient traditions. The consequence is the destruction.
The director Pema Tseden and the actor Jinpa after the premier of the movie Qiqiu - Balloon, Venice Film Festival 2019 ©www.popcinema.org
The Four Harmonious Brothers is mentioned in the film Qi Qiu - Balloon directed by Pema Tseden and presented at the 76th Venice Film Festival.
Last year, Pema Tseden was in in Venice Film Festival, with the beautiful Jinpa, located in a dreamlike Tibet.
Qi Qiu is more realistic and has a political narrative.
In the 1980s, birth control in China was tightened even in Tibet.
The family of Dargye and Drolkar, farmers in the Tibetan countryside, consists, besides them, of the grandfather, and three children. They are poor but serene, living with the principles of nature and spirituality.
Unfortunately, the doctors and officials of the Chinese party have infiltrated, even in remote villages, to follow the strict surveillance contraceptive. Giving birth to a baby is a felony. Therefore, they massively distribute condoms.
Long-shot, a man rides a motorbike, the image is blurred. The camera moves sideways in both sides. Children run with balloons. The toys were the cause of vision not in focus. Balloons are not common ones of birthdays. They are condoms and overlapping with nature, preventing to look at events with pure and simple eyes.
The grandfather dies. The Lama predicts: he will be reincarnated inside the family. In fact, Drolkar is pregnant, but she does not want the baby, she wants to have an abortion. She breaks traditions. The guilt is the damn modern idea, the doctor is just a bureaucrat of the central government and brainwashes her: “What meaning has to have many children these days?
The refusal of the wife shocks Dargye because the newborn would be the transmigration of the grandfather, so he cries and pleads her. Drolkar is inflexible, without mercy, without love. She disowns her husband and children, and she enters into a monastery with her sister. The four harmonious brothers vanish out of selfishness.
The subjects are those of Tibetan culture, both of society and of mysticism.
Religious is the concept of reincarnation. Social is the misery and the colonialist laws coming from afar:
“I wanted to explore the relationship between soul and reality. Tibetan people revere the human’s soul as immortal and believe in reincarnation. I want to tell a story about the human predicament where the soul clashes with reality.” (1)
In the background is the charm of Tibet, its simplicity despite poverty:
“The reality contains both the poverty of Tibetan families and Tibetan women’s rebellion against traditional concepts of childbirth.“ (1)
There are doubts about the awareness of the role of women. Tradition is collapsed in the comparison of an unawareness atheism
“Today most Tibetan women live a traditional way of life and play traditional roles. They keep their faith and endure all hardships. It is not difficult to imagine the predicament they face when they start to awaken and get in conflict with the current conventions.” (1)
Reflections are political, social, anthropological but certainly not realistic.
The dictatorial context of Chinese birth control is the motivation to represent a world in deep transformation. The attacks arrive from a ruthless Enlightenment, even at the borders of the empire. Nowadays, elephant, monkey, pheasant and hare do not exist.
Dargye and Drolkar are not the same. They have opposite thoughts and attachments.
Dargye is genuine, extravagant, perhaps banal, but he is human, feels the religious responsibility of his behaviour and is capable of loving. The grief for the loss of his father makes him very sad, he suffers, he despairs.
Drolkar is the contrary. Her mind is lost, she is drugged by the dogma of science. She is ungrateful with her family. The conclusion is reprehensible: abandon everyone.
The author creates a connection between the mutton - and his task of impregnating the sheep - and Dargye "you do not have a husband, you have a mutton." The metaphor is linear, the link between men and animals is important, both have the function of harmonizing the universe, together with women. How is it possible to get confused?
In television, there is a report about the birth of children in a test tube. The grandfather orders to turn it off. It is the mutton that gives life, not a medical laboratory.
And the animal must do it discreetly, confidentially. In fact, when mating with a sheep, the grandfather forbids kids to watch.
The mutton is the custom, the legend, the transcendence. Science means only the alteration of humanity. A man and a woman can procreate a baby, who could be simultaneously the reincarnation of an ancestor. A child born in a test tube of who could be reincarnation? Of a graduated cylinder?
The family of Dargye and Drolkar is a microcosm, the representation of existence, nature, death and the cycle of life.
The film is poetic, metaphysical, fortunately without logic, except for the doctor and Drolkar.
The atmosphere is poetic, thanks Tibetan music and the surreal images such as walking upside down on the sky.
Light is refined, elegant all times.
In the house the lighting is insufficient, it is dark, and the only source of brightness is the stove.
Outdoors the colours are luminous but often blurry.
There are many long-shots to describe the beauty of the mountains, nature, the landscape.
Editing is essential, plan-sequences are emotional.
Dargye and the Lama are talking. The camera for respect is outside the room. The scene is framed between two curtains. There are Dargye and his son, on their knees.
This fragment is the description of the energy of religiosity in people. To get it we need to have an open heart, like the director in shooting this poem.
Then there are the balloons. China has filled the Tibetan houses with contraceptive.
"In the first scene we started with the balloon, actually, it is a condom, to see the world. I wanted to open through this point of view because so the audience would watch the story as a child observes the world through a balloon." (2)
Kids are brilliant, intelligent and practical. The condom is exclusively a balloon that flew into the sky. In the end, two red balloons are left by the children, one of them gets shot but the other one flies up towards the sun.
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