Movie: Aftershock
Director: Xiaogang Feng
Cast: Fan Xu, Chen Li, Yi Lu and Jingchu Zhang
Rating: ***1/2
One of the top 10 highest grossing films of China, “Aftershock” isn’t your typical disaster movie, but an effort to shed light on a family that got separated during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that claimed nearly 2,40,000 lives. It’s the story of a mother, who is forced to choose between her son and daughter as the rescue workers can only save one among them.
Dad (Zhang Guoqiang) is a factory worker, Mom (Xu Fan) is a sempstress, and Fang Deng and Fang Dan are their kids, one boy and one girl. The quake kills the father, leaving the mother in a dilemma to choose between her son and daughter since both have been stuck under one giant concrete block, and the rescuers can only save one. She chooses the son, unaware that her daughter will return years later to confront her.
It’s probably one of the slowest films you may have ever come across, but that doesn’t make it any less engaging. Instead of focusing on the damage caused by the quake, director Feng takes us through the aftershock of the calamity on a particular family and its members.
The story unfolds over a period of 30 years focusing on the parallel lives of the family members. While the daughter is raised by an army couple, who become her foster parents; Fang Deng and his mother stay together. It helps us understand how the victims of one of the worst earthquakes in the history of mankind take control of their lives with the trauma of the disaster imprinted in their hearts. This is a story of resilience and hope, not just for the people who survived the quake, but also for the people out there whose lives and families have been wrecked by disasters, to stand up and stand strong.
Feng walks a tight rope between facts and fiction. He paints the fictional story against the backdrop of facts and, therefore it instantly connects with the viewers. The film doesn’t want you to mourn for the dead, instead teaches to take life as it comes and move on. A special mention should go out to the director for breathing a sense of optimism in a story that’s plagued by tragedy. Feng captures repercussion of the quake with utmost sentimentality with the help of slow-mo shots and a mournful score that almost turns gooey at one point.
As a viewer you can connect with Feng’s characters more on an emotional level, empathize with in their joys and sorrows, trials and tribulations, hopes and anxieties. Each character is different from one another even though they belong to the same family, but they shares equal amount of grief and fear.
As the title suggests, “Aftershock” is indeed the story of a family reeling from a quake, and what happens to each one when they eventually come together. This is the first IMAX film of China, and one could only imagine how grandeur the quake episode might have appeared on screen.
