EIFF 2009: Jalainur

Jalainur is a surreal vision of reality caught between past and future, foreshadowing the nostalgia that will set in when Old China disappears in the turbulent social transformations of her backcountry. Jalainur is a coal mine in Inner Mongolia, where endless, maddening cyan skies, geometrical Socialist infrastructure and a romantic cavalry of train signalmen coexist in crumbling harmony. This is one of the last operating steam train networks in the world, and a retiring technician named Zhu is the perfect symbol for the Chinese people at a critical juncture in their history. We follow the protagonist and his inseparable apprentice, Zhizhong, across the countryside, catching some of the most beautiful, incongruous and absurd sights along the way. Stringing together this largely symbolic film is the Confucian tale of these men, unlikely and perhaps unwilling travelling companions, who retain a large degree of interiority. However eloquent its visual poetry, Jalainur practices an inaccessible art, not entertainment. Writer/director Zhao Ye chooses to eulogise a land which barely exists any more, and without offering substantive characters in which to become invested, there's little reason for an alien audience to care. Beautiful, boring, Jalainur has substance, but won't be to everyone's taste.