To Live to Sing

Film description

A small theater in the suburbs of Chengdu is intended for demolition along with nearby buildings to make way for a new housing estate. Zhao Li, the leader of the Sichuan opera troupe, deals with government institutions as well as the internal disintegration within the group of actors who are starting to look for more stable and profitable work. Opening a restaurant with the extremely popular Sichuan hot pot and entertaining customers with a traditional performance of "face-changing" seems to be an increasingly alluring alternative, although it would mean abandoning opera art. Every evening, the troupe reenacts classic plays for an audience consisting of elderly people, while bulldozers systematically change their homes into rubble. The transience and fragility of the world blurs the boundary between stage fiction and everyday life ...

After the outstanding Berlinale-premiered debut, "Old Stone" (2016), Johnny Ma in "To Live to Sing" returns to the topic of the confrontation between the individual and the state institution, the conflict of tradition with modernity and human morality with extreme capitalism. The director observes the phenomenon of accelerated modernization in China, rendering the characters of his films completely unsuitable to the fast-paced, centrally-imposed changes. In "To Live to Sing" fatalistic Sichuan opera plays narratives penetrate the reality of the main character. Devoid of fantastic costume, the story touches upon the unchanging aspects of life in China and the process of accepting transience.

Maja Korbecka