Aftershock is a film that goes about exploring its characters, after a terrific happening of both grief and consequence occurred in their lives, in a straight up and in the most diligent of manners. There are few tricks, no long nor drawn out nor overly expansive arcs; nor are there masses of supporting acts coming and going and all having to go through rigmarole to make the same point - just sharp, up-front and refreshingly honest portrayals of post traumatic stress disorders and that of grievances that tie together a mere handful of character - some people call it inadvertent melodrama, I call it the refreshing antithesis to meandering, pandering drudge such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button or Magnolia.
The film's sense of unavoidable gloom, indeed impending disaster, is present in the opening sequence; a swarm of dragon flies seemingly uncharacteristically flocking away from a freight train yard and towards a level crossing pausing for one of those trains chugging by. Those exposed to the open air, that is to say those not within the confines of an automobile or the cab of a lorry, look on pensively; caught in a situation that could escalate into something much more unpleasant by the barriers in-front of them that prevent them escape. This is 1976, and the Chinese city of Tangshan; a searing summer sees a family of four consisting of mother Yuan Ni (Xu), with her husband, looking over their young children barely ten or so in daughter Fang Deng (Zhang) and son Fang Da (Li). The family operate happily together, the purchase of an item as simple or indeed as humbling as an electric fan for these hot summer evenings bringing about much joy; Fang's victimisation at the hands of some equally young bullies whom he knows from here and there in stark comparison to his sister's empowered ability to stand up to them and effectively foil them so as to allow both their escape.
Such a happening is symptomatic with young Fang Deng, a fighter and a brave person whose attitude sees them thrust down onto a separate path as to what life would almost have certainly had in store for her had certain events not interfered. Then there is the item of that natural disaster; a harrowing, alarming and really rather affecting sequence of events treading a fine line between what makes for high-end drama and just full on horror; a sequence of events which in no way attempts to water down the scenario of death and destruction on a mass scale nor indeed eroticise content consisting of masses of buildings being torn down and people caught up in the midst of it. If criticism arose however many number of years ago citing a human-beings' inability to outrun explosions and what-not, Aftershock is very much the antithesis to any Hollywoodised action-come-disaster film feeding off of that suspended belief that humans can, in fact, out run natural disasters or fireballs born out of whatever; hanging back to focus on what we can only speculate truly happens to those caught up and consequently perished amidst the chaos. One gripe which usually arises during said above filmic procedures comes in the form of characters often knowing precisely where to run, or where to go in regards to being able to escape such a scenario; Aftershock's emphasis on hapless Chinese citizens just blindly turning left and right in desperate attempts to escape the carnage is what particularly resonates.
In effect, the titular aftershocks are the events and revelations born out of this infamous, true-to-life Earthquake which went on to dramatically shape lives despite being an initial event grossly indebted to ending many others. These are aftershocks beginning in the aforementioned 1976 before broadening out across the 1980s and 90s, each tiny event and happening very much character and action imbued in that the fallout from the earthquake has its own specific tremor, or ripple, on the lives of Yuan and her son as they live on with the presumption Fang Deng died that day. Her adoption, following a series of unfortunate incidences, by a married pair of rather loving Chinese soldiers from such an era of Communism; oppression and whatnot, sees her future foster parents watch on from within a makeshift orphanage through a small rectangular slat at Fang sitting on a crude stool, eerily echoing that of hundreds of now parent-less kids watching on in similar fashion at a film playing on a large screen in this, a makeshift cinema.
To a fair old degree, Xiaogang Feng's film owes a great debt to that of Oliver Stone's 2006 piece World Trade Centre; a film utilising a tragedy, in doing so constructing the occurrence of which poignantly and dramatically in equal measure, before going on to zero in on a handful of people whose lives are shaped in the aftermath of such an event. The films' time-frames are incomparably variable, one spread out over a handful of decades with the other a mere few days at the most; but the films are indelibly linked by a burning sense of everlasting tragedy born out of the break up of, or potential of, a family unit. Where both great terror and drama was wedged out of Stone's situating of his core characters underneath that of skyscraper rubble, Feng's film effectively goes on to cover the lives of those under an emotional array of rubble; a more metaphorical sense of being trapped under that of refuse and waste with what terrific happenings in the past having its effect down the ages. The results are resounding, an engrossing character drama posing, or perhaps sold, as a disaster movie whose idea of great drama is not 'the event' itself but but how a broken family strive to survive their newfound new order, in what is an amply played character drama.
The film's sense of unavoidable gloom, indeed impending disaster, is present in the opening sequence; a swarm of dragon flies seemingly uncharacteristically flocking away from a freight train yard and towards a level crossing pausing for one of those trains chugging by. Those exposed to the open air, that is to say those not within the confines of an automobile or the cab of a lorry, look on pensively; caught in a situation that could escalate into something much more unpleasant by the barriers in-front of them that prevent them escape. This is 1976, and the Chinese city of Tangshan; a searing summer sees a family of four consisting of mother Yuan Ni (Xu), with her husband, looking over their young children barely ten or so in daughter Fang Deng (Zhang) and son Fang Da (Li). The family operate happily together, the purchase of an item as simple or indeed as humbling as an electric fan for these hot summer evenings bringing about much joy; Fang's victimisation at the hands of some equally young bullies whom he knows from here and there in stark comparison to his sister's empowered ability to stand up to them and effectively foil them so as to allow both their escape.
Such a happening is symptomatic with young Fang Deng, a fighter and a brave person whose attitude sees them thrust down onto a separate path as to what life would almost have certainly had in store for her had certain events not interfered. Then there is the item of that natural disaster; a harrowing, alarming and really rather affecting sequence of events treading a fine line between what makes for high-end drama and just full on horror; a sequence of events which in no way attempts to water down the scenario of death and destruction on a mass scale nor indeed eroticise content consisting of masses of buildings being torn down and people caught up in the midst of it. If criticism arose however many number of years ago citing a human-beings' inability to outrun explosions and what-not, Aftershock is very much the antithesis to any Hollywoodised action-come-disaster film feeding off of that suspended belief that humans can, in fact, out run natural disasters or fireballs born out of whatever; hanging back to focus on what we can only speculate truly happens to those caught up and consequently perished amidst the chaos. One gripe which usually arises during said above filmic procedures comes in the form of characters often knowing precisely where to run, or where to go in regards to being able to escape such a scenario; Aftershock's emphasis on hapless Chinese citizens just blindly turning left and right in desperate attempts to escape the carnage is what particularly resonates.
In effect, the titular aftershocks are the events and revelations born out of this infamous, true-to-life Earthquake which went on to dramatically shape lives despite being an initial event grossly indebted to ending many others. These are aftershocks beginning in the aforementioned 1976 before broadening out across the 1980s and 90s, each tiny event and happening very much character and action imbued in that the fallout from the earthquake has its own specific tremor, or ripple, on the lives of Yuan and her son as they live on with the presumption Fang Deng died that day. Her adoption, following a series of unfortunate incidences, by a married pair of rather loving Chinese soldiers from such an era of Communism; oppression and whatnot, sees her future foster parents watch on from within a makeshift orphanage through a small rectangular slat at Fang sitting on a crude stool, eerily echoing that of hundreds of now parent-less kids watching on in similar fashion at a film playing on a large screen in this, a makeshift cinema.
To a fair old degree, Xiaogang Feng's film owes a great debt to that of Oliver Stone's 2006 piece World Trade Centre; a film utilising a tragedy, in doing so constructing the occurrence of which poignantly and dramatically in equal measure, before going on to zero in on a handful of people whose lives are shaped in the aftermath of such an event. The films' time-frames are incomparably variable, one spread out over a handful of decades with the other a mere few days at the most; but the films are indelibly linked by a burning sense of everlasting tragedy born out of the break up of, or potential of, a family unit. Where both great terror and drama was wedged out of Stone's situating of his core characters underneath that of skyscraper rubble, Feng's film effectively goes on to cover the lives of those under an emotional array of rubble; a more metaphorical sense of being trapped under that of refuse and waste with what terrific happenings in the past having its effect down the ages. The results are resounding, an engrossing character drama posing, or perhaps sold, as a disaster movie whose idea of great drama is not 'the event' itself but but how a broken family strive to survive their newfound new order, in what is an amply played character drama.