In the late 80s and early 90s, when China finally started freeing up its people from the shackles of Communism, handfuls of brilliant genius students were plucked from the countryside and brought to the US on scholarships. Given the literally one-in-a-million opportunity to pursue PhD's in the land of the free, these kids came over with positive, often inflated notions of what living in America would be like. "It's a culture that is at once seductive and impenetrable," says Chen Shi-Zheng, the director of Dark Matter.
*Dark Matter *put the final touches on the SF portion of the Int'l Asian American Film Fest that's been going on here in the Bay area for the past week. It was Chen's debut movie, but you would never know it because the guy's background as a renowned Chinese opera director gives him a giant leg up in understanding how the aesthetics of theater could apply to film. He had so many awesome solo shots of the main character, Liu Xing, against otherwise common backgrounds, like a school hallway or an outdoor staircase. Chen just knew how to make these scenes look breathtaking. He also must have mad connections in the industry, because he got Meryl Streep and Aidan Quinn to play lead roles in the film.
Besides its invariably tragic ending, here's why I think the Film Fest guys picked this one for closing night:
The experience that Liu Xing had at this American university is no doubt very similar--albeit slightly unusual in its extremity--to the one many brilliant yet culturally unadapted foreign students have when they come here. They come here with the expectation that they can be who they want to be here, and that they are free to study and think as they choose. They're not only ecstatic to be escaping from a society that demands thought control of its citizens, but the idea of being able to work with famous experts in their field who advocate free thinking and debate is exhilarating.
But then things aren't always as pretty as they seem, and you find out that America's competitive nature can be debilitating and hurtful. Liu Xing finds this out very quickly, when his professor shuts down his project because it threatens his own. Ultimately,the professor gives all the kudos to the other Chinese guy, the one that sucks up to him and treats him like God. So Liu Xing doesn't really know where to go from there. Does he have to compromise his thoughts and theories in order to get the approval he needs to move on? The answer is a rhetorical yes, which makes freedom in America not so much greater than China, after all.
This is based on a true story about a Chinese PhD student named Lu Gang who went on a shooting spree at Iowa University in 1991. "The media reduced this incident to the boilerplate story of a social misfit driven off the deep end by competitive pressures," Chen says. "But I knew there was more to it than this." Here, then is Chen's exploration of the complexities behind the tragedy.
