Jalainur

The coal mines of Jalainur, in Inner Mongolia, are among the last places in the world where steam trains are still used on a large scale. It provides spectacular pictures of monumental socialist industry: the long plumes of steam left by a locomotive toiling across snow-covered steppes; the fumes spraying across the ground as the train stops; the clouds rising up from a dozen trains in the distance.
In the meantime there’s bitter cold – during shooting, it was regularly 40° below. At the start of Jalainur, two train workers in a locomotive share one glass against the rules. The elder one is soon retiring; the younger man is very fond of him. In a drama that develops calmly and inexorably, he continues to follow in the footsteps of his old colleague who keeps sending him away without much conviction.
Zhao Ye, who previously displayed his poetic visual talent in Ma Wu Jia (2007), shot it on HD. The camera occasionally dives in among the people, for instance when an escaped pig is chased, and sometimes glides past majestically, as in an enormous repair workshop for locomotives. In the meantime, we see fragments of life for Communist workers. The train workers are addressed sternly because of their surreptitious drinking and a traditional music performance attracts hardly any audience – despite the singer’s bold enthusiasm: ‘Come on, let’s go!’ (GT)

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