Time and the impossibility of reconstructing the past form the themes that bring together the three stories in Erdos Rider – just as previously in Wang Haolin’s 2009 film The Land (at that time the director used the name He Jia). Truth is hidden among the interwoven stories, a voice tells us at the start of the film. Or maybe there is no truth in the world.
Wang takes us from the expansive plains of Mongolia, where the desert lets people disappear and archaeologists dig looking for the past, past the tombs of Genghis Khan to a hotel room in Beijing, where a flirt turns out to be a mistake for the umpteenth time. Encounters in which clumsiness and cruelty but above all sorrow come to the fore, even though the film has a light-hearted tone in spite of the drama.
Referring to Le ballon rouge and The Red Shoes, Wang uses the colour red to allow sorrow to resonate. Erdos Rider poses the question whether digging up all that history is such a good idea. Some things, says a policeman who should know, are better left buried in the desert.
Film details
- Country of production
- China
- Year
- 2014
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2015
- Length
- 86'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
