Wang Bing’s Epic Journey through the Textile Workshop Continues

The middle installment of a trilogy consisting of 2023’s “Youth (Spring)” and the upcoming “Youth (Homecoming),” “Youth (Hard Times)” accentuates the strengths of Wang Bing’s latest epic documentary project. “Hard Times” maintains the repetitive structure of “Spring,” while subtly shifting focus and presenting more incidents and consequential actions. Despite the increased activity, viewers can still expect sequences where people hum along to music from their phones while working, one surprising moment featuring an electronic track sampling The Offspring’s “Original Prankster.”

For those unfamiliar with Wang’s work, slowness and a seemingly aimless pace are trademarks. He embeds himself in the lives of his subjects, sometimes for years, using his camera to capture the everyday rhythm of a community. His documentaries are purely observational, digging deep into the challenging truths about China’s past and present.

The “Youth” series, filmed from 2014 to 2019, immerses viewers in the textile workshops of Zhili, a town in the Wuxing District of Huzhou. Zhili is notorious for its privately-run sweatshops, most located on ironically named Happiness Road. While onscreen text demarcates each space, the subtle differences between these cramped offices and dormitories are nearly imperceptible.

Most employees are economic migrants from the nearby Anhui province, working under harsh conditions to provide for basic necessities. The primarily young workforce, comprising teenagers and twentysomethings, manage to carve out social interactions during their grueling 15-hour shifts. Amid the backdrop of constant sewing and machine humming, moments of connection surface, with pop music from phones serving as a soundtrack.

Though both films have a slow pace, the workers toil at breakneck speeds to increase their earnings, paid meager rates per completed item. Amid their interactions, they mess around, flirt, argue, philosophize, and fight. While names, ages, and hometowns appear onscreen, Wang depicts them as a collective, without highlighting explicit protagonists, even though some individuals do receive more focus and reappear in subsequent installments.

In “Spring,” Wang emphasized the social aspects of the workshops, with wage negotiations emerging about 90 minutes into the three-and-a-half-hour film. “Hard Times,” running 227 minutes and mostly set in 2015 leading up to New Year, highlights the material conditions sustaining this world. True to the title, “Hard Times” is far from ironic.

The film showcases more immediate confrontations for better pay. One young worker physically clashes with management after losing his notebook logging his tallies and days worked. The boss, lacking any backup records and not accepting the employee’s phone photos, withholds pay until the notebook is found — despite admitting the worker is owed money.

Children appear in these workshops due to the lack of childcare options for working parents. One group of workers witnesses from a concrete complex as their indebted boss and his family assault a supplier on the street below. Some shops close abruptly as owners flee with money and records, precipitating financial and housing crises. The indifferent landlord offers no help to those left in dire straits by the dishonest management.

Recurring themes in “Hard Times” include the loss of dignity, though some manage to reclaim some control over how their lives are documented. Occasionally, the observational barrier between Wang (or fellow camera operators) and the workers briefly dissolves. One humorous instance occurs when a worker in a lively meeting turns to the camera saying, “Fuck, don’t film this!”

Whether it was Wang himself or one of his five credited camerapeople behind the handheld camera in that moment, this fourth-wall break might be a self-aware jest from Wang. In another instance, an older man climbing stairs at night turns to the camera, saying, “You should be filming the workshop. They’re not working right now… trying to make a deal with the boss.”

That group discussion was captured by another camera, inserting a moment of levity amid the gloom. These subtle intrusions into the observational barrier make one wonder if “Homecoming” — the final and shortest part of Wang’s engrossing series — might further tweak this formula.

Source: IndieWire