Document Type
Article
Article Version
Publisher's PDF
Publication Date
2015
Abstract
Composed of four stories adapted from real-life incidents of violence spanning the first decade of China’s 21st century, Jia Zhangke’s 2013 film A Touch of Sin presents violence not as isolated incidents of individual crimes but as something fated to happen as a result of profound changes brought about by contemporary Chinese modernization and urbanization. In the film, Jia puts the whole society on trial by using theatrical artifice and by weaving seemingly unrelated characters into a larger tapestry of social ills and moral “sins.” Formally, A Touch of Sin marks a new chapter in Jia’s filmmaking career. The film is self-reflexive, anthologizing, and formally eclectic, marked by profuse self-references as well as an attempt at aesthetic hybridization. While demonstrating a style that is unmistakably his own, Jia experiments with techniques he felicitously adapts from literature, theatre, painting, and other art forms, both Chinese and Western.
Publication Title
Film Quarterly
Repository Citation
Xiao, Jiwei, "China Unraveled: Violence, Sin and Art in Jia Zhangke’s Touch of Sin" (2015). Modern Languages & Literature Faculty Publications. 33.
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/modernlanguagesandliterature-facultypubs/33
Published Citation
Xiao, Jiwei. “China Unraveled: Violence, Sin and Art in Jia Zhangke’s Touch of Sin,” Film Quarterly, 68.4, 2015 (Summer): 24-35.
DOI
10.1525/fq.2015.68.4.24
Peer Reviewed
Comments
© 2015 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
The final publisher PDF has been archived here with permission from the copyright holder.