Guo Feng: Lingyu Ruan and the weight of the past

Is it worth your time?

If you have the patience for black-and-white silent-era aesthetics and don't mind a story that moves at the speed of a gentle breeze, then sure. It's for the film history nerds and people who want to see Lingyu Ruan at work before the tragedy of her own life took over. If you need explosions or a tight, snappy plot, you will be bored out of your skull within ten minutes. 🎞️

There is something about the way these older films frame a face. It feels like they were trying to capture a soul instead of just a performance. Ruan has this way of looking at the camera where you feel like she’s already ten miles away, thinking about something else entirely.

The student life, but make it heavy

The movie isn't really interested in the typical 'campus life' tropes. It’s more about that stifling feeling of living in a country that is changing faster than you can keep up with. Sometimes the dialogue feels like it’s being shouted into a void, which is probably the point.

I caught myself staring at the background extras during one scene. Half of them look like they were told to just stand there and be 'studious' until the sun went down. It gives the whole thing a weirdly hollow, staged feeling, like the sets were just shells. It’s not necessarily bad, just… oddly thin.

If you like this, you might find some weird, distant echoes in something like The Virgin, though they are very different animals. The pacing here is definitely not for the modern viewer. There are moments where you think the film has just given up on moving the plot forward, and it just hangs out in a classroom for an eternity.

Bits and pieces

• The lighting is either too sharp or completely washing everyone out.
• The music choice feels like it was tacked on by someone who hadn't seen the scene beforehand.
• Ruan’s performance is the only reason this isn't just a boring lecture on social duty.
• There is a scene near the middle that goes on for about 40 seconds too long, and it just starts to feel like a home movie.

It’s not a masterpiece. It’s a relic. But it’s a relic that knows exactly what it’s trying to do, even if it trips over its own feet a few times to get there. Sometimes I wonder if they knew we’d be watching this nearly a century later, picking apart the grain and the shadows. Probably not. That makes it feel even more like a private conversation you weren't invited to.

It's messy. It’s a bit disjointed. But it’s got a pulse, which is more than I can say for most of the stuff I see these days. 🕯️