“A difficult film to pin down, but definitely a showcase for a new and unique voice in Eastern cinema.”

Xinyang Zhang is an aspiring young man. A pupil of Jia Zhangke’s “Next Talent Project” only seven years ago, Zhang overwhelms with a two-and-a-half-hour debut feature that is as impenetrable as it is ambitious, and while not everything he throws at the wall sticks, this portrait of a group of people on the edge of society is at least one hell of a calling card. A long-gestating project, Panda deals with universal themes of loneliness, loss, and trauma in a distinctly Chinese manner, so much so that Western audiences might be grappling for meaning in some of the tableaux Zhang presents. This makes Panda a difficult film to pin down, but definitely a showcase for a new and unique voice in Eastern cinema.

The film follows several people on the fringes of society, and on the banks of the mighty Yangtze River. Set in Nanjing, the river plays a large role in Panda, and its opening scene in which we see a large ferry dock immediately evokes Jia’s Still Life. It’s not the last time the Chinese master comes to mind, as Zhang clearly uses Jia as one of his visual references. With a mix of long, documentary-style shots registering life in what is one of China’s largest cities, and a more formal approach when depicting the lives of this rag-tag bunch of misfits, Panda is a visually arresting film shot almost entirely in black and white under the supervision of DoP Carl Hou, with only a few moments where color is allowed to take over the frame.

This also marks one of the problems of Panda: Zhang tries a lot, perhaps even too much, and not everything works. There seems to be no discernable reason to have a short throwaway scene in a car suddenly be in color, breaking the visual rhythm of the film. The director has several more of these tricks up his sleeve, showing that while he’s undoubtedly talented, his film still has the hallmarks of an ambitious debut. A title card that doesn’t appear until halfway through its lengthy runtime; poetry not just read out in voice-over, but also written on-screen in frame-spanning calligraphy; a POV swimming scene; two characters in conversation reflected in the waters of the river, with the shot flipped upside down. A gorgeous shot, no doubt, but while the river plays an important role in Panda, the shot feels unnecessarily showy.

The film’s focus lies on the humanity of small interpersonal connections. They are given little backstory, if any, but this odd assortment of characters live through their actions. A spiritual healer of sorts who treats people with poetry, a vagabond on a quest to find a dragon, a cook looking for his severed finger, but more importantly the soul of his deceased wife, and a young woman with low self-esteem seeking to break out from under her father’s spell. Their connection is the river, but also their marginalization. These are people who nobody ever looks at twice. Yet through some cosmic fate they collide beside the Yangtze, the river itself a symbol for grief and memory flowing through time. Their connections alleviate some of the pain that is buried inside them, showing that humanity can be found in the most unlikely corners.

While the themes are universal, the way Zhang approaches them is very local. The classical Chinese poetry used throughout the film is evocative, but for Western audiences one cannot help but feel that something is lost in translation here. Likewise the imagery Panda presents for what comes closest to a lead character, the dragon-seeking Arhat (if that is even his real name), is visually striking, but the dragon motif will likely mean more to a Chinese audience. The universal themes prevent the film from being completely impenetrable, and luckily Zhang sprinkles in bits of off-beat humor to keep things lively. The question “Hey Siri, how much does a fingertip cost?” is probably more unusual than anything you have ever asked your AI assistant (surprisingly it comes up with a comprehensive answer). And when was the last time you discussed a dragon’s anus?

In the end, Zhang bites off a little bit more than he can handle. The film’s length becomes unwieldy, and the scattershot narrative, such as it is, sputters to the end. Panda is poetic, and undeniably the work of a great and singular talent, but also one that still needs to hone his skills and learn that sometimes less is more.

(c) Image copyright – Levo Films Pte. Ltd. (Singapore)