Editor-in-Chief Rhea Chalak reviews Chinese-language film Buddha Mountain (2010), directed by Li Yu and starring Fan Bing Bing.

This year’s SGIFF honoured Chinese superstar, actor and producer Fan Bing Bing with the Cinema Icon Award, recognising her immense contribution to cinema. As a result of this award, there was a special presentation of three films that the actress starred in, one of which being Buddha Mountain (2010). 

The film follows three friends, Ding Bo (Chen Bolin), Nan Feng (Fan Bingbing) and Fei Zao aka Fatso (Fei Long), who appear to exist on the fringe of society, abandoning the typical route of examinations and university for an assortment of odd jobs instead. When their apartment is to be demolished and they are forced to find a new home to live in, they answer an ad placed by a retired Chinese opera singer Chang Yue Qin (Sylvia Chang), who is in the midst of mourning her deceased son. The film presents these four divergent characters, all haunted by their grievances, and displays how they clash and yet also fill the chasms present in each other’s lives. They start with conflict in their cohabitation, with the trio encroaching on Teacher Chang’s privacy and personal space, and Teacher Chang disagreeing and scolding them over lifestyle choices and whatnot. These clashes and disagreements lead to a strange settling into roles of a family, almost, with Teacher Chang rediscovering motherhood through her relationship with the youth, and the youth also looking after her and towards her as a parent and source of comfort. 

What makes this film truly powerful is the beautiful manner in which it depicts the found family trope. All the characters have lost someone or something: Teacher Chang lost her son, Ding Bo lost his mother and has a difficult relationship with his father, Nan Feng struggles with her relationship with her parents and Fatso briefly mentions familial issues as well. While these characters also make peace with these issues that continue to reappear in their lives, the film appears to posit how it is not the past that needs to be altered or made amends with but rather the present relationships and how these influence one’s future. Though the characters have lost something, they have found each other. The relationship I found especially tender was that between Nan Feng and Teacher Chang: the way Nan Feng would crawl into bed with Teacher Chang like a child looking for her mother after a nightmare-filled sleep, and the way Teacher Chang would make room for Nan Feng to fold into her. A scene so subtle, but yet truly moving and beautiful in simply presenting the vulnerabilities the characters expose about themselves. 

Mountains play a pivotal role in the film. The title directly refers to the actual mountain affected during the earthquake, and the film revolves around the aftermath of an earthquake that took place within that region — we discover as we watch that Teacher Chang’s son passed away during this earthquake. On that mountain, alongside the deaths and destruction, a temple honouring the Goddess was also destroyed. This newfound family comes together to rebuild not just the gaps within their lives but the temple too. The temple stands anew, withstanding the tests of time to persevere. So do the people who build it. The bustling and hectic nature of the film and the jobs the youth work — the signature of existence in a city of any sort — are broken away and dissipated by wordless scenes of these mountainscapes. The youth spend their time escaping the city they work in and train-hopping, cutting through the mountains. These scenes are invigorating, moments of calmness and almost meditative ecstasy that the characters crave. At the same time, the length of these scenes breaks the momentum and narrative flow of the film and creates a strange irregularity in its flow that does not feel wholly beneficial. The scenes of the mountain are clearly necessary in a film titled after the very mountain. However, it feels that the way they were edited or arranged within the chronology of the film could have been streamlined or cut down to have the same effect but with greater impact and less hazy confusion.

I don’t speak Mandarin myself, but I learned from my friends who speak the language that the translated title Buddha Mountain does not reflect the true meaning of the Mandarin title. The actual name of the film in Chinese — 观音山 — does not translate to Buddha Mountain but rather Guan Yin Mountain. For cultural context, Guan Yin is a prominent Bodhisattva (one with a spontaneous wish and compassionate mind to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings) in the Eastern Asian renditions of Buddhism, associated with representing Compassion. She is believed to have miraculous powers that help all those who worship her. This mistranslation somewhat alters the meaning of the title and therefore the interpretation of the film. While it directly refers to this temple that is rebuilt throughout the film, with the original meaning of the title it appears that Teacher Chang is Guan Yin. She watches over these children who are not hers by birth and guides them on their journeys. Sylvia Chang displays a powerful performance as the flawed and tortured landlady who becomes a beacon of resilience and fierce selflessness. Unlike Guan Yin, she is a human who is burdened with her miseries and pains. Like Guan Yin, however, she guides her tenants-turned-foster-children as they cross over this journey of their youth to attain maturity and understanding. At the end of the film, Nan Feng finally understands and attributes newfound value to Teacher Chang’s words: “Loneliness is not forever, but being together is.”

I learned from one of the programmers on the SGIFF team that Fan played a pivotal and engaged role in the curation of her films, namely to highlight the directors that she had worked with or honour films that she felt more strongly about. Buddha Mountain is a beautiful film that portrays the human condition as one that is ever-growing, resilient and forgiving. The director takes a story of grief that seems simple and narrates it with nuance, humility and empathy. We walk away from the cinema empty-handed but our hearts and minds return to Guan Yin Mountain.

BUDDHA MOUNTAIN (2010) SCREENS AT THE SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL UNDER THE iCON IN FOCUS: FAN BING BING PROGRAMME. CHECK OUT SGIFF’S WEBSITE FOR THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL LINE-UP HERE.