Journey to the West
宇宙探索编辑部
China, 2021, colour, 16:9, 116 mins.
Director: Kong Dashan 孔大山.
Rating: 5/10.
Mockumentary about a nutty alien-hunter who wants to find the meaning of life starts well but runs out of steam.
STORY
Beijing, 2020, winter. Thirty years after being interviewed by a TV crew about his search for aliens and the magazine Cosmic Exploration 宇宙探索, on which he is an editor, Tang Zhijun (Yang Haoyu) is now editor-in-chief but has hardly any staff and the magazine is struggling. He himself is still obsessed with discovering alien life, and his main helper is Qin Cairong (Ailiya), an optician, who nags him relentlessly. The magazine’s backstreet office is visited by Wang (Wang Yu), from Apollo Solar Energy magazine, who is considering a business investment. Tang Zhijun demonstrates his 30-year-old geiger counter he uses for spotting alien signals, as well as a 1990s space suit he bought many years ago. Unfortunately, Tang Zhijun gets trapped inside it and passes out; emergency services winch him out of the building and cut him out of the suit. Chapter I The UFO Chaser 第一章 追UFO的人. Qin Cairong complains how there is no money to turn the heating on. She later explains how she was tricked by Tang Zhijun 20-odd years ago to invest in telescopes, which are now useless. Tang Zhijun has a small income from lecturing to tiny audiences at a psychiatric hospital; he thinks psychopaths may be able to pick up alien signals, as their brains are on a different wavelength to normal people’s. Qin Cairong thinks he’s just a crank: he’s divorced, and his daughter, who was put in custody of the mother, committed suicide two years ago from depression. Back in his bare flat, Tang Zhijun, who considers the snowy, no-signal screen on his TV to be the afterglow of the universe’s birth, finds the set isn’t working. He attributes this to a galactic event – maybe aliens sending signals – that has overwhelmed the TV’s tube. Next day he shows his staff proof, though Qin Cairong is doubtful. Tang Zhijun manages to sell his space suit to the director (Guo Fan) and producer (Gong Ge’er) of sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth 流浪地球 (2019) and uses the cash for an expedition by him, Qin Cairong and Narisu (Jiang Qiming), an alcoholic who works releasing balloons at a weather station, to a village in Sichuan province where a strange event was recorded. Chapter II The Odyssey 第二章 蜀道难. They arrive by train in Chengdu and next day are joined by Chen Xiaoxiao (Sheng Chenchen), 22, a fan of Cosmic Exploration. They take a bus to meet Xiao Quanwang (Song Jingdong), who posted online the video of a vertical shaft of light in the village of Niaoxiaowo (Bird Burning Nest), the other side of a hill; the glowing figure of a man was seen by locals and afterwards the ball in the mouth of a lion statue had disappeared. Xiao Qianwang also keeps the so-called body of alien he saw a couple of years ago in a freezer. The group travel to the village an stay in the house of Sun Yitong (Wang Yitong), a young man who was the main witness. Chapter III The Boy Waiting for Sparrows 第三章 等待麻雀降临的少年. Sun Yitong keeps passing out for no reason and wears a saucepan on his head for protection. After six weeks of the group staying there, nothing has happened. But then there is a solar eclipse, and when daylight returns the lion statue is covered with tiny sparrows. With a seemingly possessed Sun Yitong leading the way, the group continues its journey into the hills. Chapter IV Deep in the West 第四章 西南深处. By a river the group meets a just-married couple (Fu Chunyang, Tang Ying) and their wedding photographer (Li Di). Then Sun Yitong disappears and Qin Cairong is bitten by a mad dog. Obsessively, Tang Zhijun goes on alone up into the hills. Final Chapter Unfinished Journey 终章 未尽之路. In the forest Tang Zhijun finds an old bathysphere covered in moss. Sun Yitong then appears and says he is waiting for the aliens to arrive.
REVIEW
The weirdo editor of a sci-fi magazine about aliens sets out to find some in Journey to the West 宇宙探索编辑部, a wacky first feature by writer-director Kong Dashan 孔大山 that unfortunately runs out of steam halfway. Shot in low-budget, mockumentary style, and co-creatively produced 监制 by director Guo Fan 郭凡 (sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth 流浪地球, 2019), it’s been given an English title that underlines the plot’s vague correspondences with the classic Chinese novel of the same name. The Chinese title, however, simply means “Cosmic Exploration’s Editorial Department” – a deliberately boring one that’s more in tune with the film’s dry sense of humour. A colourful cast and the straightfaced antics are entertaining for a while, but when the film starts getting philosophical/poetic in the latter half it simply becomes incoherent, punching above its weight. After premiering at the Pingyao festival in autumn 2021, and doing the festival rounds, it finally got a theatrical release in the Mainland this spring, taking RMB66 million – not so shabby for such a specialist item.
Though born in Shandong, Kong studied down south at the Sichuan University of Media & Communications – and, after the opening half-hour in Beijing, it’s in Sichuan province that the rest of the action is set. During the 2010s, Kong made several shorts, as well as working as an assistant director on My Old Classmate 同桌的妳 (2014), a charming schooldays romance that was Guo’s first mainstream movie. After co-producing and co-financing Journey – in which he also cameos as himself, alongside real-life producer Gong Ge’er 龚格尔 – Guo went on to make Kong B-unit director on The Wandering Earth II 流浪地球2 (2023) as well as giving him a small role as a Chinese astronaut.
Things kick off with the central character, Tang Zhijun, being interviewed as a young man in 1990 by a TV crew about his obsession with aliens. The bleary videotape exactly catches the era before the film cuts to “30 years later” and the magazine of which he is now editor-in-chief is still going but clearly on its last legs, kept alive by volunteers who are as weird as the now seriously spacey Tang Zhijun. The only one who speaks honestly to him is Qin Cairong, a loudmouthed middle-aged optician who helps out at the magazine’s shabby office despite considering him a nutcase. The first hour is often very funny: Tang Zhijun giving a lecture to an audience of two at a psychiatric hospital, getting stuck inside his prize possession (a 1990s space suit) and having to be winched out, and monitoring his snowy TV screen for alien signals, convinced that it’s the afterglow of the birth of the universe.
All this is done absolutely straightfaced, and shot in a nervy handheld style with restless editing and characters talking to the camera. Finally, after watching an uploaded video on the internet, Tang Zhijun, Qin Cairong and Narisu (an alcoholic friend) set off to deepest Sichuan province to find some aliens – and meet some equally wacko characters when they get there, including a man who keeps an alien in a freezer and a young man, Sun Yitong (co-writer Wang Yitong 王一通), who claims to be possessed and wears a saucepan on his head. In so much as the group is searching to bring back some knowledge, the plot does have vague similarities with the novel Journey to the West; and one could also equate Tang Zhijun with the monk Tang Sanzang/Xuanzang, Sun Yitong with Sun Wukong/Monkey King, Qin Cairong with Zhu Bajie/Pigsy and Narisu with Sha Wujing/Sandy. But such parallels are sketchy at best, and meaningless to the film’s characters, who have a life of their own. In several respects, Tang Zhijun is closer to Don Quixote than Tang Sanzang.
It’s when the group stays in the village where the alien event supposedly happened that the film starts to lose comic traction. Sun Yitong is a likeable creation but, apart from repeatedly passing out for no reason, is not as rich a character as Tang Zhijun (seasoned character actor Yang Haoyu 杨浩宇, 48, almost unrecognisable) or the blousy, straight-talking Qin Cairong (veteran Inner Mongolian actress Ailiya 艾丽娅, 57, still going strong 30 years after movies like Ermo 二嫫, 1994). The script also starts musing on things like the meaning of life and the universe in a disorganised, incoherent way that may or may not be meant to be parodistic.
The handheld, documentary-like photography by Belgian d.p. Matthias Delvaux slightly recalls his work on Old Beast 老兽 (2017); but the nervy style, with restless cutting by Hu Shuzhen 胡树真, becomes unnecessarily distracting after a while. At 60 minutes rather than almost two hours, Journey to the West would be way funnier and much more off-the-wall.
CREDITS
Presented by G! Film (Beijing) Studio (CN), China Film (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Wanda Media (CN), Shanghai CMC Pictures (CN), Huayi Brothers Pictures (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Shanghai Rao Xiaozhi Film Studio (CN). Produced by G! Film (Beijing) Studio (CN).
Script: Kong Dashan, Wang Yitong. Photography: Matthias Delvaux. Editing: Hu Shuzhen. Music: Outsider Studio. Art direction: Guo Xinbo. Costume design: Li Nan. Styling: Guo Xinbo. Sound: Zhang Guodong, Liu Peng. Visual effects: Ding Yanlai, Sun Haoyuan (Orange VFX), Wei Ming, Cui Chen (More VFX).
Cast: Yang Haoyu (Tang Zhijun), Ailiya (Qin Cairong), Wang Yitong (Sun Yitong), Jiang Qiming (Narisu), Sheng Chenchen (Chen Xiaoxiao), Guo Fan (himself, film director), Gong Ge’er (himself, film producer), Luo Juan (TV reporter), Guan Yuntong (TV cameraman), Luo Yiyun, Lang Wumei, Wang Xueyi (editorial staff), Cui Lishu (Miss Cui), Wang Yu (Wang), Liu Qi (Liu), Liu Jingzong (Gao), Sun Xiaochen (Tang Zhijun’s nephew), Chen Ping (Tang Zhijun’s elder sister), Song Jingdong (Xiao Quanwang), Tan Tian (driver), Li Di (photographer), Fu Chunyang (groom), Tang Ying (bride).
Premiere: Pingyao Film Festival (Hidden Dragons), 17 Oct 2021.
Release: China, 1 Apr 2023.