Mammoth
会考试的猛犸象
China, 2020, colour, 2.35:1, 105 mins.
Director: Wang Nianyi 王念一.
Rating: 6/10.
Drama centred on a high-school dreamer and the people in his orbit is strikingly mounted, if a tad pretentious.
STORY
Chongqing, central China, the present day. Third-year senior high-school student Su Zhengyang (Xu Qijie) lives with his parents in a flat overlooking a zoo, where there’s an elephant called Lele, originally brought from Central Europe in 2002, whom he observes through a telescope and with whom he thinks he has an emotional bond. The boy’s father, Su Qingyuan (Zhou Zhengbo), fits kitchen cabinets, while his mother (Dong Ping) sells insurance. Both want a better life for their son, and have hired Liu Lei (Qu Bo), a postgraduate student who needs the money, to privately tutor him three times a week over the next nine months up to the gaokao (university entrance examination). Su Zhengyang tells Liu Lei he’s not suited for studying, and suggests he brings his computer to the sessions so he can continue his own research. Liu Lei tells his father, who almost beats his son in anger. Su Zhengyang is obsessed by a fellow student, Zhao An’an (Deng Enxi), following her around and secretly photographing her. Meanwhile, he gets someone to hack into the high school’s computer system and alter his school marks to show he’s improving. His parents are delighted, but Liu Lei knows he cheated. Su Zhengyang waits outside the flat Zhao An’an shares with her stepmother (Jiang Yalin) to invite her to see the elephant at the zoo; but after hearing the two women arguing, he leaves. Instead, he records a declaration of love on an iPad and hides it in her desk at school; while there he reads her diary, in which she records her sense of feeling lost. When Su Zhengyang’s parents find out his school marks are fake, his father gives him a belting. Meanwhile, Zhao An’an is told by Uncle Bao (Jiao Zhiwei), the family friend who sublet the flat to her stepmother, that the latter has vanished with all the bills unpaid. Zhao An’an promises to find some money, and sells the iPad, on which she’s read Su Zhengyang’s message, for RMB3,000. When she doesn’t turn up at the zoo, Su Zhengyang asks her why; she claims she never found an iPad in her desk drawer, and until she’s passed the gaokao she doesn’t want to get involved with boys. She subsequently quits the school choir to concentrate on her studies. One evening, hanging out at an internet cafe, Su Zhengyang is chased by a gang led by Bao (Li Jiahao) from whom he borrowed RMB4,000 to buy the iPad. Liu Lei ends up rescuing him by, surprisingly, beating up a gang member; but when the boy’s parents hear about the incident, they tell Liu Lei to stop coming, as the private tutoring clearly isn’t working. Later, at a family gathering attended by the boy’s cleverer cousin, Su Zhengqiang (Yan An), who is already at university, the father is approached by his elder brother (Bai Yonghui) with a way of getting Su Zhengyang through the gaokao by Su Zhengqiang impersonating him at the exam. After much thought, the boy’s parents finally decide to go ahead. They rehire Liu Lei, and boy and tutor become good friends. The parents butter up Liu Lei by loaning him money to pay his sick father’s hospital bills. And then they reveal their plan to him. Meanwhile, Zhao An’an discovers her stepmother has stolen the money she got from selling the iPad and is using it to gamble.
REVIEW
Various people’s lives are affected by or mutate around an idle high-school dreamer in Mammoth 会考试的猛犸象, an intriguing first film by writer-director Wang Nianyi 王念一 that sometimes slides into pretentiousness but is overall worth a look, especially for its striking widescreen visuals. Though set and shot in Chongqing, Wang’s alma mater, it could almost be set anywhere, as the usual landmarks of the vast central China metropolis are absent. Shot six years ago, and first shown at a festival in Chongqing in 2020, it finally reached Mainland screens this February. It’s now of some historical interest for featuring an early leading performance by Deng Enxi 邓恩熙, who’s since become one of the Mainland’s leading teen actresses. But it’s also good enough to make one wonder what Wang will do next.
The film’s genesis was tortured, to say the least. Though Wang is not from Chongqing, he studied at Meishi Film Academy of Chongqing University, subsequently enrolling for a master’s degree at Beijing Film Academy in 2014. The script for Mammoth took shape the following year and Zhejiang-based Nanpai Film came on board as an investor; however, 80% of Wang’s script was thrown out as a result and a new one written, with the extra element of exam cheating (which Wang had heard about in the meantime) being added. Shooting finally took place in 2017 after the budget had been cut at the last minute by 50% and the number of shooting days reduced from 60 to 30. That same year the film, whose English title was then The Examinee, was entered as an investment project at the Shanghai festival, looking for completion funds. Production was finally finished in 2019 and the film premiered at the Chongqing Youth Film Festival in autumn 2020. Originally set to be released in Sep 2022, it finally made it to screens five months later, taking a microscopic RMB380,000.
The surface plot, which only emerges around 40 minutes in, centres on the layabout main character using a more intelligent, lookalike substitute to sit the gaokao (高考, university entrance exam) surreptitiously on his behalf. The gaokao is such an important event in Mainland teens’ lives – basically deciding their future – that it figures in many youth movies, with characters often re-sitting the exam a year later. Here the idea of cheating is proposed by a family relative (for a sizeable sum of money) and eventually agreed to by the boy’s parents (especially his mother), who don’t want him to end up in dead-end jobs like they have. The boy’s female classmate, for whom he declares his puppy love early on, makes it plain she doesn’t want any romantic entanglements until after the gaokao, and she doesn’t have the luxury of parents who can afford to game the system. The film’s third main character, an impoverished postgrad student from out of town who’s taken on the job of tutoring the boy because he needs the money, swallows his pride when he’s told about the plan and accepts money from the parents to keep his mouth shut – though later that skeleton emerges from the cupboard with dramatic results.
The irony of the whole film is that the audience never sees the gaokao that is talked about so much, nor the exact way in which the cheating is done; and the results of the exam are almost casually made known. Wang is more interested in other things, notably the class divisions that divide the characters, mould their personalities and decide their futures. The girl is at the bottom of the scale, living with an abusive step-mother and with her father in prison, and is driven to selling the boy’s present of an iPad to pay the rent. For her, the gaokao is potentially a passport to another life. For the boy, who comes from a comfortable, though not wealthy, middle-class home, the gaokao is simply a nuisance to keep his ambitious parents happy. For the impoverished tutor, it’s an opportunity to earn some money on the side, for which he’s prepared to undergo some humiliation; though later, when he himself makes some money, he dramatically morphs into a ruthless blackmailer, triggering an ironic showdown.
The boy’s identification with an elephant in a nearby zoo only half works. On the one hand, it’s a pretentious idea, and leads to philosophical musings by the boy that are completely out of character for a spoiled, study-shy layabout. On the other hand, it does give the film a slightly mystical centre that helps to unite the discursive structure of various characters with their own stories. As it stands, the film could profitably be tightened by 10 minutes or so, especially a side story of the tutor’s fascination with another of his clients, the pampered daughter of a very wealthy family.
Though she was only 12 at the time, with one movie role under her belt (crime/psycho-drama The Devotion of Suspect X, 2017), Deng, who’s always looked much older than she is, convinces as a third-year senior high-school pupil of about 17, alongside Xu Qijie 许淇杰, then 19 and still studying acting at BFA, as her admirer. It’s a typically tightly buttoned performance by Deng (Last Letter 你好，之华 , 2018; Summer Is the Coldest Season 少女佳禾, 2019), but the Chongqing-born actress helps to make the smallish, somewhat underwritten role believable by playing in local dialect. As the tutor, Qu Bo 曲博, then 26 and at the start of his acting career, is slyly effective as the worm who turns, while character actor Zhou Zhengbo 周征波 is good as the boy’s strict father.
Despite all the production difficulties, the film looks impressive, especially the beautifully composed widescreen exteriors by d.p. Zhang Shuyuan 张书源 (though Wang has claimed that the static visual style was adopted to save time and money after the budget was halved). Veteran director/film academic Xie Fei 谢飞 is credited as supervising creative producer 总监制, presumably for his BFA role as master’s degree supervisor.
The Chinese title means “The Mammoth That Can Sit an Exam”. The film is also known under the English title Chinese Examinee. Reportedly, a 148-minute director’s cut – 40-odd minutes longer – also exists, presumably filling in some of the lacunae in the theatrical release.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhejiang Nanpai Film (CN).
Script: Wang Nianyi. Photography: Zhang Shuyuan. Editing: Xu Zikun. Music: Chen Xirui. Art direction: Sun Wenxuan. Styling: Chen Anqi. Sound: Zhang Guodong. Artistic supervision: Li Chen. Executive direction: Qi Qing.
Cast: Deng Enxi (Zhao An’an), Qu Bo (Liu Lei), Xu Qijie (Su Zhengyang), Zhou Zhengbo (Su Qingyuan, Su Zhengyang’s father), Dong Ping (Su Zhengyang’s mother), Shang Rumeng (Liu Lei’s wife), Jiang Mingyu (Yuanyuan), Jiang Yalin (Zhao An’an’s stepmother), Li Jiahao (Bao, gang leader), Chen Mingjun (Xiaolong, gang member), Jing Ying (Bao’s girlfriend), Cai Xuze, Pan Yongbo, Xia Zihuan (gang members), Jiao Zhiwei (Uncle Bao), Zhong Ling (wife of younger brother of Su Zhengyang’s father), Yan An (Su Zhengqiang, Su Zhengyang’s cousin), Bai Yonghui (elder brother of Su Zhengyang’s father), Xiao Feng (Su Zhengqiang’s mother).
Premiere: Chongqing Youth Film Festival (Competition), 31 Oct 2020.
Release: China, 24 Feb 2023.