The Best Is Yet to Come

不止不休

China, 2020, colour, 16:9, 115 mins.

Director: Wang Jing 王晶.

Rating: 6/10.

Interesting drama about a young provincial trying to be a journalist in Beijing partly focuses on the real-life Hepatitis B scandal of 2003-04.

STORY

Beijing, Sep 2003. Han Dong (Bai Ke), 26, an online journalist from Mudanjiang in northeast China, attends an autumn job fair to try for a job on a newspaper. However, he has no CV, no degree in journalism and after junior high school went to work in a factory; all he has are printouts of his online stories. He’s already been in Beijing for some time, arriving before the SARS epidemic, but by November he still hasn’t found a job; he’s living in a grungy communal flat and his girlfriend Xiaozhu (Miao Miao), who’s from the same city, is sleeping in the storeroom of the company where she works. Finally Han Dong is offered an internship at Jingcheng Shibao 京城时报 newspaper, working under senior reporter Huang Jiang (Zhang Songwen), a tough veteran who makes no promises for the future. Along with other young interns he gets a crash course in how the newspaper works. Along with Huang Jiang he goes undercover in Zhaojiagou, Shanxi province, to investigate the cover-up of a mine disaster, and witnesses the mine head (Jia Zhangke) paying widows to keep quiet about the deaths of family members. Back in Beijing, Huang Jiang tells him not to let personal feelings get in the way of reporting; he gives Han Dong a joint byline on the story. Han Dong and Xiaozhu happily see in the New Year, 2004, with his hometown friend Zhang Bo (Song Yang), who’s come to Beijing to study at college. Soon after, Han Dong stumbles across a backstreet operation, run by Li Haibiao (Wang Yiquan), that’s offering high prices for blood. Posing as a student needing money, he discovers Li Haibiao is also working with hospital director Yao (Bai Hongbiao) in a scam issuing fake good-health certificates to people with Hepatitis B – endemic in China, with some 100 million infected, a third of the global total – so they can get certain jobs or attend university. Han Dong discusses the story with Huang Jiang and then goes undercover, doing odd jobs for Li Haibiao and also coaching his young daughter, Li Qixi (Cheng Xiaoxia), in Chinese. But one day he sees that Zhang Bo is among those using Li Haibiao’s illegal operation. Zhang Bo tells Han Dong that he’s selling his blood because he desperately needs the money. When Han Dong finally writes his article, he leaves out Zhang Bo’s name and tells him what he’s done. Zhang Bo is still annoyed and tells Han Dong the whole truth, precipitating a crisis of conscience in Han Dong that leads to him trying to pull the article just as it’s going to press.

REVIEW

A working-class guy from northeast China tries to make a go of it as an investigative journalist in turn-of-the-century Beijing in The Best Is Yet to Come 不止不休, another drama about young people trying to realise their dreams in the fast-changing capital that has the extra edge of referencing the real-life Mainland scandal of fake Hepatitis B certificates. The first feature by director Wang Jing 王晶 – not to be confused with the identically named Hong Kong veteran, aka Wong Jing 王晶 – it premiered in a sidebar at the Venice festival in autumn 2020, when Wang was 36, and was finally released in the Mainland this spring, taking RMB56.5 million, an okay amount for such non-mainstream fare.

Born in Taiyuan city, Shanxi province, Wang studied directing at Beijing Film Academy from 2003 and made his first short, the socially realist Boy in Cage 在别处 in 2007. After work in commercials and documentaries, he joined the workshop of arthouse darling Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯, also from Shanxi, first directing a segment (12 Neighbours 12邻) of the internet documentary short 爱的联想 (2011) and then working as assistant director on three Jia features (A Touch of Sin 天注定, 2013; Mountains May Depart 山河故人, 2015; Ash Is Purest White 江湖儿女, 2018). Despite Jia being creative producer 监制 on The Best, which also uses his longtime d.p., Hong Kong’s Yu Liwei 余力为, Wang proves he has a film-making personality of his own, with a liking for socially realist material but with none of Jia’s intellectually empty pretentiousness. Though the film has faults of its own, it’s a strong directing debut that engages the viewer across almost two hours.

The story opens at a very specific time, in Sep 2003 at a Beijing jobs fair, in the dying days of the SARS pandemic that had gripped the country from late 2002 to summer 2003. Twenty-six-year-old Han Dong is from Mudanjiang, up by the border with North Korea; though he has online journalism experience, he’s a former factory worker with no degree and therefore basically unemployable. By November he still doesn’t have a job, and he and his hometown girlfriend are sleeping in separate doss houses, typical migrant workers in the capital. Finally, through a chance connection, Han Dong is offered an internship on a well-known Beijing paper, where he’s taken under the no-nonsense wing of a senior reporter and given a chance to show his stuff when the two go undercover to investigate a mining cover-up in Shanxi province. (Cue acting cameo by Jia.) And then, early in 2004, he stumbles across a racket involving fake negative Hepatitis B certificates – then required by many employers and universities in a country where the disease is endemic. In true movie style, Han Dong’s article, published at the eleventh hour, leads to government reform and a big vaccination push – though China still has about 30% of the world’s carriers of the infectious disease, one of the world’s top four alongside malaria, HIV and TB.

Dramas centred on injustices and wrongdoings being exposed are by no means rare in Chinese cinema, though ones centred on journalists doing the exposing are less common. But The Best is more about an ambitious provincial trying to make it in the capital than about the Hepatitis B scandal itself which, though important to China, is not exactly the sexiest of subjects – and only appears halfway through the film anyway. Popular actor-comedian Bai Ke 白客 (real name Luo Hongming 罗宏明), in his early 30s during production, is very good at playing the not-so-guileless “innocent” Han Dong and gives the character a slightly sardonic edge that makes him likeable on a human level. Also, the script by Huang Wei 黄苇 (best known for her boxing-mum drama Shallow 出拳吧妈妈, 2021) and new names Huang Minmin 黄旻旻, Chen Chengfeng 陈乘风 and Li Jingrui 李静睿, tells the main scandal more from the point-of-view of Han Dong’s relationship with a hometown friend who’s come to study in Beijing than from just exposing the villains behind the racket. And even then, those who have furnished and used the fake health certificates are portrayed in a sympathetic light, more as victims than exploiters of an unfair system.

In such circumstances, it’s a shame that the role of Han Dong’s girlfriend (acted okay by dancer Miao Miao 苗苗, from Youth 芳华, 2017) is treated in such a token way, with less screentime than Song Yang 宋洋 (known for the arty wuxia movies of Xu Haofeng 徐浩峰, like The Sword Identity 倭寇的踪迹, 2011) who contributes a typically strong screen presence as the hometown pal. Song’s character pretty much takes over from the no-nonsense journalist of Zhang Songwen 张颂文, a dependable character actor (The Shadow Play 风中有朵雨做的云, 2018; The Pioneer 革命者, 2021; Knock Knock 不速来客, 2021) who powers the film’s first half. As well as Jia popping up as a sleazy mine boss, actress Qin Hailu 秦海璐 also has a classy cameo as the wife of Zhang’s journalist.

The film has a very real feel for the look and atmosphere of a paper’s newsroom some 20 years ago, and d.p. Yu’s naturalistic photography further underlines the realism throughout. On the dramatic side, however, Han Dong’s crisis of conscience around the 80-minute mark feels manufactured rather than believable, and the occasional inserts, in slightly blurry video, of people talking about their personal experiences during the time are both distracting and unnecessary. Editing by France’s Matthieu Laclau and music by Japan’s Hanno Yoshihiro 半野喜弘 – both Jia colleagues – are effectively invisible. The film’s Chinese title is two words both meaning “endless” or “incessant”, so roughly means “Beyond Endless”.

CREDITS

Presented by Momo Pictures (CN), Shanghai Fabula Entertainment (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Shanghai Lian Ray Pictures (CN). Produced by Momo Pictures (CN).

Script: Huang Wei, Huang Minmin, Chen Chengfeng, Li Jingrui. Photography: Yu Liwei. Editing: Matthieu Laclau. Music: Hanno Yoshihiro. Art direction: Liu Weixin. Styling: Li Hua. Sound: Qiao Mingzi, Zhang Yang. Action: Yang Chongyu, Wang Yongcheng. Special effects: Cai Kuiguang. Visual effects: Cao Ping, Gong Yuanjie. Executive direction: Li Xingbo.

Cast: Bai Ke (Han Dong), Miao Miao (Xiaozhu), Zhang Songwen (Huang Jiang), Song Yang (Zhang Bo), Wang Yiquan (Li Haibiao), Zhou Yemang (editor-in-chief), Qin Hailu (Huang Jiang’s wife), Hu Tianyu (young man in sunglasses), Wang Chunmei (newspaper manager), Sun Yan (senior editor), Zhang Lei (Xiaozhu’s boss), Kong Lingmei (landlady), Wei Ruguang, Wang Zun, Zhao Runnan (newspaper interns), Ge Yu (taxi driver in Shanxi), Li Pengfei, Wang Zhiyong (coal-mine guards), Sun Xiaojuan (Han Meiyu, grieving widow), Jia Zhangke (coal-mine owner), Zhao Luoran (newspaper’s hotline receptionist), Bai Hongbiao (Yao, hospital director), Cheng Xiaoxia (Li Qixi, Li Haibiao’s daughter), Li Yue (newspaper’s art director), Hao Gang (policeman at college), Chao Fan (college administrator).

Premiere: Venice Film Festival (Horizons), 8 Sep 2020.

Release: China, 24 Mar 2023.