Looking Up
银河补习班
China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 147 mins.
Directors: Deng Chao 邓超, Yu Baimei 俞白眉.
Rating: 6/10.
Father-son light drama lacks a suitable screenplay and structure to realise its aspirational ambitions.
STORY
Jiuquan satellite launch centre, Inner Mongolia province, northern China, 17 Oct 2019. At a press conference for the two astronauts about to go on the Shuguang No. 16 spacecraft – fourth-timer Gu Xinghe (Shao Bing) and first-timer Ma Fei (Bai Yu) – the latter’s family is conspicuously not present. Sep 1990: as a young boy (Feng Ze’ang) in the city of Dongpei, Ma Fei’s father, engineer Ma Haowen (Deng Chao), had given him a globe made from a football. But during a splashy ceremony for the opening of a bridge that Ma Haowen had designed, the bridge had collapsed, tarring Ma Haowen’s reputation for ever. 15 Dec 2019: After 57 days the two astronauts are due to return to Earth in three days’ time. Suddenly, however, all contact is lost with Jiuquan when some space debris damages the spacecraft’s radio antenna. Feb 1991: Ma Haowen has been convicted of negligence and sent to a remote prison, where his wife Xinyu (Ren Suxi) visits and gets him to sign divorce papers. During his prison sentence Ma Haowen is bullied by fellow convicts; at home, his son Ma Fei is also bullied. In 1997 Ma Haowen returns home to Dongpei after seven years, still hated by people in the town. Xinyu now has a sugar daddy, railway administrator Meng (Liang Chao), and the two have sent Ma Fei (Sun Xilun) to Boyu High School, an exclusive local boarder that’s among the four best in Dongpei. When Ma Fei is expelled for skipping class and reading a Jin Yong martial-arts novel, Ma Haowen publicly challenges the headmaster, Yan (Li Jianyi), over the decision. Yan finally agrees to let Ma Fei stay on for a while, as long as he makes the top 10 in class. When Meng has to go to Guangzhou on business, Ma Haowen spends time with his son but he’s still mocked by locals in the street and still can’t find a job. One man, Liu Baliang (Wu Yaheng), does give him a job after Ma Haowen helps him out; and Ma Haowen’s onetime apprentice, Lv Datou (Wang Ge), surreptitiously gives him and his son a place to stay. In return, Ma Haowen does a lot of work under Lv Datou’s name. With his father’s encouragement, Ma Fei starts to study hard, though Xinyu is appalled at what is going on. At the high school, Ma Haowen becomes friendly with Gao Tianxiang (Wang Xi), a young replacement teacher who believes in Ma Fei. Ma Haowen tries to get his son to learn in a lateral way, not just rote from school books, and to open his eyes to the world. He finally pulls him out of high school and educates him on the road, though Ma Fei is almost drowned in a heavy storm that separates the two of them. 16 Dec 2019: Ma Fei volunteers to go outside the spacecraft to inspect the damaged antenna, without which they cannot return to Earth. Gu Xinghe forbids him, but eventually Ma Fei is to make his own, unconventional decision, as his father has always taught him.
REVIEW
A father encourages his son to reject rote learning and open his eyes to the world in Looking Up 银河补习班, a light drama that’s another variation on the modern-day Chinese Dream that everything is achievable. The third collaboration between popular actor-director Deng Chao 邓超, 40, and theatre/TV writer-director Yu Baimei 俞白眉, 44, it’s very different from their first two movies together – the cartoony, knockabout comedies The Breakup Guru 分手大师 (2014) and Devil and Angel 恶棍天使 (2015). Dedicated to “fathers”, and very much the product of two (now) middle-aged men with young families, it’s an original script this time by Yu rather than an adaptation of one of his plays, with just a light vein of irony instead of strenuous physical comedy and a strong dose of the genre known as the “aspirational film” 励志片, encompassing human endeavour from rural China to outer space. Despite a hefty running time of almost 2½ hours, the film has taken a very nice RMB850 million-plus in three weeks. [Final tally, after seven weeks, was RMB872 million.] But despite an impressive first half, the script isn’t up to its own ambitions and, for a movie that champions independent, critical thinking, increasingly relies on corny cliches to bring the drama full circle.
The story’s grand scope is laid out in the opening minutes. At a press conference for two astronauts, a journalist asks why the family of the younger one, Ma Fei, isn’t with him, and the film then flashbacks almost 30 years to a defining moment in his life – when a bridge designed by his engineer father collapsed during the opening ceremony. This latter sequence is handled in a semi-humorous way, with Deng’s performance as the disorganised father leading the audience on until the carpet is suddenly pulled from under its feet.
The same device is used several other times throughout the movie, whose subtle, ironic humour isn’t pushed to centre stage but (given Deng’s image) is always there in the background. Among the main cast, Deng’s ironic style is matched by the actress who plays his exasperated ex-wife – Shandong-born Ren Suxi 任素汐, 31, who’s also from a theatre background and whose few films include the absurdist-comedy gems Mr. Donkey 驴得水 (2016) and A Cool Fish 无名之辈 (2018). More’s the pity her character is virtually dumped after the opening half-hour, as her chemistry with Deng energises the movie whenever she appears.
Though the defining moment in Ma Fei and his father’s life is blackly comic, the repercussions are tragic: the father carries the can for the engineering cock-up, spends seven years in prison, is divorced by his wife, and is still a social pariah and effectively unemployable when he eventually returns home. Henceforth, he channels all his hopes into the education of his son Ma Fei who, to put it mildly, is not a natural learner. At every stage, the father challenges the entrenched educational system and finally pulls him out of it, giving his son a “life education” on the road that almost leads to his death. In a rather hurried and unbelievable last act, the son starts to excel scholastically and then gets into flight academy, eventually travelling into outer space where he gets a chance to prove himself to his dad back on Earth.
The problem is that Yu’s screenplay lacks an over-arching structure to realise its ambitions. The flashback structure, hopping between the son in outer space and his youth back on Earth, doesn’t help as it not only breaks up any accumulated drama but also presents an adult version of the son that seems to have no connection with the more troubled youth we spend more time with. There’s simply no sense of organic growth in the script, which works in individual sequences and short bursts but not as a character study spread over 2½ hours. Several setpieces – such as the flood crisis 90 minutes in – feel manufactured just to give the film some spectacle, and the vertiginous finale in outer space, though grippingly staged with excellent VFX, is only there for the corniest of reasons – as well as to underline the fact that China can make space dramas as well.
Interestingly, the whole aspirational/astronaut thread is briefly foreshadowed by a flashback in Deng and Yu’s Devil, where the anti-hero is shown wearing a fishbowl in the street as a young boy – an image maybe borrowed from the Hong Kong coming-of-age drama, Echoes of the Rainbow 岁月神偷 (2010). Whatever its source, this thread – which only develops late in the flashbacks – sits awkwardly on a story that’s essentially Earth-bound and about a son’s education by his unconventional but loving father, not about a boy who’s always wanted to be an astronaut. In that respect, Looking Up is thematically close to two recent films by trendy Shanghai writer/director/racer Han Han 韩寒 – Duckweed 乘风破浪 (2017), in which Deng played the lead as a son who finally understands his father, and Pegasus 飞驰人生 (2019), in which a father proves to his son he’s not a loser. Alas, Looking Up lacks Han’s gift for metaphysical drama.
The smallish supporting cast is fine within its limitations, especially newcomer Wang Xi 王西 as a cute high-school teacher in a rather manufactured romantic subplot, plus veteran stage/TV actor Li Jianyi 李建义 as a dogmatic headmaster who’s finally forced to see the error of his ways. Fourteen-year-old Sun Xilun 孙浠伦 is okay as the high-school Ma Fei but Bai Yu 白宇, 29, is colourless as the adult version. Production qualities, by several of the same team from Devil such as Chinese American d.p. Wang Dayong 汪大勇 [Max Wang] and stylist Hao Yi 郝艺, are high, including smooth cutting by experienced Bollywood editor Ballu Saluja (Lagaan: Once upon a Time in India, 2001; Dangal, 2016) in his first Chinese assignment. The side is let down only by the musical score by two Hans Zimmer acolytes – Germany’s Steffen Thum and the UK’s Lorne Balfe – which strains to be uplifting but never achieves a fraction of the majesty of the music (by other hands) for Devil.
The film’s Chinese title literally means “Milky Way [i.e. Outer Space] Special Tuition”.
CREDITS
Presented by Tianjin Orange Image Media (CN), Horgos Orange Image Media (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Horgos Youth Enlight Pictures (CN). Produced by Tianjin Orange Image Media (CN).
Script: Yu Baimei. Photography: Wang Dayong [Max Wang]. Editing: Ballu Saluja. Music: Steffen Thum. Main theme: Lorne Balfe. Executive music production: Hans Zimmer. Music supervision: Yu Fei. Art direction: Ma Shiqi. Styling: Liu Qian, Hao Yi. Concept design: Hao Yi. Action: Luo Yimin [Norman Law]. Visual effects: Jiang Chao.
Cast: Deng Chao (Ma Haowen), Bai Yu (Ma Fei), Ren Suxi (Xinyu, Ma Haowen’s wife), Wang Xi (Gao Tianxiang, teacher), Sun Xilun (high-school Ma Fei), Li Jianyi (Yan, headmaster), Liang Chao (Meng), Shao Bing (Gu Xinghe, older astronaut), Wang Ge (Lv Datou, Ma Haowen’s apprentice), Wu Yaheng (Liu Baliang), Wei Zun (madman), Feng Ze’ang (young Ma Fei), Bai Zhidi (high-school teacher), Dai Lele (Gu Xinghe’s wife), Wu Jing (Pan Wanli, flight commander), Zhang Zhenlei, Feng Guoqiang.
Release: China, 18 Jul 2019.