The Shaft (Chi)

In Zhang Chi’s affecting drama, a mining town acts as the centre point around which a family’s dreams and regrets unfold. Split into three sections wherein the focus of the narrative alternates between a father and his two children, The Shaft

details their despondent lives as they struggle to liberate themselves and escape from the darkness of the mines into a more optimistic future.

Throughout this debut feature, the same images of a group of men heading down into the mine shafts are repeated; the monotonous rhythms of humans bustling and steel clattering set as a counterpoint to the similarly routine lives of the family. The father has spent his whole life in the industry, and his two children are desperate to avoid his fate. Although the daughter is in a loving relationship with one of the miners, she knows her future prospects look bleak. When the chance arises to escape the relationship and start afresh in Beijing, she’s left to make a difficult but inevitable decision. The son similarly wishes to leave for Beijing, and believes one day that he’ll become a world famous singer. What looks to be an opportunity to make the move is quickly thwarted by conmen, and when later he’s seen drunkenly singing at a karaoke bar, it’s clear that his lousy voice was never going to enable him to fulfil his dreams. The father is left only with regrets of the past, spending his retirement on the internet searching in vain to find his long gone wife.

Chi uses a subtle and effective gift motif to highlight how the family members’ lives are connected. The daughter is given a pair of red shoes by her boyfriend that she later throws in the river; the son refuses the vitamin tablets his dad offers in the hopes that they’ll help him succeed at school; and the father ignores his children’s urgings that he go on a holiday away from the town. Each time, their potential happiness and contentment is denied. The children are so desperate to escape from the mine that they ignore the potential benefits available if they stay in the town, while the father is so attached to where he lives that he’s unable to let go of his past and forge a new future.

The Shaft was shot on DV, and has a grimy quality that’s suited to the material. The characters appear as if watched through CCTV, conversations occurring off-screen as the camera moves about mechanically. The film contains some beautiful, striking imagery, not least the final scene in which the father finally decides to leave the village. He’s seen in a succession of increasingly long shots, zigzagging along an endless road, both literally and metaphorically struggling to escape from his home. It’s an image that brings together the three threads of the narrative, acting as an overarching symbol of the difficulties they end up facing in moving towards a new life, reaching a new destination.

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