In the film Suzhou River, the narrator, or the videographer asserts that his camera does not lie. For the director, he answers the question through the film, “Does the camera lie?” Using the story-within-a-story technique, he explores the interplay between fiction and reality. While he questions the film’s ability to mirror the reality, he underlines the role of a film, or a fictional work in general, as a median to communicate ideas and feelings.
The subjective feeling of the filmmaker makes the film impossible to objectively document the reality. The film starts with a sequence of documentary shots of the Suzhou River in Shanghai by the director, Lou Ye. Contrary to most documentaries of Shanghai which depict the prosperity of Shanghai, the director puts his camera toward the messiest and dirtiest part of Shanghai along the Suzhou River. The under-construction buildings, the immigrant workers, and the cargo boats along the Suzhou River display a hidden reality, a dark side of Shanghai. Nevertheless, both types of films can only represent part of the real Shanghai. Lou chooses the Suzhou River as the subject of his film not to express a critique of Shanghai, but his unique affection of Shanghai. From the narration, we know what attracts him is the stories happening on the river. His subjective kinship of Shanghai forces him selective and biased to shoot the river: He chooses the people who have a story hidden behind their eyes instead of the garbage on the river. By this approach, he romanticizes and mystifies the river. Furthermore, the narration merges the fictional stories into reality. While at the beginning the narration aligns with the images in the film, the narration departs from the reality when the narrator talks about mystic incidents that audience cannot justify through the images. Even the narrator himself rejects his
honesty of narration by saying “Do not trust me, I am only lying”. The alienation shows the director does not attempt to convince the audience the film is real but constructs a stage for his following fictional story.
The creation process of a fictional work shows the impact of real life on fiction. Suzhou River is a film about filmmaking. The first-person shoot and the third-person shoot divides the film into the cameraman’s real life and the scenes in the “film” he is making. On a boring day when he stays at home and looks from his window. He daydreams of making a “film”. After targeting the protagonists as the schoolgirl and a carrier he sees on the street, the film “begins”, and the first-person shoot suddenly switches to the third-person shooter with a background soundtrack. Since he does not have any plan or script before directing the “film”, the film is loosely organized. The narrator uses many “possible” in telling the story since he is uncertain of each detail of the character’s setting; He uses many “then” or “let me think”, which reflects his inconsistent thinking process. To continue the story, he gets inspiration from the news, stories, and his personal experience, and puts the real-life elements in the story. Therefore, the character in the “film” is inseparable from people in his life. The carrier is a mixture of the carrier, himself, the gang member he met in the bar and the crazy man constantly searching his wife mentioned by Mei. The narrator’s narration indicates the dire straits of his career and his love affair with Mei. The cameraman goes to Shanghai with the dream of being a director but turns to take commercial videos with no room for creativity and personal expression. Even as a videographer, his work is not so popular, since he will work for whoever pays, and he has to spray advertisements on the wall. His “film” displays a conflict between his dream and reality by portraying a carrier who leaves his hometown with the ambition to do something but ends up
doing a repetitive job. In addition, Mundane’s disappearance after jumping into the water is parallel to his relationship crisis with Mei and his worry that Mei might leave him forever. In the “film”, we see how the money alienates lovers or friends. Mundane leaves Mardar since she realizes the love of them is not worth more than money, Mundane leaves the world since she found out she can be exchanged with a certain prize and she is not worth more than the money; Also, Lao B kills Xiao Hong for getting the money. The plot design reflects the cameraman’s substantial attitude of love. He thinks Mei lives him for not having enough money. In this light, a fictional work is never independent of real life, since the creator consciously or unconsciously expresses his opinions about his life through his fictional creation.
When fiction is the author’s life experience and philosophy putting into an image, the fiction can impact the real life by transmitting ideas of the author to the audiences. After Mardar follows Mei to jump into the river, the story has reached the end and the narrator has no idea how to continue the story. However, the film continues after the narrator consents Mardar with “free will” and lets Mardar “finishes” the story by himself. I suspect Lou Ye intends to make a sci-fi film and allows the fictional Mardar to become the real person. What is clear is that the narrator loses control over his creations. When he realizes Mardar messes up his life, he tries to destroy his creation by hitting Mardar and closing the Happy Bar, but he fails to “kill” Mardar; In this part, reality and fiction mix together and the fictional character interact with the narrator and Mei. According to my understanding, it is because the narrator invites his girlfriend Mei into the fictional world by telling the story to her girlfriend. However, the chapter is written by Mei, since the narrator loses his former omniscient view of the story and he learns the story from the narration of Mei. The narrator starts the story to kill some leisure time, but he underestimates the
power of fiction. Mei is indulged with the faithful love between Mardar and Mundane, so she falls in love with Mardar, a symbol of everlasting love. On the contrary, the narrator is not Mardar; he is not loyal to Mei. Mei for him is no more than an object of desire, satisfaction of his sexual arousal. When she leaves, he does not have a strong intention to make her stay but even asks for “making love” before she leaves. The fiction inspires Mei’s expectation of eternal love and exaggerates the sadness of the reality where she is unable to find such kind of love.
When we view the film as a fictional work of the director Lou Ye, we can discover his mild critique toward the lost of pure love in modern society. Mei’s home as a boat on the river is a precise representation of the floating identity of people in modern China. With the fluidity of population, people constantly change his living places, jobs or social groups. Promises are meaningless to keep since they will be forgotten once a person moves to a new place and have new friends. Love is essentially a contract between two people, but such a commitment is no longer divine in the current time. In addition, with the industrialization of society, everything can be replicated cheaply and in a large amount. When Mardar asks Mei if she has a flower pattern on her leg, a unique identification of Mundane, she replies he can get such a sticker easily on the market and then shows her flower pattern on her leg. While each individual is indistinguishable from each other, loving one person is no different from loving another. Switching to another love is no different from throwing away an old commodity and getting a new one. Therefore, love loses its place in the contemporary world because of the devaluation of promises and diminish of the personal identity. For this reason, Madar and Mundane’s meeting follows their death. Such an intimate couple is unable to exist in modern society since there is no place for everlasting love in the ever-changing city. For this reason, the narrator can promise Mei he loves her and he will
search for her easily, but soon gives up searching and plans to seek a new lover after Mei leaves him. By emphasizing the role of creator playing in a fictional work, Lou Ye puts the director himself behind the camera to the front of the stage and communicates his notion of the people’s alienation in the modern time to the audience.
If we view Suzhou River as a roman noir film, it does not deserve a compliment due to its incoherent narration, shaking camera shots and exaggerated characters. However, if we approach this film as the creation process of a “film”, we see the interesting interaction of the fictional world and the real world. A fictional work projects the author’s ideas of his life. It does not reach the end when the creator finishes its last chapter, but continue to develop when the audience or readers resonants with the opinions hidden in the work and thus change their actions in the real- life accordingly. In a word, a fictional work starts and ends in reality. Nevertheless, my interpretation of the film is arbitrary, everyone can generate their unique interpretation as the director leaves various ambiguities in his film. The openness to different possibilities is another aspect of the beauty of fiction.