Dead Pigs

As a local Shanghainese, this film perhaps means a little more to me than others. Dead Pigs is more about the city than any characters, it is a biopsy on one of the fastest growing and changing cities in the World, and what it opens is a group of really interesting characters who represent each sectors of Shanghai society relatively well while also painting a picture of how the city affects these people both mentally and physically. Cathy Yan does a great job at constructing these societal issues into her film, but unfortunately while the formula is right, the ingredients feels forced. The biggest issue of all is the casting of Mason Lee who is very obviously an ABC and simply does not fit in the film. The film might work better for a Western oriented audience as it does feel disconnected from local culture (even though it does address societal issues very well, but feels very much through Western lenses), but at the same time Western audience would certainly have trouble understanding the nuisances which places the film in an awkward conundrum. Nevertheless, the film explores unique issues and documents a very unique period of city development of my hometown.

A pig farmer, a beauty salon owner, a young waiter, a wealthy girl and an architect share adventures when thousands of dead pigs appear in Shanghai's central river. Based on true events (in 2013, 16,000 pigs were found in the Huangpu River, infected with PCV), this film marks the debut of Cathy Yan as a director, who 2 years later (2020), makes herself known to the western world with Birds of Prey. The characters are excellent examples of the personification of various problems in modern societies, such as the lack of empathy, ambition, fear of facing reality or the social economic gap between classes. There's a clear western view on the narrative, so that the public can identify itself with the story, but it is still a very interesting set of ideas, and a kind of wake-up call for the Chinese boom at a global level.

In 'Dead Pigs', we see a world where everyone is a liar and everything is faked and hyped. Everything that is real is dying off or being torn down, or at the least is undervalued. It's obviously a metaphor for modern Chinese society -- no, make that modern society in general. But the characters are vivid enough to ignore symbolism and enjoy the film at face value.

The only holdout is Candy Wang (played by Vivian Wu from 'The Joy Luck Club'), a cranky, shrill middle aged eccentric who is refusing to sell the family house to make way for a major new development.

We also follow a number of other characters, including the American architect for the development, who is portrayed in a surprisingly sympathetic light (even though he is as much of a fake as everyone else).

The only false note is a short stretch of sing-a-long karaoke. Maybe that is more meaningful to the Chinese audience. But overall, this is a good movie, well worth watching.

Dead Pigs is quirky and vibrant where the characters collide through their personal turmoils and as their city undergoes big changes. Crazy salon bird lady steals the show defending her house from developers.

This is one of those movies dealing with the effects of capitalism, as if they were essentially some sort of a Chinese thing. There seems always money available to fund a movie that deals with commodification, estrangement and deracination, even exploration and criminality in China, an established relocation of Western middle class anxieties. Dead Pigs, as part of this agenda, is mostly watchable, with truly compelling cinematography and a splendid performance by Vivian Wu and Yang Haoyu. The screenplay nevertheless left me skeptical. There are some nice absurdities in it and there is a unsettling colonial vibe with some white models in a theme park housing complex. Nevertheless the main characters' background were unconvincingly cobbled together and the author doesn't seem to take their misery all too seriously. I had some issues with the gleefully soundtrack, a vexing contrast to the perceptive camera, underlining Yan's willingness to change instantly from depression to irony, culminating in the scene with the excavator with its surreal turn, after which the movie came to a conciliable, even optimistic end. But then during closing credits you see dead ducks floating in the river, accompanied by a bittersweet pop song, the very same the crowd chanted in front of the excevator, a last indication of the director's waywardness (I probably didn't get the symbolic message).