Western Trunk Line – Xi gan dao (2006)

Directed by: Li Jixian | 101 minutes | drama | Actors: Li Jie, Zhang Dengfeng, Shen Jiani, Zhao Haiyan

1978: Life in a remote Chinese village is hard work and suffering. Li Siping doesn’t care. As soon as he can, he skips his job in the factory and saunters around or tries to make old radios so he can receive the messages from the outside world. Of course his mother notices this, and Li Siping is regularly beaten. Meanwhile, everything is watched by the passive and silent father (Doctor Li) and Li Siping’s younger brother, who goes by the nickname ‘flat head’ (‘square face’). The lazy Li Siping seems to get most satisfaction from lying, theft and deceit: often innocent, but sometimes with unpleasant consequences for, for example, himself or his younger brother, who is often teased at school because of this.

Li Siping’s aimless life seems to make sense again when he meets Yu Xuanyan. Originally from Beijing, she seems to have been forced to move to the countryside because of her father’s subversive activities. The handsome and graceful Yu Xuanyan seems like the polar opposite of Li Siping in everything, but maybe that’s just a hoax. He discovers, again, of course, by devious means, that Yu Xuanyan is telling her father in her letters that she is in the Art Ensemble of the village, while she just has to work in the factory. When Yu Yuanyan finds out that Li Siping has stolen her letters (with enclosed money) for her father, their two lives unwittingly become intertwined.

A strange love-hate relationship develops that is not accepted by the other villagers. Li Siping has made himself too impossible to give a different spin to his life, it seems. ‘Western Trunk Line’ is a typical ‘coming of age’ story, as there are so many along the railway to which the title refers. The impossibility of true love and freedom is central. The story is told in a subtle, but often also somewhat sentimental way.

The pace of the film is quite slow, which makes the film too boring at times. Strong points are the fact that the ‘hero’, Li Siping, is actually not a sympathetic person at all. Above all, he is a ‘loser’ who repeatedly makes the mistake of antagonizing others. Also beautiful is the supporting role of Li’s younger brother, who seems to be constantly in the corner where the blows fall. He escapes the harsh reality by drawing, something that is noticed by Yu Xuanyan, but by no one else. It’s the tragic aspects of the three main characters that make ‘Western Trunk Line’ worth watching. The fact that the film is sometimes too monotonous is perhaps mainly illustrative of the life depicted in the film.