From China, a heavily stylized sci-fi satire. DISLOCATION (Cuo wei; 1986) was a sequel to THE BLACK CANNON INCIDENT/ Hei pao shi jian (1985), a Jianxin Huang directed black comedy.
Focused on an engineer named Zhao Shuxin, played by the late Zifeng Liu (1938-2022), THE BLACK CANNON INCIDENT depicted the shenanigans that occur when Chinese authorities launch a haphazard investigation into Shuxin’s activities after intercepting a misinterpreted telegram. It’s a stylish and extremely ballsey film (criticizing Chinese authorities from inside China’s borders being a very unsafe move then and now) but was outdone in all particulars by DISLOCATION, also directed by Huang.
Here Zhao (once again played by Zifeng Liu) gets a promotion, but is assailed by anxiety and exhaustion. Together with a scientist pal Zhao creates a robot replica of himself to attend meetings and give presentations in his place.
There’s trouble from the start. The robot can’t handle alcohol, which proves quite problematic in social gatherings, and comes to enjoy the pettiness and dishonesty of the workplace a bit too much. It also takes up smoking (because doing so confers an “air of authority”) despite the fact that Zhao doesn’t smoke. Further divergences occur when the robot inserts itself into a burgeoning romance between Zhao and Yang (Kun Yang), a sexy co-worker with whom the ‘bot becomes besotted. Worse, it engages in theft and violence, inspiring Zhao to seriously consider pressing a detonation button he’s created to stop the ‘bot.
In the dual roles of Zhao Shuxin and his robot double Zifeng Liu is superb, creating two indelible characters, one human and one not, without any of the expected robot mannerisms. His performance, however, is but a component of a very style-conscious film.
A cold and inhuman atmosphere is established by immaculately ordered and often repetitive visuals that lavish a lot of attention on characters doing mundane things (walking down lengthy hallways, dialing payphones, inserting a tape into a VCR, etc.) and a red-and-blue color scheme that grows increasingly garish. Further oddness is provided by Huang’s use of surrealism, which takes the form of elaborate dream and hallucination sequences illuminating the protagonist’s unquiet mental state.
Ultimately DISLOCATION suffers from the fact that, in the manner of quite a few non-Chinese science fiction films, its stylistic elements far outpace the cliché-ridden narrative. Still, I imagine DISLOCATION must have seemed quite unprecedented in 1980s China. So too its cutting satire of Eastern bureaucracy, which can’t possibly hope to resonate with western viewers in the same way it did with its intended audience.
Vital Statistics
DISLOCATION (Cuo wei)
Xi’an Film Studio
Director: Jianxin Huang
Screenplay: Jianxin Huang, Min Zhang
Cinematography: Xing Sheng Wang
Cast: Zifeng Liu, Hong Mu, Feihu Sun, Kun Yang