Film Review: Crime & Punishment 罪与罚
Crime and Punishment by Zhao Liang tells the story of military police near the Chinese-North Korean border, their bleak day-to-day lives, and their petty arrests. Although Zhao Liang exposes the brutality of some of the policemen — and even shows them beating suspects on camera — he doesn’t rely on shocking the audience to tell the story. Unlike his film Petition, in Crime and Punishment Zhao doesn’t hide his camera, and instead edits the movie cleanly to develop his story. In one scene, Zhao shows the police interrogating a suspected thief. He cuts to the thief post-interrogation, the suspect bloodied and bruised, giving the audience insight into the interrogation without actually showing it.
Zhao’s realistic, no-nonsense editing style is a perfect match for the bleak setting of the movie. Life for the border guards as much as for the suspects they harass is difficult, boring, and often joyless. There’s an especially bizarre segment in the film where the police find an old man collecting scrap in his cart, and they chew him out for not having a permit. They ask the man a set of questions that begins to repeat itself, with no real conclusion reached after a long time spent arguing. The next day, the police give up, and let the man go with a warning. Zhao adds a quick line of text to note that the man immediately returned to scrap collecting just moments after leaving the office. The police wouldn’t have anything to do during that time anyway. Nothing was gained, and hours were wasted.
Zhao’s most impressive accomplishment in the film is his ability to find moments of joy and humanity in the joyless and inhuman world of the border guards. In a final scene, a drunk and sentimental policeman who has just lost his job discusses with his friend about how his life has slipped through his hands. Immediately afterwards, Zhao Liang shows the police strangling and stabbing a rabid dog. The contrast of the two scenes makes the viewer question their impression of the police. Zhao asks the viewer to sympathize with the guards, which he then immediately juxtaposes with a glimpse of their cruelty. Ultimately, the film is joyless. Zhao has nevertheless turned it into an engaging, original, and powerful documentary. I highly recommend this film.
