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For two more nights, Facets Multimedia will show Chen Kaige’s latest film, Caught in the Web, a topical comedy-drama about life in the age of the 24-hour news cycle. Reviews of the movie tend to describe Chen’s take on the zeitgeist as heavy-handed, especially when compared with the work of such younger mainland Chinese directors as Jia Zhang-ke. I wouldn’t disagree with that assessment, though I don’t consider any film by Chen to be without interest. After all, he’s one of the most groundbreaking mainland filmmakers of his generation. His Yellow Earth (1984) brought international attention to the “fifth generation” school of Chinese cinema—it was also among the first Chinese movies to confront the history of the Cultural Revolution (a subject he revisited in his subsequent King of the Children and Farewell My Concubine). History is a constant theme in Chen’s work, Caught being no exception. Its awkwardness might be ascribed to Chen’s attempt to view the present as if it were a historical era, considering what contemporary modes of communication might reflect about the development of Chinese culture on the whole.
