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Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (2004)

Director: Lu Chuan

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From Time Out London

Set against the spectacular, freezing plains of the titular high-altitude plateau, this sober, gripping action drama uses the vulnerability of the endangered Tibetan antelope as the basis of a powerfully paced story about conscience and survival. Following the deaths in 1996 of members of the self-appointed local volunteer force established to protect the animals against poachers, reporter Ga Yu (Zhang Lei) arrives from Beijing to investigate. Winning over the group’s charismatic veteran leader Ritai (Duo Bujie), he joins an excursion that offers a chance of nabbing the ringleader and the risk of disaster.

Writer-director Lu has crafted a script gratifyingly free of contrived character conflict, generating its considerable sense of jeopardy and emotional impact through a feel for formidable nature, affecting individual performances and vividly applied ethical dilemmas. The patrol’s obvious sincerity and cameraderie is tempered by hints of vigilantism and compromise on which Lu refuses to pass judgement: during the first encounter with suspected poachers, for instance, we share Ga’s misgivings about their rough treatment; later, pragmatism grates against principle.

This sophistication is matched by superb use of the film’s locations; it’s almost entirely exterior. From its stark light and serrated mountains to ice sheets and duststorms, Kekexili is a photographer’s dream, but Lu also offers an ethnographic aspect ranging from drinking games to seemingly macabre air burials. It wouldn’t be too hard to read a political edge into this story of rapacious outsiders exploiting Tibet and its resources. Lu never offers anything so explicit, but he does ask a strong stomach of his audience; animal lovers might applaud the film’s sentiment but balk at beasts flayed or fields of vulture-picked carcasses.

Author: Ben Walters

Time Out London Issue 1884: September 27-October 4 2006

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