Republic

In a small room of six square meters, Li Eryang wants to realize his communism and create a republic for his “Cosmos Brothers”.

A strange phalanstery, tucked away in one of Beijing’s narrow alleyways, filled with bodies and acrid smoke, spacey rock music, and psychedelic lights. Out of time, or perhaps, coming to us from a doubly distant time—from half-a-century ago and from halfway around the world. What an astonishing trip: a communist hippy fantasy relocating the Mao-inspired utopias that rocked the West in the 70s to present-day China. But the element of surprise quickly gives way to an obvious point of history: the forced march towards growth which saw China embrace the rule of capitalism was bound to foster this kind of utopian counterpoison, however limited in scope. Yet Jin Jiang’s fascinating film takes viewers beyond the relative incongruity of young Chinese men and women finding a lifeline in Pink Floyd and hash. As a matter of fact, the minuteness of this utopia is its most striking quality: the melancholy narrowness of a dream no sooner conjured up than threatening to fade away. More striking still are the very real and ridiculously close quarters of Eryang’s flat, which his generous hospitality has turned into an overcrowded island bursting at the seams. Taking a seat amid the dreamers, the film proves brilliantly equal to the challenge set out for it. As Eryang remarkably puts it: when you have a dream, you can sit anywhere, “even on the head of a pin.”

Jérôme Momcilovic