At 178 Yimin Road in Zhili Industrial City in northern China’s Zhejiang Province, 19-year-old Shengan is two months pregnant. Whether she and her 20-year-old boyfriend Zu Guo have an abortion or a baby is partially decided by their manager as the couple spends most of their waking hours at his address. They are among thousands of young textile workers who have left rural homes to spend 15 hours a day in windowless rooms, shaking on sewing machines to sew mass-produced children’s clothes.
Almost entirely without commentary, Chinese documentary filmmaker Wang Bing integrates with young workers at various sites, resulting in Youth (spring), a three and a half hour documentary that could easily have been five hours, or 42, or maybe a week. He has filmed a total of 26,000 hours over five years and plans to release sequels. The story involves falling into a workshop. Then another. And another. We are told via a fence title map that 18,000 such workshops are in Zhili. While this repetitive structuring manages to mimic the mode of work depicted, frustratingly it anonymizes some of the workers introduced later.
It’s a shame as the personalities are the main charm here, seeming to suggest that the scent of youth wafts through even the most utilitarian environments. The flying pictures on the wall begin in the workshop, where workers sing along to the radio and trade good-natured barbs; they flirt and play fight and sometimes actually get into physical fights. Living on top of each other 24/7 means they have no leeway to process volatile emotions, but it also breeds family intimacy that makes these claustrophobic conditions bearable. The workers sleep together in flophouse dorms, retreating for limited leisure hours to eat noodles, wash their feet, and fight again, on one occasion weaponizing a big cream cake.
As the runtime progresses, the thematic focus shifts from interpersonal dynamics, with romantic negotiations galore, to job-related negotiations over compensation between workers and their disinterested, sometimes verbal, bosses. abusive. Monthly wages are calculated based on the number of bundles of sewn garments. In a speed-driven lifestyle, hands move across sewing machines as if they were in fast-forward. The director’s strongest critical editorialization is in the title he chose, because in Zhili’s workshops, youth itself accelerated. While this restrained embodiment allows for nuanced observations and avoids contrived narrativization, the film’s impact is muted for the young workforce depicted, who have – once again – been subsumed by a machine so much larger. than themselves.
Youth (spring) is an official selection at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where it will be screened until May 27.
