Chinese blockbuster Aftershock rolls out tomorrow on Region 1 DVD and will also be available via various Video On Demand platforms.
Directed by Feng Xiaogang, who attracted international attention with A World Without Thieves before moving onto stolid historical dramas The Banquet and Assembly (and then romantic comedy If You Are the One), Aftershock features a terrifying recreation of the devastating 1976 earthquake in Tangshan that killed a quarter of a million people. It's made personal when a truck driver and his wife, who have snuck out to make love in the back of his truck, must watch with sickening agony as the apartment building in which they live collapses, burying their two young children under tons of rubble.
The film goes on from there, but I defer to the very well-written review by our own Eight Rooks, who expresses his reservations much better than I could describe my own, very similar concerns. As he says, Aftershock can only be "cautiously recommended."
The advance copy I received does not include any special features, and it appears that reflects the bare-bones nature of the release. It's part of a new partnership between New Video and China Lion Film Distribution; upcoming releases include the director's sequel, If You Are the One: Love and Marriage and Andrew Lau's A Beautiful Life. Next month sees Jing Chen's The Warring States, with Francis Ng, and remake What Women Want, with Andy Lau and Gong Li.
While this wasn't the film I wanted it to be I actually didn't hate it as much as I thought I might, once the true trajectory of the drama was revealed. I wanted the film to focus more on the earthquake itself, build the characters up to it and have that - along with the immediate aftermath - be the main structure of the film. It is of course not that film at all, instead opening with the earthquake, giving the mother a terrible Sophie's Choice to make, and how that has long lasting repercussions on the entire family. It's full blown histrionics and brimming with Nationalism, but the film was made at a time when the country was reeling after the Sichuan Earthquake and its "aftershocks" and I would be lying if I claimed I didn't shed a tear or two at the film's finale, despite myself.