Night Train (2007)

A bleak and dehumanizing China in Night Train

Yi'nan Diao's Night Train is a work of great skill that ended up boring me with its pretensions. Yi'nan visually captures the isolation of his protagonist, Wu, by showing her alone in the corridors of her apartment building and commuter trains. Wu works as a judicial sergeant at arms whose duties include delivering the coup de grace during executions. Stoic and no nonsense, Wu yearns for romantic companionship and utilizes a dating service to meet men, but has extremely poor results. Her fate is intertwined with that of Li, an autistic loser whose wife was executed by Wu.

I appreciated Mr. Yi'nan's portrayal of China's criminal system as bleak and dehumanizing. Dong Jingsong's cinematography and Wen Zi's music are both first rate. However, there are too many moments where Yi'nan is guilty of artistic overreach. Mirrors are placed as an all too obvious indicator of vanity. The fetishistic use of Wu's white gloves is also a bit clumsy. Finally, the beating of a horse smacks me as too much of a crib from Crime and Punishment. Night Train is overly monochromatic both in its blue/grey palette and its bleak tone. Happily, there was better to come from Mr. Yi'nan.