BETTER DAYS
(directed by Kwok Cheung Tsang, 2020)
***+ (out of 5)
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> This Best International Feature nominee from China lays bare the fierce, soul-crushing social phenomenon of the annual state “Gaoko exam”, which determines who will be a scholar and who will be a worker drone.
. There are not nearly enough spaces in Chinese colleges to accommodate everyone who wants to attend. The government runs a kind of lottery of meritocracy. It’s social engineering: meant to direct its citizens into the roles that would best serve the state. Parents will do anything to give their children an advantage- and I do mean anything. It is a thoroughly corrupt system. Nasty tricks abound, bribes, merciless bullying- parents would probably kill to give their offspring a leg-up, if they could get away with it.
. In BETTER DAYS, one vulnerable scholar hires a cocky street thug as her protection from the mean girls who would cut her, if given the chance. But things go south when her worst tormentor dies in an accident that is mistaken for murder, and the two become prime suspects- each utterly faithful to the other, with a loyalty that could seal dark fates.
. There is much of interest here. It’s always good for insulated Americans to be exposed to foreign cultures. As Top Dog, we have an awfully narrow vision of the world. This is interesting for the sympathetic light the Chinese police are cast in. The detectives trying to solve the case seem almost unrealistically compassionate about the young couple. They seem to know they are victims themselves, of a social economic order that makes every individual compete against every other individual. China does not have “communism”, it has hyper-capitalism, rigidly controlled by a fascist party that has only one agenda: to use its people to achieve its own geopolitical aims.
– Illuminating. And sad. Sadly illuminating.
*
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