Aftershock

“It’s not that I can’t remember, it’s that I can’t forget.” This sentence — whispered by the adopted daughter to her father who, after thirty years, is still convinced that she suffers from amnesia — marks the key scene of the film, the moment in which the protagonist decides to no longer run away from her past, but to face up to it.

Based on the novel of the same name by Zhang Ling, published in 2006, the film opens with images of a warm evening in 1976, when the life of a family, a community and a nation would be indelibly overturned by a terrifying earthquake which caused the deaths of 240,000 people. A mother finds herself in the position of having to make an unthinkable decision, for which she will pay the consequences, both morally and psychologically, for the rest of her life. Until the moment when, 32 years later, another horrifying earthquake by chance reunites the family torn apart by the first one.

Despite the information circulating among the media, which led many to believe that this would be an epic catastrophe film, the most showy part — with highly realistic, stunning special effects — is over within the first twenty minutes, rapidly giving way to the central theme of the film, the melodrama. Aftershock is not so much about the Tangshan earthquake, but rather about its consequences in the souls of the survivors, and of important themes of Chinese culture such as family, gender discrimination, the capacity for forgiveness by a child and a sense of guilt.

Blessed with convincing and measured performances, even in the potentially tear-jerking scenes, the film is open to diverse interpretations. In the mesh of the story of a family separated for decades by a tragedy of epic proportions, we are offered a glimpse of the modernisation and social and economic changes that have taken place in China over the past thirty years. But it also contains an invitation for a people to face up to its past, to accept the dramas and atrocities, to pay homage to its victims and deal with the pain by looking to the future with conviction.

In the final conversation with her reunited parent, the main character understands that her mother made an atrocious choice because, at that moment in time, she had no other option, but that she has paid the price in terms of remorse and the sufferance that has been her life’s companion: this scene could be read as a message of political conciliation. The fathers — the party chiefs — betrayed their children — the naive young rebels — but did so with tortured souls, fully aware of the crimes they were committing, but believing they had no alternative.

Initially distributed in China on 3,500 screens, it was the first Chinese produced film to be distributed on IMAX format in the country. It cost around 125 million RMB and earned 670, establishing a box-office record for a Chinese-language film. It was selected as the Chinese candidate at the Oscars for Best Foreign Film. It won the Best Film and Best Lead Actor award at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.