The movie is set in the early forties in a remote village in the southwest of China, the Village of Longevity, which is famous in the whole country – since the Qing dynasty – for people over one hundred years old and where the most long-lived person is told to have lived 119 years and 3 days. Design of Death begins along the narrow and unsettled mountain roads where a light lorry is going upwards, while a group of hot-headed guys is beating a closed sack and finally throws it down into a gorge. A motor-scooter crosses the light lorry which is going along the downwards mountain road and then runs into the sack, falling on his way. Niu Jieshi, the man in the sack, is then set free by the passenger on the motor-scooter, a doctor. The meeting is short because Niu Jieshi, incredibly unhurt, goes back to the Village to challenge the group of young toughs who mistreated him. The earth is quaking. The story resumes after 13 months when the doctor is traveling towards the Village of Longevity to verify that the strange illness – which is thought to be the cause of some deaths – does not spread anymore and is not detrimental to the name and the reputation of the Village. The doctor finds Niu Jieshi lying on a coffin right on the mountains. He brings him to the Village to give him his assistance, but he runs into the clan who orders him to return the corpse because they are sure that it is the cause of the epidemics. The doctor performs a close examination of Niu Jieshi, but he does not find any physical problem and decides to return to the Village of Longevity to find out the cause of his death. The doctor is now playing the role of a detective to submit the report to his superiors and reconstructs the episodes of Niu Jieshi’s life to discover what happened thanks to the little Niu. Niu Jieshi, son of a pedlar, was adopted by the clan Niu at the death of the father but he immediately became the black sheep of the Village, unable to respect rules, traditions and good manners. His jokes and acts of bravado created chaos and disapproval. From interrupting the sacrificial rite in his ultra-centenarian grandfather‘s honour, to the bath in the well of the sacred water of the Village, from spying the relatives during their sexual performances to the public humiliation of the uncle who changes the name of the family for it to be auspicious, from the aphrodisiac spread in the well water thus embarrassing the whole Village for causing a contagious lust, to his love affair with the widow Ma. The mayor of the Village decides that drastic measures have to be taken to get rid of Niu Jieshi: he calls doctor Niu back to the Village – since he studied abroad for many years – in order to think out a diabolical and deathly plan.
After Cow, a movie competing in the section Orizzonti of 2009 Venice Film Festival, the director Guan Hu works again with the popular comedian Huang Bo acting in the movie of the year Lost in Thailand by Xu Zheng, the best box-office movie ever in China, ranking 2 after Avatar by James Cameron. Design of Death relies on flashbacks and untold stories to have a matter solved, a matter which only someone searching for the truth wants to tackle because the one and only fact out of discussion is that someone has died. The Chinese original title is even more precise in this sense, namely “killing a living creature”. Guan Hu focuses the history on the awkward character who blatantly disagrees with the community, a society faithful to tradition, culture and rules which might have had a certain value, but lost their meaning with the passing of time because of insensitiveness to renewal. The black sheep is unable to respect traditions and rules and conform to good manners of the society, he claims his way of behaving because he is an alien and does not belong to the clan by blood ties. He has to be kept away for the good and the future of the community. Ironically, such decision is taken by the leaders of the Village when the portentous aphrodisiac literary reveals the unrestrainable lust of the others. The story takes place in the early forties, but it does not make any reference to any specific historical time, only closer to today reality from the chronological point of view, to the old China.
Maria Ruggieri