Lu Chuan, “Kekexili: Mountain Patrol” (2004)
Not often that you come across a film bearing a strong conservation message combined with a package of stunning mountain and desert scenery, a sub-text about honour and camaraderie despite political differences and some limited commentary on social and economic conditions in a particular region. In the space of 90 mintes, Lu Chuan’s “Kekexili: Mountain Patrol” weaves all these and other concerns into a structure that appears as part-documentary / part-news item / part-drama set on the high Tibetan plateau in western China. While the film’s thrust is a plea to audiences to help save and preserve populations of the Tibetan antelope and stop the illegal trade in their skins, there are other issues touched on in the film that deserve equal importance.
News reporter Gayu (Zhang Lei) arrives in a small Tibetan frontier town to investigate the murder of a patrol-man by antelope poachers and find out more about the patrol itself. He meets the head of the patrol Ritai (Du Buojie) and his right-hand man Liu Dong (Qi Liang) who agree to take him on a typical patrol to search for the poachers. The journey of several patrol-men into the mountains and over the high plains is arduous. Gayu comes to realise that Ritai’s relentless pursuit of the poachers, all of them well-known to the patrol, is dangerous due in part to the severe and unpredictable weather and the general physical conditions. It’s also futile for the patrol: the lack of proper and regular government funding means that the patrol quickly runs short on supplies so Ritai sends Liu Dong back into town (hundreds of kilometres away) for more food and fuel, and has to leave two other patrol-men behind when a patrol-car runs out of petrol. The group left to pursue the poachers is seriously under-manned. Liu Dong also has to sell some antelope pelts to raise cash for medicine for the injured patrol-men who go back to town with him and to buy supplies, and thus the patrol itself is implicated in the illegal trade. The search ends in disaster for the entire patrol: the two patrol-men minding the car grow weak and hungry and eventually perish in a severe snow-storm; Liu Dong gets the supplies but ends up dying in dry quicksand when his van is bogged down on the way back; and Ritai is shot dead by the poachers’ leader when eventually he catches up with the whole group and finds himself out-numbered and out-gunned. Only Gayu survives to make his own way back to civilisation with Ritai’s body.
Though Ritai’s pursuit of the poachers is ultimately suicidal, the viewer realises from the men’s encounters that both the hunters and hunted know each other too well and an unspoken code of honour exists between the two groups. The patrol-men seem to enjoy the thrill of the chase and the adventures they have together and the poachers get a kick out of being wanted men and leading the patrol on a wild goose chase. The poachers even know that their pursuers are often short on money and offer them the chance to become poachers themselves and never want for money for the rest of their lives. The honour system breaks down due to the overall poverty of the region that forces Ritai to abandon his prisoners to the mercy of nature and which is also partly why the poachers continue their illegal work in spite of being captured, fined or punished repeatedly.
Apart from Du Buojie and Qi Liang, all the actors who appear are native Tibetan amateurs and some of their dialogue may well be improvised. Du portrays Ritai as a hard-bitten anti-hero type who pushes and tests himself and his men against nature as well as try to protect it. The physical environment of the Tibetan plateau emerges as a significant “character” as well as a magnificent and stunning backdrop: the harsh and capricious weather and the treacherous roads and geology direct much of the simple plot and are the cause of several characters’ deaths. The film crew also suffered hardships and illnesses and the production manager from Columbia Pictures, one of the film’s sponsors, died in a car accident on location. Significant too is the use of Tibetan music, both the droning music of the monasteries during the sky-burial scenes of two patrol-men and the rustic folk music, to give the film a distinctive melancholy atmosphere and a sense of isolation and loneliness.
The use of the Tibetan equivalent of what we might call Country and Western music brings up the question of how closely the film resembles Western genre films. Several conventions of the Western genre are present: among other things, the pursuit of bad guys by the good guys which takes them through a remote and harsh environment that becomes a significant antagonist to the good guys and tests their physical and moral being; moreover, the pursuit takes on obsessive overtones for Ritai, far beyond the pleasure of the chase or the chance for adventure; and the film calls into question whether an abstract ideal or simply doing what the law requires can be worth sacrificing the lives of good, brave men like Liu Dong. The good guys and the bad guys are evenly matched in weaponry and arguments for their respective causes, and the film may attain a power from the ambiguous moral positions of the heroes and villains who find they actually have much in common. Often the women in such films have very minor roles as girlfriends or wives pleading with their menfolk to stay home (and stay alive) and this is the case with “Kekexili …”, in which Liu Dong’s scenes with his prostitute girlfriend provide the film’s most heart-wrenching moments before he leaves her to start back on his tragically fatal journey.
For all the power of the imagery, the themes and the plot, I find the “happy” ending, done entirely in subtitles, rather too pat for my liking. The film does say the Tibetan antelope was granted protection from illegal poaching by the establishment of a national reserve and a fully funded, professional patrol replacing the volunteer patrol. There is nothing said about whether the volunteers were invited to join the professional patrol or if the professional patrol is staffed by both Tibetans and Chinese. This makes me wonder whether the problem Ritai mentions to Gayu about the patrol’s funding is actually one of forgetfulness and neglect on the government’s part, and not one of the government deliberately ignoring the patrol because it happens to be a local Tibetan initiative born out of love and respect for nature. All too often in many parts of the world, conservation measures to preserve endangered animal and plant species or to protect the natural environment founder because the local community is not consulted or is not allowed to have an active role in the conservation project.