Movie Review: Behemoth
Behemoth opens with the view of an excavation project. Mechanical shovels and tow trucks are scattered amongst machine-carved ridges that lead down to a pit of uncovered treasures. The scene is unnervingly quiet and its wide lens vastness only extends that feeling. Several moments later, that quietness is shattered by a thundering explosion that sends clouds of smoke spiraling in the air. They float as sheets of black, red, grey and yellow, each crashing into the other. It is undeniably beautiful, in the same sense that utter destruction can look gorgeous from afar. Like the picturesque devastation of Vietnam in Apocalypse Now or the atomic bomb detonation from the most recent season of Twin Peaks, director Zhao Liang uses poeticism to channel the depths of misery.
Behemoth can be best categorized as a documentary crafted in the shape of a poem...
Behemoth can be best categorized as a documentary crafted in the shape of a poem. Taking structural and thematic cues from the Book of Job and Dante’s Divine Comedy. The film details the human cost of China’s rapid industrial and economic development. Hiking through the lush steppes of Mongolia, the camera follows and intimately captures the torturous life of migrant iron and coal workers. Behemoth is built purely on images and sounds. There are no interviews, no storylines and no specific characters. Throughout the film are vignettes of spiritual rumination, where a naked man, curled in the fetal position, lays amongst the landscapes as Zhao delivers passages from Divine Comedy. The man is our Adam, scared and defenseless, making sense of our fallen world. These shots are fractured into triangles and trapezoids, a stunning effect that creates a wall between the film and the user while still preserving the image’s original power. We are allowed to be removed from the chaos and informed by poetry that things are still hopeful.
However, in between these vignettes come extended segments where we are placed at the center of mayhem. An extraordinary example of this appears halfway through the film, where the screen goes pure scarlet. It’s jarring and even blinding. After a few seconds, the red dissipates only to see the flames of a large furnace, howling like the devil. Many men are working there, engulfed in the searing heat and noise. This is hell, the place where they work every day. In other shots, the green landscapes increasingly shrink as the grey pit of humanity ever expands. Lines of trucks dump dust and dirt down a slope, onto the sheep’s prairie, where they stagger fearfully. The migrant workers are seen painted in black makeup, the smoke and muck stuck inside their pores, a permanent reminder of the death that looms near. They say no words but speak a million thoughts with their eyes. In one particular scene, a man picks at the molten blisters on his darkened hands. We spend a solid three minutes observing the man, the sound of his scratches sharp and clear for us to feel. The sound design is lyrical and deeply uncomfortable. This is purgatory, a place that simultaneously keeps them alive and kills them.
Zhao, who is cinematographer in addition to being director, has a fantastic eye which stems from his background in photography. Panoramic shots of excavations and impeccably lit mine trails can easily stand on their own as photographs. What makes it all the more impressive is the fact that he shot the film in guerilla style, only with a camera assistant and boom operator at his side. Zhao said his simple film production allowed for less distractions. This becomes apparent in his films. Zhao shot Behemoth without the permission of the workers, but they don’t seem to pay much notice, resuming, and as a result showing in all its truth, the bleakness of their life. The film’s fly-on-the-wall approach allows for the images to speak. The people merely blend into the composition and don’t have a voice, aptly reflecting the dehumanization of their struggle. Their dark faces blend into the coal mines and their bodies towered over by respiratory machines. For the sake of development, we allow them to disappear into the smoke.
For most of this review, I have discussed hell and purgatory but not heaven. While Behemoth does devote most of its time to the former two, the latter makes an appearance in the film’s coda. Heaven is the result of hell and purgatory. And what is that result? Pristine cities built high and wide, loved and occupied by no one. It’s as good a heaven as humans could ever make it, temporary and ultimately futile. Workers broke their backs and destroyed their lungs for nothing—for if we let our greed search for meaning, we will always come up empty.