MOUTAIN PATROL (PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA/HONG KONG, 2004).
Wednesday, 3rd October 2007

People’s Republic of China/Hong Kong, 2004. Directed by
Lu Chuan from his own screenplay. Photography (Colour):Cao Yu.
Music: Lao Zai. Certificate: “15”. Length: 89 minutes.
Leading Players: DUO BUJIE (Ri Tai), ZHANG
LEI (Ga Yu), QI LIANG (Liu Dong), ZHAO XUEYING
(Leng Xue), MA ZHANLIN (Ma Zhanlin), ZHAO YISOU (Luo Sang).

Now and then you come away from the cinema feeling that a film has given you a very special experience. Such an experience may be of more than one kind. On occasion it stems from encountering a work that is emotionally shattering and later on in this season we have a piece, Ghosts of Cité Soleil, that had just that effect on me. Something equally memorable but very different can happen when the cinema transports you to a part of the globe that you are never likely to see in person. This is particularly the case when the landscape involved is conveyed in screen images so vivid that, if only by proxy, you feel that you have been privileged to visit regions that are truly awesome. It’s this kind of memorability that Mountain Patrol possesses.

The location for this film was the very spot where the real-life events that are the basis of the story occurred: the mountainous terrain of Tibet and the vast wilderness of Kekexili, the latter being an alternative title for this picture. I attended a screening at which the director, Lu Chuan, was present and he spoke of the extreme conditions under which filming had to take place. It was one of the most hazardous shoots imaginable on account of both the sub-zero temperatures that had to be endured and the fact that the movie’s remote location, a plateau on the boundary between Tibet and China’s Qinghai Province, provides little oxygen. Exhaustion was a very real risk throughout the filming and, with the planned shooting period of three months extending to six, over half of the crew either defected or went down with sickness. The hazards were made even greater by the limited amount of food available and by the fact that what food there was lacked quality. Only the dogged commitment of Lu Chuan kept the film going.

Mountain Patrol is, in fact, Lu’s second film and a total contrast to his first, a conventional thriller unseen here. In Mountain Patrol Lu is handling material straight from life, and for that reason the tone of the piece is that of a quasi-documentary although it’s actually an acted dramatisation. The event that triggered headlines in China and aroused Lu’s interest took place in 1996. Three years before that the inhabitants of the region had responded to their growing concern over the fate of the Tibetan antelope. Because the fur of these animals was much prized, poachers had built up a trade in it aided by pelt-skinners prepared to work for them in order to survive in this harshest of climates. Their activities had grown to such a degree that the antelope had become an endangered species, and that was why people felt it necessary to act. The action they took was to create a volunteer group who became known as the Wild Yak Brigade Mountain Patrol and they made it their job to track down the poachers. It was an all-out effort to stop the slaughter which, according to statistics, had since 1985 reduced the number of antelope from over a million to around ten thousand. Remarkable as this response was (the expeditions undertaken by the volunteers could take months), it was one special incident that produced the headlines, and that was the killing by poachers of one of the volunteers.

Although Lu felt that this was a tale that had to be told on film, it could easily have been an impossible dream, not just because of the conditions for filming already described but because it was possible that the film-makers would not be allowed to go ahead. Kekexili is a protected area that keeps out tourists and Lu’s only hope was to establish direct personal contact to ascertain what might be possible. He first got to know those involved in local organisations that were concerned with protecting the environment and then met actual members of the Mountain Patrol. Through this approach he eventually obtained the support and approval of the Administrative Bureau of the Kekexili Nature Protection Area. Nevertheless there was still some unease about the project since the patrol whose story he wished to tell was a non-governmental one, a status that applied to two out of the three patrols then functioning.

Once the project was found to be feasible, Lu still took his time. He had already been following the patrols for some months before he wrote his script and he would spend almost four months scouting locations in the region. What he has fashioned is a film which tells a story that closely follows the actual events and in the process he has avoided any temptation to add fictional sub-plots. Zhang Lei plays Ga Yu a journalist from Beijing who chooses to follow up on the published story concerning the murder of one of the patrolmen. He seeks out the patrol leader, Ri Tai (Duo Bujie), and so that he can report authentically on the realities of the situation he is himself allowed to go out on one of the patrols which will last seventeen days. In this way he will learn just how hazardous the work of the patrol is, and how elusive the target – the poachers always seem to be just beyond the horizon. If one does encounter them, then inevitably there is a danger of violence, but the landscape too is one that can prove to contain perils of its own. A more fictional approach might well have had the journalist falling for Ri Tai’s daughter but Lu is out to avoid such clichés. The most he is prepared to do is to build up the character of one of the volunteers, Liu Dong (Qi Liang), so that we can see something of his life – he has a girl-friend in Leng Xue (Zhao Xueying) – and can identify more closely with him in consequence.

By approaching the material in this manner Lu ensures that what is found at screen centre is not some invented personal drama but the sense of what it is like to belong to the mountain patrol. That in turn puts the focus firmly on the environmental issues that led to the patrol being set up in the first place. Nevertheless, towering above all in every sense of the term is this breath-taking landscape so superbly captured in the colour photography of Cao Yu. It’s too austere and formidable to be beautiful in the conventional sense but it makes your jaw drop as you behold it and it’s central to the experience that Mountain Patrol offers.

Filmography (title underlined shown by the EFS):
The Missing Son (2002); Mountain Patrol (Kekexili) (2004).



Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival

“An astonishing achievement… blows most Hollywood inventions out of the water. **** ” – Film Review.

“Gripping ****” – Time Out. “Epic ****” –Total Film.

“Awesome*****” – Financial Times.

“Astonishing. Tremendously impressive in fact” – Derek Malcolm, Evening Standard.

“It’s majestically beautiful and begs to be seen on the big screen” – Daily Telegraph.

Programme notes by Mansel Stimpson.