{"id":1369,"date":"2017-11-24T14:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-11-24T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=1369"},"modified":"2020-07-17T09:41:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T08:41:32","slug":"silent-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2017\/11\/24\/silent-rage\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Rage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review of Wrath of Silence<\/em> directed by Xin Yukun, China 2017<\/p>\n

Screened at London Film Festival 2017, seeking UK distribution in 2018<\/p>\n

Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York<\/p>\n

Wrath of Silence<\/em>, an \u2018indie\u2019 film from China tells a painful story.\u00a0 It is filled with starkly incompatible ideas and images, juxtaposing childhood innocence with adult criminality, the gentleness of sheep with brutal violence, vegetarianism with carnivorous gluttony.\u00a0 In the early segments of the film the viewer is subjected to scenes of sheep being slaughtered, butchered, and devoured, suggesting that people may be at risk for similar treatment in this savage world.<\/p>\n

This clip from the film<\/a> is not for the faint-hearted<\/p>\n

Set in rural China, the film depicts a nation in transition to unfettered capitalism, where the landscape is being destroyed and replaced by a physical environment inhospitable to life.\u00a0 The water is poisoned by runoff from mines, and cities of ugly monotony rise from lifeless ground in the distance. \u00a0\u00a0In parallel, the social environment is also being degraded, with bullying kingpins in ascendancy. Corruption is rampant, and injustice is accepted without protest.<\/p>\n

Zhang Biomen (Song Yang) is a restless wildcard of a man who has not conformed to the prevailing capitalist ethos.\u00a0 Both miner and sheep-farmer, he refuses to cede his mining license to Chang Wennian (Jiang Wu), the sadistic Mafioso-style strongman in his remote village.\u00a0 Biomen happens to be mute, his condition stemming from an event that occurred when he was a young man, and we sense long before it is confirmed that his injury occurred during a fight.\u00a0 That is because Biomen is at heart an angry man with a trigger-sharp temper, always gearing up for a fight, his righteous fury easily ignited.\u00a0 But now he has a serious proximal cause for rage: his school-age son, Lei, has gone missing while tending the family sheep herd, and Biomen has reason to believe that he has been abducted by Chang\u2019s foot soldiers.\u00a0 Also, Biomen owes money to Chang, who has been scheming to bring the entire mining production of the village under his control.<\/p>\n

As Biomen fights Chang\u2019s henchmen at every turn the viewer begins to feel that his mutism is somehow fitting.\u00a0 Elective mutism, which Biomen\u2019s is not, but is presented as if it could be, occurs in the context of psychological traumas. This condition arises when what urgently needs to be said cannot be spoken because the intense underlying emotions threaten to overwhelm psychic equilibrium.*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Wrath of Silence<\/em> the distress is caused by an entity known as \u2018nonfamily abduction of a child,\u2019 a circumstance understood by child psychiatrists and family therapists to constitute a unique category of suffering for parents.** Parents are wont to blame themselves – and sometimes each other – for having inadequately protected their child, one of the most basic requirements of parenthood.\u00a0 For them, abduction of a child produces a state of tormenting anticipation, one that worsens with time until it is resolved; in that way, it is distinct from ordinary grief.\u00a0 What is particularly agonizing in cases of child abduction is the element of uncertainty, and as time passes there is an increasing likelihood that the abducted child will be recovered dead, if at all. \u00a0Xin Yukun who wrote as well as directed the film, intended to tell the story of a father-son relationship that would be meaningful to worldwide audience. In the UK, the news of Madeline McCann<\/a> is still followed with dread and anticipation.<\/p>\n

In such desperate personal crises, powerful psychological defenses are called into play. \u00a0Biomen summons up the defense that is most readily at his disposal\u2014wrath. \u00a0As suggested by the film\u2019s title, it seems that Biomen\u2019s seething rage, visible in his facial features, is actually augmented by his inability to express his emotions in words, and at least that proves useful for the moment; his anger gives him strength and an almost reckless courage.\u00a0 His ‘silent’ wrath manages to speak loudly.<\/p>\n

Biomen\u2019s wife, Xia (Zhou Tan), who is ill and whose expensive medical treatment has been the reason for the family\u2019s debts, is equally miserable.\u00a0 But Xia suffers more quietly than her husband. For consolation she has a few sympathetic neighbors and her own mother\u2019s prayers and talismans. Still she is deeply helpless; and helplessness is another key feature of parental reaction to nonfamily abduction of a child.\u00a0 In psychoanalytic terms, helplessness is a state in which there is no specific action that can be taken to relieve internal tension.* Sobbing, Xia rocks the family\u2019s pet sheep protectively, perhaps a substitute for her missing son.\u00a0 With this gesture Xia is also clinging to a cherished value that is now under threat, respect for life, as she waits for Biomen to return home with her son.\u00a0 It is implied that the little lamb is one being, human or animal, that will be spared from slaughter.<\/p>\n

Biomen\u2019s inner struggles and suffering are mirrored by the larger social context in which aggression, greed and avarice are the order of the day. Biomen is not alone.\u00a0 Without revealing the conclusion of the film\u2019s storyline, it can be assumed that cruelty and dishonesty will endure and cannot be eradicated by happy endings. Neither will Biomen\u2019s silent rage dissipate anytime soon.<\/p>\n

*Laplanche J, Pontalis J-B.\u00a0 The Language of Psychoanalysis<\/em> (trans. Nicholson-Smith, D.),\u00a0 New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.<\/p>\n

**Spilman SK. ‘Child abduction, parents\u2019 distress, and social support’, Violence and Victims<\/em>: Vol. 21, No.2, April 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review of Wrath of Silence directed by Xin Yukun, China 2017 Screened at London Film Festival 2017, seeking UK distribution in 2018 Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York Wrath of Silence, an \u2018indie\u2019 film from China tells a painful story.\u00a0 It is filled with starkly incompatible ideas and images, juxtaposing […]<\/p>\n

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