What caught my attention first was the name of the movie: “Tiny Times”. As it turned out, the movie was not about or for children. It’s about the coming-of-age of four college girls sharing their lives, dreams and more in Shanghai, China’s glittering financial capital.
Nothing really path breaking about the plot, you would say. That’s what I thought as well. In different versions, Hollywood has done the story – occasionally replacing boys with girls — to a very slow death.
But, as it turns out, since its release in end June, Tiny Times has touched several exposed nerves China.
Not only is it doing big business here – some USD 80 million till now –, it has triggered a big, big debate about generation gap and on the no-holds-barred consumerism often associated with the Communist country’s rich, single-child, urban youngsters. And, which, the movie ecstatically shows in its shimmering scenes.
It has also oddly polarised film critics; flagship newspapers of the Communist Party of China (CPC) have supported the movie but it has come in for severe criticism from those who write on movies in comparatively more liberal spaces.
It is based on popular author Guo Jingming novels for young adults.
“I have seen 6,000 or 7,000 movies, and this is one of the few that I hate. I was aghast at it,” these were strong words of criticism from Raymond Zhou, a known film critic.
Though Raymond reviews movies for China Daily, an important English newspaper for the CPC, he reviewed TinyTimes for Beijing News as he thought his criticism could be viewed as anti-capitalist drivel.
He needn’t have worried.
Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the Global Times, a paper closely affiliated with the Party, came to the movie and the author’s support. According to Sina.com, he praised Guo’s mastery of “subtle emotions” and said he was glad to see an author “from the grass roots” attain such success.
“I believe [Guo] is a superman who can decipher many types of delight and sorrow,” he wrote on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog service.
“Although some of the four main characters supposedly come from families of modest means, they live in a posh apartment and flaunt their Gucci, Dior and Louis Vuitton possessions,” Sina.com said, quoting one the young women who said: “Love without materialism is just a pile of sand.”
Some were more critical of the movie as it appeared to celebrate the culture of brands as income inequality widens in the country; they compared the plight of the millions of migrant labourers who built the shiny scrapers in cities like Shanghai only to be left far, far behind the in the story’s China’s amazing growth.
Many saw the movie as an example of the differences between individual and collective dreams.
There were obvious references to President Xi Jinping’s often-repeated and promoted concept of “Chinese Dream”.
Sina.com quoted state-run Xinhua news agency on what Xi said about Chinese dream: “Only by integrating individual dreams into the national cause can one finally make great achievements.”
The movie, of course, doesn’t quite celebrate the collective dream; it’s all about individual aspirations.
But for many, it was just a movie. Not a very good one, maybe; but maybe a source of temporary distraction.
‘”As a member of the movie’s marketing team commented in an interview, “What I really want to know is, if a movie can destroy an entire system of values all by itself, then what kind of value system is it anyway?”‘