In this blog post, I will summarize the plot, historical context, documentary elements, and the impact of the film ‘Summer Palace.’
20 years old. The passionate love and carefree wanderings of youth
Yu Hong, the protagonist of “Summer Palace,” is a young man who moved to Beijing from a small provincial city to attend university. He quickly falls in love with Zhou Wei, whom he meets at university, but the emotionally unstable Yu Hong becomes increasingly obsessed with their relationship as time goes on, tormented by the fear that their happiness will shatter.
Even while in love, Yu Hong continues to display instability, and as they hurt each other, the two gradually drift apart. Then, the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident erupts, and the intertwining of personal turmoil and political upheaval causes Yu Hong’s psyche to be shaken even more deeply.
Amid the instability of the times, Yu Hong, Zhou Wei, and their friends lose each other and scatter in different directions. Though they reunite years later, they have changed significantly over the course of more than a decade; the passionate love of their youth has cooled, and everyone is exhausted and struggling.
China in 1989: Political Upheaval — The Tiananmen Square Incident
The year 1989, which serves as the backdrop for the film, was a period of major political upheaval in Chinese society. The Tiananmen Square Incident refers to the bloody events that occurred on June 4, 1989, in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where students and citizens demanding democratization were met with a violent crackdown by the government.
At the time, calls for democratization had grown in China following the Reform and Opening-Up policy, and protests escalated as they intersected with social discontent over rising prices and other issues. The government responded with a hardline crackdown, deploying tanks and armored vehicles and using tear gas and live ammunition against crowds that refused to disperse. The crowds fought back fiercely, even setting tanks on fire, resulting in numerous casualties.
Documentary Elements in ‘Summer Palace’
‘Summer Palace’ received critical acclaim for capturing both the psychological turmoil of a young girl and the instability of the era. In the film, when the Tiananmen Square incident erupts, Yu Hong and her friends rush into the streets; however, their actions are portrayed not as a deep understanding of the events but as being swept up in the surrounding chaos, implying that many students likely behaved in this manner in reality.
The film realistically depicts the situation by interweaving actual footage shot at the time into scenes of the increasingly violent protests. By incorporating real protest footage into the fictional narrative, the film allows viewers to grasp the scale and intensity of the Tiananmen Square incident, and the director uses these documentary-style elements to highlight the protagonists’ unstable state in an even more tragic light.
What ‘Summer Palace’ Left Behind
Although ‘Summer Palace’ did not explicitly focus on the Tiananmen Square incident, it was not released in China because it used the event as a backdrop. Director Lou Ye submitted the film to the Cannes Film Festival without permission from the Chinese government, resulting in a five-year ban on directing and producing films imposed by Chinese authorities.
The Chinese government still appears to view the Tiananmen Square incident with discomfort. In particular, by including actual footage of the protests in the film, the government likely could not tolerate the exposure of an event from the past that it wished to conceal. Just as enlightenment movements and sensitive topics were restricted in the past, it seems the government did not want the public to be stirred up by this film.
