Film Review - Not One Less (1999)

Pedagogy of a Substitute Teacher

Reviewed by P. K. Jayaraj, RIESI, Bengaluru

From the Movie: NOT ONE LESS

Director: Zhang Yimou
Screenplay: Shi Xiangsheng
Cinematography: Hou Yong
Editor: Qu Ru
Design: Cao Jiuping
Music: San Bao
Producer: Zhang Weiping ; Zhao Yu (exec.)
Production co.: Sony Pictures Classics
Duration: 100 min

Cast:

Wei Minzhi ... Wei Minzhi
Zhang Huike ... Zhang Huike
Tian Zhengda ... Mayor Tian
Gao Enman ... Teacher Gao
Sun Zhimei ... Sun Zhimei

Zhang Yimou’s ten feature films to date, beginning with Red Sorghum in 1987, have evoked heated attacks and passionate defenses, both within China and in the international film community. Not One Less is no exception. Released in China in early 1999 to official and critical approval and audience enthusiasm, the film hit a roadblock at the Cannes International Film Festival later that year. The film won the Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Film Festival.

The film is set in the present, in a small village in Hebei province. When teacher Gao is called home to care for an ailing relative, the village mayor hires Wei Minzhi as Gao’s temporary replacement. Thirteen-year-old Wei is barely older than her students, and her teaching skills are next to nonexistent. But her stubbornness and determination know no bounds. Unsure that the mayor will pay her, Wei focuses on the ten Yuan bonus that Gao offers her if all twenty-five students in the class are still there when he returns, and “not one less.”

Gao leaves Wei a piece of chalk for each lesson, which consists of writing a text on the blackboard for the students to copy. Wei’s pedagogical methodology seems largely to consist of locking the students in the classroom and guarding the door from the outside. This works until troublemaker Zhang Huike manages to runs away from school, forced to try to find work in the nearby city of Zhangjiakou to support his ailing, debt-ridden mother. Wei now has a mission: to get to the city, recover Zhang, and thus claim her bonus. But by the time she arrives there, Zhang has disappeared. After exhausting but fruitless attempts to find him, Wei approaches the local TV station, whose manager, impressed by her determination, features her on a top-rated “social problem” program. Zhang sees the show, and the producers return him and Wei to their village, donations and extra chalk for the school in hand.

In outline, the plot seems like a recipe for something merely sentimental. But Not One Less is not just a story about cute kids, helpful adults, and happy endings. These elements are present, though, and do contribute to the “audience-friendly” feel of the film, a quality which accounts not only for its popularity with Chinese audiences, but also for its perceived marketability by North American multinational corporate distributors.

The neorealist elements of Not One Less contribute to its ability to transcend the sentimental. All of the actors in the film are amateurs. Moreover, most play a version of who they are in real life: the mayor is actually Tian Zhengda, a village mayor; the TV station manager is, in fact, the manager of a local station in Zhangjiakou. The two central children, Wei Mingzhi and Zhang Huike, who play characters of the same name, were found in rural Hebei schools after a long search by the director and his team. This semi documentary aspect of Not One Less—its use of hidden cameras (during Wei’s interactions with crowds in the city, for example), location shooting, and natural lighting—results in a fascinating uncertainty. There is a sort of ambivalence or play between the different genres of realism, staged documentary, and fiction that is reminiscent of recent masterpieces of Iranian cinema (Makhmalbaf and Kiarostami being the two most prominent exponents)

Synopsis

In a village in China mired in poverty, Gao (Gao Enman) is the lone teacher in a school so threadbare he must ration chalk to make sure he has enough for the day. The destitution of the village is not limited to the school; some of the children sleep in the schoolhouse because they have nowhere else to go, and many students have already dropped out to go to work to help feed their families. Gao is forced to leave town for a month, and no one in the village is able to take over for him except a 13-year-old girl, Wei Minzhi, who possesses only the most rudimentary education herself. What she lacks in educational credential, she makes up for in determination -- she needs money, and teaching is an honest job that pays, and since she'll get a 10 Yuan bonus if all 28 students are still attending when Gao gets back, she is determined that no one will drop out on her watch. So when one student turns up missing, and word has it he's been sent to the city by his mother to work, she travels to the city to look for him. In a place where thousands of children are working in the underground labor force or begging on the street, one boy hardly stands out from the crowd, and she has little luck. However, she's able to persuade a sympathetic TV station manager to let her make an announcement in hopes someone knows where he has gone. Despite its serious and often grim theme, Yi Ge Dou Bu Neng Shao is often light in tone and draws on the strength and humor of its characters.