How is Your Fish Today? (Jin tian de yu ze me yang?) Guo Xiaolu China/UK 2006
Interesting things are emerging from within the documentary world. After 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep, one of the best documentaries of 2006, comes How is Your Fish Today a similarly reality bending prospect. It is a much more ambitious attempt to blend together reality and fiction by merging documentary with several layers of fictional footage, each told in contrasting stylistic ways. Sadly ambition isn't always rewarded, although director Guo Xiaolu's debut feature is highly distinctive and often very funny.
Referring to the solution a Feng Shui master offers the lead character for his recent run of bad luck (to buy a fish) the central narrative follows failing Beijing scriptwriter Rao Hui as he fantasizes about the lead character of a rejected project. His fictional alter-ego, Lin Hao, flees across China to its most northerly conurbation, the village of Mohe on the Russian border where one can allegedly witness the Northern Lights. Rao Hui eventually becomes so obsessed by his creation that he too journeys to Mohe. In addition How is Your Fish Today also contains straight documentary reportage showing people on the train to Mohe as well as footage at the snowy destination.
Contrasting the various modes of reality on offer here, How is Your Fish Today takes the post-modern baton beloved of the avant garde and runs with it a little further north. Playing with narrative in this way went mainstream a few years ago under the influence of scriptwriter to the latest wave of Hollywood auteurs, Charlie Kaufman. In this vein, How is Your Fish Today carries much similarity to Adaptation by explicitly connecting a scriptwriter to his work and it too leads towards an ending that unites author and subject. The additional ingredient here though is the inclusion of documentary footage giving the project an extra dimension in its progression to China's northernmost point.
Where in 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep the tribes-people that film was depicting took part in short fictional re-enactments (carrying echoes of a thousand Shakespeare productions performed in dodgy locations all over the globe - Macbeth on the mangy council estate for example), here the documentary form is in the minority. These 'real' snippets flesh out the themes of the narrative sections, explicitly giving the film a sociological and cultural curiosity factor in common with many of the fictional protest films coming out of China (e.g. Blind Shaft, Walk on the Wild Side etc.) and emerging on the festival circuit.
Coupled with the fictional bits these segments also serve to remind an audience that judging a country solely on a fictional film presents problems, whilst re-enforcing the qualm that despite claims to authenticity the documentary format can be just as divisive and deceptive as narrative fiction. In addition after many such films pointing out the cost of China's economic awakening it is a revelation to see writer Rao Hui living an affluent lifestyle, sharing similar blues to everybody else.
Regrettably How is Your Fish Today is deflated by one almighty anti-climax incubated by the two differing fictional styles. And to top it all Mohe doesn't seem like a tremendously nice place however friendly the inhabitants may be! The stylised hyper dramatic progress of Lin Hao is made genuinely stirring by an orchestral score and the potent imagery of a man traversing a continent only to end up battling the elements all alone in the snow outside Mohe recalls North American independents like Fargo. In contrast Rao Hui is depicted as the Chinese Larry David or Ricky Gervais. How can these two men possibly meet, each retaining his own style? They do but to say any more endangers the plot and no amount of documentary footage is able to soothe this dilemma. In reflection Adaptation had exactly the same problem but by pandering instead to Hollywood excesses it was simultaneously lampooning it was more superficially satisfying. How is Your Fish Today's resolution is arguably better but less immediately so.
Meanwhile there are lots of great little resonances and a droll sense of humour evident throughout. On the broader end of this scale there is a nice parallel at the end where Rao Hui goes ice fishing with his hostel manager in Mohe. All the fish are left twitching on the ice in some over reaction to the advice given by the Feng Shui master. Elsewhere Rao Hui consistently amuses. On a trip to the gym his trainer tells him that each cigarette he smokes is reducing his life by one day. As an early thirty-something with a fifteen year habit, Rao Hui reflects that he must be in credit as he's still alive!
Fittingly a great opening line in a documentary segment suits the mixed feelings the film evokes, echoing the futility of any road movie. When a train conductor on the way to Mohe is asked what he thinks of the destination, he says he never gets off the train.
