The uncontrolled urbanization of rural China and the displacement of agrarian communities form the melancholy socio-cultural backdrop of Return to Dust, an unhurried but hypnotic portrait of two discards thrown together to scratch out a life as they weather the seasons. A lyrical slice of Chinese neorealism set in writer-director Li Ruijun’s northern birthplace of Gaotai, bordering Inner Mongolia, this is an elegiac story, a humanistic metaphor for a vanishing world seen through the prism of a vulnerable couple cruelly written off by their families as worthless encumbrances.
While Li doesn’t address the phenomenon directly, the film evokes news reports from the past decade or so of “ghost cities” rising all over rural China, where accelerated growth has outpaced demand as developers clear farming areas to make way for modern townships that remain underpopulated. The largest of these places, with hundreds of thousands of empty homes, sprang up out of the desert in Ordos, an area similar to where the story takes place.
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Return to Dust
Knowledge of that background is by no means essential to engage you in the simple, elemental storytelling of Return to Dust. But the humble lives portrayed here provide a stark contrast to the roaring Chinese economy that drove the construction boom.
From the opening scenes, it’s clear that Li and his DP Wang Weihua have a feel for the land and its rustic dwellings, conjuring a stirring sense of place in pleasing visual compositions that draw you in while the unprepossessing figures in what’s fundamentally a two-character drama are being established. The exquisite use of both natural light and discreet artificial enhancement throughout is beautiful.
Ma (Wu Renlin) is the last unmarried brother of his family, a hard worker exploited by his siblings, while Guiying (Hai Qing) is also well past the age of most brides in rural China, her fragile health affected by a pronounced limp and bladder-control issues. Her family have been reluctantly taking care of her but now want her out. When the two are forced into an arranged marriage, they comply in silence. But the future for them looks bleak, with Ma initially showing more concern for the troublesome donkey that hauls his farm cart. Their wedding photo is a portrait of joyless strangers with no communication between them.
Despite the indifference shown by their families and the meager possessions given to them to bring to the marriage, Ma insists on burning offerings to honor their ancestors and bless the union — the first sign that this taciturn, illiterate man of the land has a spiritual side. Snow borders the desert in winter at the start of their lives together in the impoverished village, which is close to a town yet seems removed from civilization.
A local government scheme provides them with a field to work for a year and seeds to plant in order to grow corn that the state will then buy from them. And Ma finds himself in a position to help the community due to a rare blood type (amusingly identified as “special panda blood”) needed by an ailing town official for transfusions. Not that he sees much advantage from this.
With gentle brushstrokes and a gaze that becomes almost imperceptibly more intimate, Li observes Ma’s first acts of kindness toward Guiying, who seemingly has known only humiliation and loneliness. It’s at that point, too, that the first notes of Peyman Yazdanian’s lovely string score are introduced. Guiying slowly begins reciprocating her husband’s care, concern and trust as he works tirelessly, sharing his deep knowledge of farming. While staying temporarily in various abandoned houses, they haul water to make mud bricks to build their own home. Ma carefully removes and rehangs the red “double happiness” symbol for newlyweds each time they relocate.
As the seasons change, the elements are often against them, but companionship and a shared desire to carve out a life sustain them. The subtlety and nuance with which Li’s storytelling conveys their evolving relationship is disarming; even the hints of late-blooming romance are appealingly understated. And the two actors — Wu is a regular of the director’s rural dramas, Hai a more widely known veteran — are entirely captivating, their expressive faces communicating volumes with few words of dialect and minimal displays of emotion.
The vivid turquoise head scarf that Guiying begins wearing represents an uplifting note of color against the prevailing earth tones. It has a similar symbolic function to the hatching of chickens that the couple raise together, signaling new life.
Despite continuing to be exploited by his family as they favor his young nephews and exclude him from wedding ceremonies, Ma remains loyal to them and to the rest of the community. He takes advantage of the access afforded him by the periodic blood transfusions to advocate, without success, for better financial compensation for local farmers in advance of harvest time.
While the film could be read as an implicit critique of China for discarding the weak in its rush to modernize, what’s more striking is its contemplation of kindness. Ma is a gentle soul with a profound respect for nature, and that quality proves restorative for Guiying. Even so, the writer-director doesn’t make Ma a saint; in a rare display of anger, he loses his temper with his wife due to her clumsiness while loading hay, though he immediately shows remorse.
As various neighbors take buyouts from developers to demolish their properties and free up the land, Ma and Giuying seem to have found themselves some permanence. But with the same clear-eyed, unsentimental observation he brings to the couple’s good fortune, Li bears witness to the return of sorrow to their lives in a final act that’s all the more affecting for its restraint.
