Wamatseitan is a film writer, which is technically true. If in doubt, just look at his body of work. From Silent Mani Stone to his latest work Balloon, they are all basically about one thing, about faith, about searching, about confusion, about collision. After all these, what is left is how to better integrate Tibetan culture into modern civilization, or how to simply show Tibetan culture to the public, or how to reflect the intertwined emotions of progress and confusion of Tibetan culture in the face of changing times.
If we evaluate Wanma Tsetan’s work in terms of grasping the pulse of the times, we can say that it is accurate, but the accuracy itself comes from his profound understanding of the culture he lives in. This perception is universally extraordinary. Ultimately, this insight is presented to the audience in the form of a work that expresses one’s emotions quite successfully, which makes Wanmacaitan a successful director.
Understanding the basic ideas of the director and looking at this latest film, it is not surprising that it is not so complicated to understand. Today, let’s talk about The Balloon. It’s a film that had been completed and then shelved for a while, and when it was re-released in theaters, it didn’t look faded. It’s a simple story, but also one that is iconic and belongs to Wamma Tsetan.
The Balloon is about the daily life of a Tibetan family in the 1990’s. The family, which already has three boys, lives a very difficult life. The family, which already had three boys, was living a tight existence. The children don’t have many toys to play with, and when they happen to find a condom hidden under their parents’ pillow, they mistake it for a balloon and play with it. Later, the father promised to buy a real balloon for them when he went to the county town. However, the road to the county town took many twists and turns as family members changed.
The old father passed away one night, the aunt became a nun because of the emotional struggles of her youth, and he met the person who hurt her when he was picking up his nephew from high school. His wife, on the other hand, became pregnant by mistake. The family, who believed in reincarnation, believed that the child was an incarnation of their recently deceased grandfather. The family begged the wife to keep the child. However, because of the fine, the wife finally aborted the child, looking at the family’s meager means. Thus, the family’s hopes were dashed. Where the future lay, no one knew.
The story sounds rather convoluted, yet Wamat Tsetan’s presentation was not at all startled by the twists and turns of the story. He was very methodical and even visualized the twists and turns of the story. We all know that Wong Kar-Wai’s appreciation for Wanma Tsetan is all-encompassing. Wang Jiayi was the producer of the previous film, A Sheep Run Over, and he is present in this film as well, among its creators. The influence of one director on another is evident in this film. Wang Jiawei influenced Wanma Tsetan’s filming techniques, yet the Wanma Tsetan at the core is still him. The story told in this film is no more complex than the previous ones. He still focuses on faith and reality, and then looks at the integration of the two and the conflict between them from the Tibetan people’s perspective. If you were a little more demanding, there is nothing new in this film.
As the director said, the two color balloons in front and back are actually intertextual. The white balloon in the front looks at the world, while the red balloon looks at the world in the back. This is actually a kind of mutual attention between the ideal and the reality. The “white balloon” represents reality, life, and the present reality, while the red balloon represents faith and perseverance. When these two different values collide, the spark is the whole story.
The logic of the film’s story is clear when we look at it from back to front. Two red balloons are bought, one bursts, and one flies. The two endings about faith have been set up. Every story in the film is a correspondence between these two endings. The man and his son believe in the reincarnation of their grandfather, but soon after, he is gone. The red balloon bursts, and all their remaining hope is pinned on the fact that the mistress is pregnant. During this time, the Mistress and the Mistress have different interpretations of the Guru’s metaphor, with the Mistress being skeptical and the Mistress being convinced. When the Mistress decides to abort the child, the only remaining red balloon flies away, just as the Master and his eldest son arrive at the hospital and witness the Mistress lying on the operating table. So their faith becomes even more psychedelic.
After seeing her former boyfriend, Auntie gave her a book, but the book was first burned and then returned by her sister. Even though she knew she had the book and the love in it, she couldn’t keep this feeling for long. What she had believed in before still flew away like a red balloon, watching it fly further and further away.
Compared to these people’s faithfulness, the mistress of the house is the embodiment of a reality that is very clear about the present and the future. She is not in awe of the reincarnation that her grandfather, the master and the child believe in. She even dared to doubt the Master’s prophecy. When she became pregnant unexpectedly, her first thought was whether her family’s circumstances would allow her to have the child, not whether the child would be a continuation of her belief in reincarnation. She knew exactly what her family needed and didn’t need, and she wasn’t stubborn about it, yet she couldn’t agree with her man about this belief.
The collision between reality and faith ended with each of them going their separate ways, leaving people even more confused. They are left even more confused about where the future lies, what is the way out for faith, and how to balance the two in the process of coexistence with reality. This is also a kind of questioning of how Tibetan culture should go out of Tibetan areas. Wanma Tsetan released a red balloon of his own, but it eventually flew away, visible but not touchable. It is tantamount to not catching it.
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