‘Youth (Hard Times)’ Review: Wang Bing Returns to the Garment Workshops of China to Further Explore the Economic Tribulations Faced by Their Young Workers
Courtesy of TIFF
Zhili, an area of Huzhou City, China, is the home of over 18,000 garment workshops, which provide jobs for more than 300,000 workers. Made up of a largely migrant pool of employees from the country’s rural regions, these garment factories are often run by owners who operate outside the law, manipulating their laborers within an economic system that provides little protection or stability for those on its lowest rungs. With his latest work and the centerpiece of his ongoing ‘Youth’ trilogy, Youth (Hard Times), Chinese documentarian Wang Bing returns to these Zhili workshops to further study the young migrant workers whose lives are governed by the punishing and neverending nature of their hard labor, investigating the nature of this exploitation with the unhurried observational perspective that has come to define Bing’s career and his fixation with showcasing contemporary relationships between individuals and the work that defines their lives within the landscape of a Capitalist world.
Youth (Hard Times) resettles from the garment factories found on the inaptly anointed Happiness Road workshops focused on in 2023’s Youth (Spring) to the ones on nearby Xisheng Road. However, few details distinguish the cramped, windowless, and grungy workplaces from one another. As with the first installment, Bing introduces his subjects with no-frills title cards that include their name, age, and hometown (Tan Weiwei, 15, from Wanjiang, Anhui Province, for example). While maintaining the same penchant for extended takes and handheld camera work that fully immerses the viewer within these miserable working-class spaces, Youth (Hard Times) distinguishes itself from its predecessor as it unhurriedly becomes structured by the economic instability faced by its subjects. Bosses disappear before issuing paychecks, figures buckle under the pressure of their demanding workloads, and groups unofficially unionize against their crooked managers, all as the Chinese New Year looms closer and workers look forward to returning to their hometowns to celebrate with family and friends, far away from the sewing machines that control much of their lives.
Courtesy of TIFF
Over its nearly four-hour runtime, Youth (Hard Times) pushes to create a fully formed glimpse into the toils of its proletariat subjects, following them from dusk till dawn as they move between their workshops and the squalid dorm-style living quarters located within the same Communist style factory buildings. Disregarding intricate lighting setups or elegant camera movements, Bing utilizes a handheld digital camera that allows him to freely pursue the workers and create an entirely enveloping experience. Through this approach, the viewer can comprehend the ceaseless repetition of the workers’ lives as their days blend and become defined by their economic output, leaving little time for the young subjects (some aged just fifteen) to consider building aspirations for their futures. While Youth (Spring) mainly underscored the intimate interpersonal dynamics between its subjects, this second installment emphasizes the all-consuming anxieties of the work that permeates almost every conversation, whether caused by faulty sewing machines or arguments with bosses over raising measly payouts for individual garments.
With many of the workers hailing from China’s Anhui province, Youth (Hard Times) accentuates the powerful juxtapositions between their family lives and the ones they lead while working in the city. During the documentary’s final moments, Bing tracks some of his subjects returning to their hometowns, finally escaping the dismal confines of their workshops and living quarters for the fresh air and open expanses of their rural roots. This shift operates as a well-deserved release from the ceaseless anxieties of urban life and Capitalist pressures but also provides critical context to understand the economic situations at play that push these young workers towards opportunities in the city, the humble, sometimes impoverished families they have left behind. By supplying this fully realized portrait of the figures he focuses on, Bing intercommunicates with all of the forces at play that lead the young workers to take on such exploitative work within a society that rarely offers them more viable opportunities.
Just as the figures at the core of the documentary return home for a few days of vacation or briefly catch glimpses of fireworks from the concrete balconies of their factory homes, Youth (Hard Times) shifts its focus during beats that speak to the larger world outside of the workshops. In one of the few instances where the workers directly address Bing’s camera, a young man named Hu Siwen reflects on his involvement in the 2011 protests in the Zhili garment district. What started as a pushback against tax collectors devolved into a brutal clash that found the workers violently repressed by police. Through this moment, Hu Siwen leaves behind his immediate everyday problems to reflect upon the broken machine in which he finds himself just a cog, lacking any protection or representation for his best interests and, in turn, those of his coworkers.
Courtesy of TIFF
In the press notes for Youth (Hard Times), Bing states: “Most young people in China work hard to live. Wages are very low, days are endless, and there is almost no room left for rest. Chinese society has reduced their daily lives to work.” The documentary works as a decisive transmission of this concise phrase, shining light on a dark corner of the global economy that consumers rarely consider, living far removed existences from the grimy workshops that Bing embedded himself in during the five years he spent shooting the Youth trilogy. While Youth (Hard Times) can prove a challenging sit for even the most fervent of arthouse cinema fans, the documentary’s overall vision and pursuit prove incredibly significant within the landscape of contemporary filmmaking.
3.5/5
‘Youth (Hard Times)’ made its world premiere as part of the Official Competition at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival before playing at other festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Icarus Films will release the documentary in select theaters in the United States beginning on Friday, November 1. Click here for more information about ‘Youth (Homecoming)’ or watch the trailer below: