Unspoken Cinema

THE MAN WITH NO NAME (2009/WANG Bing) Opening sequence After a brief landscape shot of an arid countryside covered by a thin snow where an abandonned house made of earth stands, in close up, a man with the dirty face of a miner extracts himself from the fracture of a dry mud hill as if he exited a coal shaft, smoking a home-made cigarette. He walks off on the snowy roads with empty bags under his arm. On the dirt path, frail but poised, now carrying two heavy bags strapped with ropes on his back. He walks a long time on snowy roads. He then empties the bags full of earth in the middle of a snowy field and starts to stomp the fresh mount flat. On his way back, he picks up dried horses dungs with his bare hands in the middle of the road to fill up his empty bags. A caveman in modern times This old man, starring in every shots, comes out as a rural vagabond, a loner abandonned by all, who lives like a stray dog into his hole in the ground. He is a castaway surviving from a wreckage like