A Touch Of Sin Analysis

Whereas the introduction of melodramatic plots cannot be understood as a pure attempt to “go mainstream” (Wang 159) or complete deviation from Jia’s realistic concern, not only because all four stories are loosely adapted from authentic news. Different from the play of Quentin Tarantino as a fan of violence, the use of spectaculars in A Touch of Sin is a way of sketching socio-political circumstances in which ordinary people are hustled into the dead end, rather than fetishizing the genre of carnage (159). Besides, Jia’s intention to negotiate the reality in order to create the sense of real has started to have an inkling since early stage. He states that the quality of authenticity which in his mind outweighs the the reality itself, and there

Faye Wang’s Sky, and Mao Ning’s Heart Rain, are sung in the film to articulate Xiao Wu and Meimei’s melancholy and shared intimacy, which shows the power of popular music on expressing personal desires that used to be suppressed in Mao’s revolutionary culture. With the famous line of “I want to fly but can’t fly higher, however I try”, the Little Bird used in the last story of A Touch of Sin, also displays the effect on revealing Xiaohui’s despair about changing his fate (Wang 168), meanwhile functions as the tool of social investigation and critique (Setzo 95), condemning the solidification of class. The reference of Hong Kong movies can also be seen in both works, like now and then the famous Hong Kong gangster film: The Killer, is broadcasted in the soundtrack, implying Xiao Wu’s desire and inability to follow the hero model, displayed by Chow Yum-Fat (Lu 175), which coincides with the stylistic imitation of King Hu’s wuxia movies in A Touch of Sin, showing the impact of popular cultural figures on providing an imagined, idealized figures, as way of escaping from the painful reality. However, A Touch of Sin stands out for Jia’s first attempt to include traditional opera as juxtaposition with contemporary China. The Shanxi opera, Nocturnal Escape, and Za Pan Guan, showing “outlaw heroes of the classical opera”, is linked with and inspires Da Hai’s offstage violence as a bold rebel against new Chinese officials (Rayns 3). While the scene from The Trial of Su San where the female prisoner questioned thrice “Do you understand your sin?”, implying Xiaoyu as a bearer of guilt for killing the intentional rapist. Moreover, the line links up the four stories, alluring the audiences to ponder on the root of sins. Different from popular