Gate Provides a Fascinating Look At Tiananmen

Few events attract the attention of the entire world. The massacre at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 was one of them. The Gate of Heavenly Peace revisits the tumultuous 7-week period leading up to the massive student demonstrations that culminated in the deadly shower of Chinese Army bullets. This three-hour documentary, composed of original footage, dramatic interviews and pleasant voice-owner narration, results in a gripping, unbiased and informative chronicle of an important time in China's recent history.

One of the film's most striking qualities is its scope. It reaches back into China's past, providing a brief but surprisingly comprehensive history of the Communist Party and its hero, Mao Zedong. Outstanding archival footage (some of it dating back several decades) of lavish parades and boisterous rallies effectively conveys the Chinese people's devotion to the Party and its ideals.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace also focuses on Tiananmen Square itself as a place rich in historic and symbolic meaning. The largest square in the world, Tiananmen is where Mao announced the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and since then has been the center of the country's political life. Forty years later, Tiananmen Square would become the site for the student pro-democracy movement's challenge to the Party's increasingly questionable political practices.

The pro-democracy movement materialized, in part, because of the anger some Chinese felt over the rampant corruption at all levels of the Party. Through interviews with workers, students, writers and teachers, the film powerfully conveys its 'subjects' increasingly vehement mistrust of the Party.

The outrage is obvious on the faces of the demonstrators, and the situation is aggravated when Party officials refuse to have serious, face-to-face discussions with student leaders. It was this critical look at the Communist bureaucracy which led Chinese officials to withdraw their entry to the New York Film Festival--Ang Lee's Shanghai Triad--because Gate was being premeried there.

Equally satisfying is the way the film is put together. The editing is first rate and the shifts from archival footage to interviews only occasionally lack grace. Traditional Chinese folk and Party songs help to complete the feeling of what it must have been like to be in China at the height of the Communists popularity.

Directors Carma Hinton (who was born and raised in China) and Richard Gordon have gone well beyond the call of duty in their Herculean effort to condense the fascinating and complex story of Communist China into a three-hour time slot and still retain a sense of focus and direction.

The documentary succeeds in its even-handed presentation of both sides of the Tiananmen story. The film is neither a propogandistic image boost for the Communist party nor a sentimental idealization of the students as martyrs dying for an honorable cause. Rather, The Gate of Heavenly Peace painstakingly chronicles the complexities, of history--it's vicissitudes, surprises, victories and failures--as any great documentary should.