Lasting for nearly four hours, TIL MADNESS DO US PART is not an easy film for audiences. Directed by Chinese independent filmmaker Wang Bing, this documentary displays the unimaginable lives of a group of people who are locked in a small building, a psychiatric institution in China’s Yunnan Province.

Some people have already lived there for more than ten years; others arrived less than several months ago. According to the note at the end of the film, some of these people had killed, while others were sent by their families because they were too old to provide for themselves. These people live together and sometimes sing, murmur or talk to each other but, most of the time, they do nothing. Some scenes in the film may arouse uncomfortable feelings in audience members, as someone may pee near the bed or get naked and walk around. It is a world of delirium but also of sensation, patiently exposed by the director, Wang Bin.

“people’s life among each level is worthy of discussion”

There is no soundtrack throughout the film. With its slow and repressed pace, audiences are forced to stay with people in the film and be powerless observers. This film is by no means for audiences to gain pleasure, but Wang Bin’s gritty camera offers a vision of another kind of life, which is irrational but also tender. In one scene, a man is visited by his daughter at the institution. Across the iron bar, the girl keeps telling her father that he will be taken home as soon as he has recovered, and she worries that he might need some cigarettes. The girl is sobbing while the father keeps asking her to leave before the day gets dark. In another scene, a woman comes upstairs to meet a man. They hug and touch each other tenderly. Across the iron bar, the two people try very hard to express their love to each other in their own way.

With the film’s meticulous depiction of people’s daily lives in the institution, Wang Bin did not provide much background to the institution in the film. The film does not tell why the institution does not treat people properly or indicate who runs it. There is also no description of people’s life experiences or family backgrounds. It seems that the director has no interest in discussing social issues but focuses on the intimate emotions of human nature. Similar with his previous documentary film TIE XI QU: WEST OF THE TRACKS, Wang Bin truly proves what he once said: “people’s life among each level is worthy of discussion”. Rather than talking about a solution for the macro environment, the director is concerned with how individual life survives in such a society.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFfyu9b97Ww