It was through the Chinese social media site Weibo, rather than official news, that director Jia Zhangke first learned of several localised incidents of extreme violence that would inspire his latest film, A Touch of Sin. A gun-toting vigilante takes revenge on a corrupt elite in a provincial mining town, a massage parlour receptionist fends off a customer’s aggressive advances with a deadly knife and a motorbike hit man travels from peaceful fields to city for his deadly contracts. Pushed to terrible extremes, ordinary people can do bad things. Jia has constructed a narrative of four separate chapters with the odd overlapping detail, each one a demonstration of the extreme pressure put on Chinese workers in various sectors by the relentless national drive for economic expansion. It
15 May 2014, The Tablet
A Touch of Sin
Cinema
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I deplore how it was introduced overnight without lay consultation as a unilateral imposition in England and Wales (not in Scotland) and I see it as an example of clerical overreach, noting that the initial trickle of visit support becoming a flood came from the laity. It is true that under Canon Law, the Bishops did have that authority but the decision to impose it and take away personal choice I found quite shocking, not least because it has never been rescinded.
I imagine there will be no change in the Synod as it is a local matter. For me, it does seem that the circumstances of this personal control over my eating and fasting habits has been taken away from me, something which is reminiscent of a pre-Vatican 2 paternalistic Church.
So I do not now like to hear of the decision being expressed in spin terms as an environmental bonus as if that was the reason for the decision, which I feel certain it never was.