Cui Jian embraces “love，acceptance and forgiveness”

The old maxim that "you\'re only as good as your last film" proves happily wrong in the case of Mainland rock legend Cui Jian, whose first feature, BLUE SKY BONES, is as beautifully accomplished as his last exercise as a film-maker - the 30-minute segment, 2029, in the two-part movie CHENGDU, I LOVE YOU(2009) - was laughably inept. Set in Chongqing in the early 2000s, it\'s a challenging look at the lost generation of the Cultural Revolution through the eyes of a young songwriter who\'s trying to make sense of his life in an age of the internet, music downloading and forgetfulness of the past. Where the futuristic 2029 was a chaotic jumble of ideas, BLUE SKY, despite a few weaknesses, has a strong emotional thread to carry the audience through the flashbacks to the past and the jungle of thoughts expressed by the central character in his philosophical voiceover.

Cui has modestly described his role on the film as "orchestrating the actors, the music and the script" and leaving the rest of the production work to professionals in each field. He\'s chosen his team wisely, including veteran Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle(who\'s spent a lifetime working on movies by top Chinese directors), editor Zhou Xinxia, and a cast including versatile young actress Ni Hongjie(MY OWN SWORDSMAN , ONE NIGHT SURPRISE , SILENT WITNESS ) as the boy\'s rebellious mother, Huang Xuan and Tao Ye as the two young men in her youth, and the older Zhao Youliang (the Daoist master in AN END TO KILLING) as the boy\'s father.

Cui has acknowledged Doyle as the "axis" of the team, and his cinematography is a major part of the film\'s success, from the saturated reds and army greens in the Cultural Revolution sequences to his striking compositions throughout. Doyle\'s photography brings atmosphere and shape to the story as it shuttlecocks between past and present - from the "young love" triangle of the 1970s between the boy\'s future mother, her true love and his tortured, gay friend, to the early 2000s as the son, trying to make a career as a songwriter, finds himself sexually and emotionally blocked. Threading its way through all of this is the story of his dying father who tries to track down his wife after 20 years.

Cui\'s use of music - from his own songs to orchestral music by Liu Yuan and Italian pianist Moreno Donadel - binds together the whole structure rather than dominating it. And the real surprise is that, despite the movie\'s often challenging structure and imagery, Cui, now 52, finally espouses traditional values of love, acceptance and forgiveness. It\'s as if the former rocker-cum-bad boy has finally hit middle age.