The primary objective of a movie is to entertain the audience by presenting a captivating story, while a good movie also incorporates various artistic elements and employs skillful techniques to evoke empathy among the audience. Dying to Survive, directed by Wen Muye, is a movie that amazed a large population of the audience in China after its release in 2018. Although it is Wen's debut film, he effectively engages the audience in the movie while provoking the audience to think introspectively and to reflect on the critical social issue-the cost of life-saving drugs. Along with the leading actor, Xu Zheng's spectacular performance, the movie received numerous accolades and remained a hot topic in discussion months after its screening.
The central storyline of the movie revolves around a drug called Glinic, which takes its name from the real drug Gleevec, a highly effective medicine targeting chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) synthesized by the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. However, before Novartis' patent expires, the price of the drug is prohibitive to most patients in China with this life-threatening condition. Cheng Yong, the protagonist, accidentally finds out that the Indian generic Glinic has the same therapeutic effect with a significantly lower price; then, the movie can be divided into three parts: Cheng smuggles the drug to "earn good money," quits for fear of arrest and revenge from the antagonist Zhang Changlin, and resumes selling at a much lower price with a personal loss. Wen Muye and other scriptwriters employ different strategies in these three parts to engage the audience throughout the movie.
For the first part of the movie, Wen uses conflicts among characters and an extensive amount of humor to grab the audience's attention and facilitate the progression of the story. For example, at the beginning of the movie, Cheng beats his pregnant ex-wife and her lawyer during the discussion of their son's custody, which leads to a fight with Detective Cao Bin, who is also his ex-wife's brother. This brief scene portrays Cheng as a violent, reckless, and unsuccessful middle-aged "loser" who has no resemblance to the "God of Medicine" (the literal translation of the original title). This negative portrayal of Cheng leaves the audience with a misleading first impression, which amplifies the drastic transformation of the character to an altruistic hero later in the movie. Additionally, this personal enmity rationalizes Detective Cao's suspicion towards Cheng in the smuggling investigation.
The dramatic conflict and losing the custody of his son provide Cheng with the ambition to earn "big money" by smuggling drugs. Before doing so, he needs to form a group of helpers, and that is when Wen Muye integrates multiple humorous plots into the story to further engage the audience. In order to negotiate with the manager of the Indian drug factory, Cheng finds Pastor Liu, who is fluent in English, to translate for him. However, Liu is reluctant to do it since it is against his belief in Christianity. Cheng then tells him that God says, "saving a life is better than building a seven-tier pagoda," which is actually from Buddha. The majority of Chinese people are more familiar with Buddhism than Christianity and would understand the humor instantly. Then, Cheng quotes "If I do not descend to hell, who descends to hell" (Wen, Dying to Survive, 00:27:35-00:28:00) from Buddha and mistakenly attributes it to God again. The second misquote seems repetitive, but it foreshadows Cheng's destiny-getting arrested for distributing Glinic.
After effectively engaging the audience, Wen starts to introduce more foil characters to evoke emotions and empathy among the audience. The combination of dialogue, filming techniques, and sound vividly demonstrates the theme of realism and prepares for a thought-provoking ending. The most representative foil character is an elderly patient who begs Detective Cao to stop the investigation after he arrests a group of patients who has been benefiting from the inexpensive Indian generic drug. Wen utilizes close-up shots with low-key lighting to portray an extremely vulnerable figure, which creates an intense feeling of repression. Wen also deliberately eliminates all other sounds to amplify the elderly woman's monologue in a feeble voice. The question "can you guarantee that you can stay healthy for the rest of your life?" and "such bad luck may fall on any family" from the patient elicit extensive sympathy and some degree of fear among the audience. Although not everyone has experienced life-threatening conditions or seen loved ones suffering from critical illnesses, most of the audience has been sick or been in the hospital before, so the fear of serious illnesses and expensive medical bills mentioned by the patient is ubiquitous.
To enhance the theme of realism, Wen uses moving cameras with quick shifts of angles to mimic the effect of a hand-held camera. This strategy gives the movie a texture similar to that of a documentary, which encourages the audience to connect the story to real life, especially among those audiences who experience similar miseries. Moreover, Wen successfully targeted the young adult population by continuously incorporating various emblems that represent the early 2000s, such as the previous version of the Chinese currency, the first version of the online chatting software Tencent QQ with Window XP, and vintage televisions to instantly draw the audience back to the real early 2000s with the things they grew up with.
The meticulous demonstration of realism establishes the smooth character progression of the protagonist Cheng Yong. After witnessing the deaths of Lv Shouyi and Huang Mao, along with miscellaneous influences from other characters, Cheng turned from selling drugs for profits to selling drugs to save people for a pecuniary loss. However, the progression of the two antagonists is one of the drawbacks of the movie.
The most prominent antagonist Zhang Changlin is a fraud expert who sells counterfeit drugs with no medicinal benefit to patients with CML. After Zhang threatens Cheng to transfer his franchise of Indian generic drug, he raises the price of the drug ten times higher, which leads to the deaths of several patients who used to buy the drug from Cheng. After Cheng realizes this, he resumes selling drugs, but this time, he sells at a personal loss. Zhang is eventually moved by Cheng's altruistic act, so after the police arrest him, he tries his best to protect Cheng at the cost of his commutation. However, Zhang's transition seems too abrupt to the audience. Compared to Cheng, who has been through multiple tragedies and epiphanic moments, Zhang's description is limited to a selfish, profit-driven, and apathetic con artist. The fact that only a single encounter with Cheng completely changes him in a substantial way is not particularly persuasive.
On the contrary, Wen manages to dramatize the pharmaceutical company Novartis by oversimplifying their business model to depict them as the other antagonist. However, the character of the company is less dynamic than Zhang. There is a pharmaceutical representative from Novartis in the movie who always wears a set of formal suits, neglects people's protests, and urges the police department to arrest the drug dealer multiple times. As a result, the audience will inevitably picture an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company behind this ruthless character. However, Wen did not mention how much capital and labor pharmaceutical companies have invested before they can commercialize a new drug, and they only have the patent for a limited amount of time. On the other hand, Wen omits the role that the Chinese healthcare system played in drug pricing. For instance, the Chinese government imposed import taxes on all life-saving drugs before the case of Lu Yong brought public attention. Ironically, in the end, Wen uses large fonts in subtitles to highlight that the government stopped imposing taxes on drugs for critical illnesses and regulated the price of those drugs with new healthcare policies. It is plausible to assume that Wen purposely omits the essential agencies for drug pricing for political reasons and bypasses strict censorship.
Dying to Survive is one of the best Chinese movies I have watched after movie censorship became much stricter in China. It is entertaining, thought-provoking, and even promoted the legislation of the healthcare laws in China. More importantly, to the general audience, the movie compels us to reflect on life as the most beautiful gift that should not be taken for granted, so every day and every minute of our life should be cherished.