Review of In the Heat of the Sun

I came to In the Heat of the Sun through an adaptation of the original novel by Shuo Wang, a graphic novel in two volumes called Wild Animals by Chinese artist Song Yang. I was fascinated especially as I haven't come across any other comics or manga from China. The first volume intrigued me so much I sought out the second volume, and I wanted to see the movie as well. I was glad to find a release with English subtitles. I was startled by the story of a group of teenage hooligans free to run around Peking beating up rival gangs because all the adults are either working or have been sent to the country to reeducate others, and the schools are lax. As the cover of the graphic novel indicates, it's a tale of love and violence. I knew little about the Cultural Revolution but I didn't expect that the main characters' experience of daily life during this era, notorious for political terror and the upheaval of the lives of millions, to be a story also reflecting coming of age and first love. It's like West Side Story told by one of the most violent kids in the gang, but the love story goes sour, the narrator's attempts to be heroic also turn dark, and none of the kids seek to escape the brutality around them. It's a shame that the original novel hasn't been translated into English as of yet. An keynote of Wild Animals and the In the Heat of the Sun is the unreliability of memory, and whether the narrator's accounts of his youth have taken on his embellished presentation of himself to his adored older Mi Lan or his wish to remember his younger self as a brave warrior like his revolutionary idols. The conclusion of the graphic novel shows the narrator admitting to himself that the ending scene of him attacking Mi Lan never happened: he was never intimate with her. His first kiss comes from a night with Yu Beipei, when he enters her bed as she sleeps at his friend's house. It's unclear exactly what happens after she berates him for being too young to truly want sex, and lectures him that someday he'll want to be married and he needs to be worthy for his future wife. He remembers "It was truly the most important living political ideology lesson of my entire life". The graphic novel begins with a glimpse of the older narrator and his friends, now grown up, in modern China, but while the older narrator's voice is heard, the other characters are never shown again as adults. I noted from the reviews of the film that the director of the movie altered some of the events and details to reflect his own childhood, and it feels authentic as an universal looking back at teenage years and the first stirrings for grown up life, independence, and love. The ending of the film is very telling, as it shows the boys now grown up riding in a open top limo in the new 1990s China. It indicated to me how much China has changed: that the drive the boys felt to be heroes for their country is now directed towards success by Western standards. I appreciated reading the comments here and sensing how the film is regarded by people who grew up in China and during the same time; In the Heat of the Sun is revealing as well for viewers from other countries and other generations, as it has much to say about the young learn how to regard their contemporaries and learn how to love.