Ghost Returns and Historical Memories in Zhang Yimou's Gui lai and Pedro Almodóvar's Volver

"Gui lai" in Chinese carries the same meaning as "volver" in Spanish: both mean "to return." Volver, released in 2006, is a hard-hitting drama by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar; Gui lai, released in 2015, is a historical romance by Chinese director Zhang Yimou. Viewing Volver as a modern update of Odysseus's homecoming from the perspective of gender, Corinne Pache claims that "to raise the phenomenon of return is inevitably to start a conversation with Homer's Odyssey, which is, the home to which all narratives of homecoming must themselves return" (55). Indeed, Odysseus's homecoming, as a mythical ritual, goes beyond individual experiences and embodies human fate across nation and culture. As Gregory Nagy notes, return—in Greek, nostos—in Homer's Odyssey refers to "homecoming," a "song about homecoming" and a "return to light" (283). Differences between Gui lai and Volver aside, the two films show parallels with relation to these three connotations of nostos. More specifically, both recount homecoming stories and use those stories to allude to historical memories; both use art, including songs and photographs, as means for the main characters to recover their memories; and lighting shapes the way the audience perceives the (non-)boundary between the dead and the living. Whereas a comparison of these two works shows different approaches to the concept of returning, the allegorical interpretations of both works in their respective sociopolitical contexts, in turn, shed light on these differences.

Gui lai is set during and after the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Like Odysseus, the protagonist Lu has also been absent from home for twenty years. Where Odysseus spends ten years fighting in the Trojan War and ten more years on his homeward journey, Lu spends twenty years of his life in a political labour camp in a desert in Northwest China. Throughout these two decades, he attempts to return home twice, only to find that he will never be able to return. In The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boym observes, "After all, Odysseus's homecoming is about non-recognition. Ithaca is plunged into mist and the royal wanderer arrives in disguise […] Even his faithful and long-suffering wife does not see him for who he is […] Odysseus has to prove his identity in action" (8). Boym's description of this scene from the Odyssey has its equivalent in Gui lai with Lu's attempted returns home amidst and after the Cultural Revolution. His first attempt is characterized by the dark in both its literal and figurative senses. Escaping from the camp, he covers himself up from head to toe to escape the notice of the Communist Party cadres. When he reveals himself to his daughter, whom he has not seen since she was three years old, she refuses to recognize him for political reasons. Years later, Lu is lucky enough to survive the Cultural Revolution and waits until the day of his release to go home again. To his surprise, his wife, who suffers PTSD, is no longer able to recognize who he is. In spite of numerous endeavors to prove his identity, he does not succeed in returning to his family and resuming his roles as father and husband.

Whereas Lu's homecoming in Gui lai fails for political reasons, Irene, the protagonist of Volver, hides herself from others and lives in the dark for personal reasons. On learning that her husband had raped their daughter and had an affair with their neighbour, Irene sets fire to their home on a windy afternoon, thus burning her husband and his adulterous lover to ashes. Having committed arson, Irene escapes prosecution by not showing up in public. She stays underground with her elder sister, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and has lost memory and thinking abilities. There are rumors among the neighbours that Irene's ghost appears from time to time, but these rumours do not surprise anybody because, traditionally, the dead are an integral part of living in the village.

The beginning of Almodóvar's film suggests the spectral nature of Irene's existence. Volver...