While cinema should have elements of universal appeal, to appreciate "A Touch of Sin" it's useful to have some sense of Chinese society and history. Many of the elements in A Touch of Sin would resonate well with a Chinese audience, but I'm afraid most Westerners wouldn't catch them. The very fact that dialogue in each scenario is conducted in a very distinctive (mutually unintelligible) local dialect is totally missed by the English subtitles (indeed, in China, the film would need standard Mandarin subtitles!)-- but the issue of dialect and local origins in a 'wanderer's society" like China would have a huge impact on the Chinese viewing audience.
Other reviewers mention that when violence occurs, bystanders don't seem to have any reaction -- this can be seen as a direct homage to the great Lu Xun (China's foremost modernist writer of the 1920s) who claimed that his very entry into the world of literature was inspired by a photograph of a public execution in China --where gawking bystanders in the background of the photo had no reaction to the violence happening before them. Similarly, the "assassination at the temple" (first story) can be seen as a direct reference to the famous 1935 assassination of the notorious Shanghai warlord Sun Chuanfang as he was praying in a Buddhist temple (an assassination that was seen as totally righteous and virtuous by the Chinese public at the time). And finally -- the very existence of the Chinese Communist Party, and the entire People's Republic of China -- is due to an ideology that the social injustices caused by capitalism must be solved by violence. (Think Dahai's killing spree, but on a mass scale). If you want to know why the film is not shown in China, think no further than this!!
We always analyze Western films within their cultural and historical contexts....to not do so with non-Western films does an injustice to the film and the film-maker.
Other reviewers mention that when violence occurs, bystanders don't seem to have any reaction -- this can be seen as a direct homage to the great Lu Xun (China's foremost modernist writer of the 1920s) who claimed that his very entry into the world of literature was inspired by a photograph of a public execution in China --where gawking bystanders in the background of the photo had no reaction to the violence happening before them. Similarly, the "assassination at the temple" (first story) can be seen as a direct reference to the famous 1935 assassination of the notorious Shanghai warlord Sun Chuanfang as he was praying in a Buddhist temple (an assassination that was seen as totally righteous and virtuous by the Chinese public at the time). And finally -- the very existence of the Chinese Communist Party, and the entire People's Republic of China -- is due to an ideology that the social injustices caused by capitalism must be solved by violence. (Think Dahai's killing spree, but on a mass scale). If you want to know why the film is not shown in China, think no further than this!!
We always analyze Western films within their cultural and historical contexts....to not do so with non-Western films does an injustice to the film and the film-maker.