Director – Sicheng Chen – 2026 – China – Cert. 12a – 120m
**
The terminally ill patients thrown together in hospital Ward 10 decide to adopt a positive attitude towards both life and death – out in UK cinemas on Friday, June 5th
This has one of those weird Oriental movie titles that doesn’t translate that easily into Western languages, the number 10 referring to the ward for terminally ill patients in a particular hospital and the rest meaning a sort of optimistic equivalent of a suicide squad, but less a military type do or die operation than a determination to live in the inevitable face of inescapable, imminent death. The translators have settled on a term borrowed from philosopher Martin Heidegger which probably works better in German than in English, in which language it feels incredibly clunky. It refers to the act of living authentically in the face of death, which is very much what this movie is about. Somewhere in the middle of the narrative, Ward 10’s occupants, who feel increasingly like a close-knit family, name themselves (in the English subtitled version) the Ward 10 Fearless Squad, which would perhaps have been a better title.
Director Sicheng Chen (Detective Chinatown 3, 2021; Detective Chinatown, 2015) opens with that old cliché, the man about to jump off the top of a building. “I definitely can’t pay you back”, Zhang Xiaobing (Jiang Long) says to the caller. “Take my phone.” The pretty nurse appears, racing from the centre of the roof to stop him. He slips. She has got him. Phew! But not for long. He falls past people in hospital wards towards the crowd of onlookers below… Living’s not that big a deal, he says. Dying’s not that big a deal. A comedic tone is established, but with dark overtones…
Three days earlier, after the main title, Xiaobing’s in the same hospital with his aunt Zhang Xiaolan (Ai Liya from Ermo, Zhou Xiaowen, 1994) who is about to have surgery when he and a colleague approach Director E (Wei Xiang), who has just taken over from the previous doctor to whom our two men were selling AI carebots. They want the money owed them, but the director points out that the publicly funded hospital doesn’t have that kind of money. But then, the news comes though to the director’s office that Xiaobing’s aunt is in cardiac arrest. Next thing, Xiaobing’s at a funeral director’s where the enthusiastic salesman (Tong Monan) is showing him prices. Everyone is pitching moneymaking schemes, it seems. We can’t even afford to die.
Asked to say a few words to his late aunt, he tells her he feels a failure. He has one friend, Chowhound (Zhang Chi). Searching for his late aunt’s watch – presumably it’s worth quite a bit – in the return ambulance and then the hospital ward, they’re confronted by a nurse demanding they settle the hospital bill. This might seem funny to indigenous Chinese viewers, but in the UK where healthcare is (for the moment) free, it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
Xiaobing makes a dash for it. On the stairwell, as he’s about to relax with a cigarette, his lighter won’t work. Then, the rooftop. We’re back at the beginning. The jump. The fall. Onto a medical tent. As he puts it, he failed to die – and instead became an internet meme.
The remainder of the film is divided into seasons – Summer, Autumn, and (very briefly) Winter.
Summer. Our hero is hassled first by rich woman patient Beauty Ma (Cao Ming), then by three loan sharks Big Liu (Han Yanbo), Big Guan (Zhang Lei) and Big Zhang (Liu Kun). A report delivered by the nurse, XieXie (Yang Chaoyue), says he has cancer. Or worse, confirms Director E. Actually, Director E. wants Xiaobing’s help in a study on the effects of psychological intervention on cancer patients, and Xiaobing agrees since staying in Ward 10 may help him evade the three loan sharks.
The current Ward 10 inmates also include a man who hides behind the curtains round his bed, precocious little girl Zhang Xiaobing aka Xiao (Ye Quanxi), who claims to be star Zhang Ziyi’s daughter, and bespectacled film director Jia (Wang Zichuen), constantly attended by his girlfriend Zhen Ai (Qi Xi from The Whistleblower, Xiaolu Xue, 2019; Long Day’s Journey into Night, Bi Gan, 2018). Jia gives Xiaobing a script to read for feedback. Ai tells him it was rejected, although its his masterpiece. Jia’s script, Xiaobing and his friend agree, is terrible. The man is deluded. Nevertheless, Xiaobing plays the sycophant and praises the script to Jia’s face, to his girlfriend’s delight – and talks him into making a Ward 10 documentary.
The chatty lift operator, due to retire, plans to go travelling. First stop, Dubai, where the Burj Khalifa has 56 lifts, some made of gold. The curtain man reveals himself as Zhao Bowen (Huang Yi), stage three liver cancer patient. Later, Bowen’s dad Zhao Zhigang (Cheng Taishen) turns up threatening to sue if the footage isn’t deleted. Liu Wanpeng (Cao Bingkun) has his dad Liu Jangye (Ni Dahong from The Assassin, Hou Hsaio-Hsien, 2015; Curse of the Golden Flower, 2006; To Live, 1994, both Zhang Yimou), a former internal affairs cop, admitted with gall stones. Director. E seems to think he won’t need surgery because a new miracle drug will do the job.
And so life, in the shadow of impending death, goes on. Meng the lift lady (Ding Jiali from Lotus Lantern, Chang Gwang Xi, 1999), who had planned on travelling abroad, moves in to the Ward. Acquiring a new belief in the afterlife, she becomes a make-up student of Beauty Ma. However, her new-found sense of well-being is shattered when her good-for-nothing husband (Zhang Xiqian) turns up. All she can do is fob him off with some of the money under her pillow for hospital bills, but he still complains it isn’t enough. The occupants of the ward, horrified, use their various professional talents – shaming him by filming, calling for fellow police officers to the scene of the robbery – to get him to reluctantly hand back the money to his wife and leave. They name themselves the Ward 10 Fearless Squad.
Autumn. As Jia’s camera questions the materialist Liu about the afterlife. Bowen’s parents want to postpone his surgery so he can have another job interview. Xiaobing, meanwhile, films Jia and Ai’s joining a group of colleagues including streaming platform commissioner Porter (Yang Le) for a restaurant meal where it emerges that his platform has rejected Jia’s script. The three take their leave amicably.
A heartfelt scene where Jia tells his sympathetic girlfriend what chemo is like, all its unpleasantness, with the city’s nightlights reflected in the glass of the van’s windows, seems to have wandered in from another movie.
Bowen eventually has had enough of his parents’ ambition, and bows out of their rat race, shaving his head after skipping an appointment. And sending the Ward 10 Fearless Squad a video. This inspires the group to get permission to take an ambulance patient vehicle to a place where they can fulfil all their dreams at once…
Their van heads out through a sentimental montage of windmills, forests and water before arriving at Hengdian China, where movies are made and Liu gets to star in a wartime action movie shooting numerous Japs. At the meal in the studio afterwards, they all discuss what they’ll miss when they go.
Winter sees the completed documentary screened at a cinema; Towards its end, with Ai watching in the audience, the absent Jia gives a long, impassioned and frankly drearily worthy speech on the screen. There are a couple of additional scenes during the credits, one of which directly references Heidegger.
Overall, it’s a very strange mix of over the top comedy which, in this instance, doesn’t translate terribly well to a Western audience, mawkish sentimentality equally likely to sit ill with many Western viewers and some genuinely touching material on dealing with the approach of death.
Being Towards Death is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, June 5th.
Trailer: