From the 5th generation filmmakers to the recent Independent filmmakers, there has not been a film that portrays the darker side of Chinese society as severely as this one, in which Li Yang shows how poverty lies beneath the rapid development of Chinese society and how it undermines humanity. Song Jin-ming and Tang Chao-yang work as miners in an Illegal mining town in northern China. To get money from various insurance companies, they kill other miners who are their relatives, or claimed to be so. One day, they lure a naive young man from the countryside named Yuhan Peng-ming into working in their mine. However, Song begins to feel sympathetic toward the good-natured young man. Through the motif of belated awakening· frequently used In traditional myths and folk tales, the director criticizes the blindness of Chinese society to Its dark side. The ending, where Peng Ming survives after all, in accord with ′heaven′s will′ as Chinese people would say, and Song ends up dead, Is true to a traditional narrative convention and, at the same time, criticizes the mammonist values dominating contemporary China. Comparing three models of human beings -one is good, one Is evil, and one is redeemed -Li Yang maximizes the tensions within the narrative structure. In particular, Li focuses on the psychological conflicts and changes of Song, the third type, to highlight the tensions. Blind Shaft succeeds in both terms of social criticism and art. (Kim Ji-seok)