NOT ONE LESS (Yi ge dou bu neng shao)
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Sony Pictures Classics Director: Zhang Yimou Writer: Shi Xiangsheng (based on novel) Cast: Wei Minzhi, Zhang Huike, Ian Zhenda, Gao Enman, Sun Zhimei, Feng Yuying, Li Fanfan, Tian Zhenda
Here are some facts: try to identify the location being described.
Teachers' salaries are so low that the authorities have to dig deeply into the barrel just to find uncertified substitutes. Regular teachers take too much time off, using their sick leave: in one case an instructor takes a whole month to visit his dying mother. The kids are pretty wild. Teacher turns her back on the class and mayhem ensues. Kids sneak out during the day to such an extent that it's necessary to post a guard at the door just to keep them inside the building. While the brighter kids can read the alphabet, some can't read at all, yet all are tracked into the same class. The dropout rate is scandalously high. Many of the youngsters are dirt poor and need to find work just to keep their families afloat. The mayor promises more supplies and better pay but cannot be trusted to keep his word.
What school system are we talking about? If you guessed Shuiquan Village in China's Hebai province, you're on the money. That wasn't hard, was it?
"Not One Less" is an adorable fable which can draw tears from those in the audience who are not yet enveloped by hardness and cynicism. Made by one of China's great directors, the fifty-year-old Zhang Yimao ("Red Sorghum," "The Story of Qiu Ju," "Raise the Red Lantern"), Shi Xiangsheng's story is of a small village school not too distant from Beijing but light-years away from that country's capital in sophistication. "Not One Less" is not one of those thinly- veiled allegories of its country's politics but is, rather, a straightforward, heart-wrenching and frequently comic tale of the difference one teacher can make on her students. Since Zhang was himself a farm hand and unskilled laborer during the Cultural Revolution from 1968 to 1978, he constructs his scenes from what he knows. Yet this time around he has no interest in exploiting China's great actors like Gong Li (who is sold into a loveless marriage in "Red Sorghum" and is sent to a feudal manor to become the new wife of a nobleman in "Raise the Red Lantern"). In this case he employs the talents of non-professionals, with most characters performing in the precise roles they follow in real life. The mayor of little Shuiquan village, Tian Zhenda, is in fact the mayor of Shuiquan village. The students at the Zhongxin primary school are students at that very school. Even the TV station manager at the broadcasting station of the city of Jiangjiakou is the TV station manager at Jiangjiakou's TV outlet. While watching these people perform with gusto and above all without pretense, you can't help wondering why people need to go to acting school at all.
The story turns on an unusual plot device. The sole teacher of the rural school (Gao Enman) is called away from his job for a month to visit his dying mother and, because it's not easy to find a replacement willing to work for such low pay in such a dirt-poor village, the mayor hires a 13-year-old, Wei Minzhi (Wei Minzhi) as a substitute, promising her 50 yuan for her labor. (The yuan is the same as the renminbi, so each would be worth twelve cents. Six dollars a month. Hear that Sandra Feldman? You have some organizing to do.) But the $6 will not come to her that easily. Because of the high attrition rate at the school, she will get paid only if by the end of the month, her roster shows the same number of students--not one less. When one kid--the class clown-- drops out because his sick mother needs him to find work in the big city of Jiangjiakou--Wei's dignity is on the line and her conscience is challenged. Though the kid has made life unpleasant for her in the classroom, she will spare no effort in getting him back to school. The latter part of the film deals with Wei's adventures roaming the city with virtually no money, trying despairingly to find the boy. Your reaction to the movie's climax--Wei's pleas to a TV audience in that city-- is a good barometer of the story's effect on your emotions.
In supervising a cast of characters who are principally below the age of fourteen, including some as youthful as six, Zhang proves that he is as much a master at his trade as he is when overseeing the performance of the wonderful Gong Li in his more sophisticated dramas. Mixing light moments with inspiring melodrama, Zhang graphically illustrates the plight of millions upon millions of kids in his Third World country who must drop out of school yearly simply to locate jobs paying the equivalent of sixty dollars a year. Most of the population in the city get around on bicycles, but let's not romanticize the circumstances. The relative absence of cars does little to ameliorate China's problems with pollution: in fact of the ten most pollutes cities in the world, I believe China has four.
During the closing credits, Zhang informs the audience that inadequate schooling will continue to keep the rural population as poor as those of the previous generation. Yet "Not One Less" is not meant to propagandize the country's plight, to embarrass the current government, or to evoke worldwide cries of sympathy and financial support. Zhang is surely smart enough to know that the audience for his art- house fare is a small one. In western nations where American movies are more popular than the local fare, the crowds go for plot-driven stories: what happens next? Whodunit? But in this touching road movie, the journey, not the destination, is the essence. The roads are rocky and rough and the excursion long and slow, but the trip is ever so worthwhile.
Not Rated. Running Time: 106 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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