TO LIVE
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1994 Ben Hoffman
Perhaps at present one of the best directors in the world is Zhang Yimou, mainland China's prolific filmmaker. In 1988, his RED SORGHUM caught the attention of the West with the story of village wine makers warding off the Japanese. This was followed in 1990 with JU DOU, the tragedy of illicit love in a society dominated by males. RAISE THE RED LANTERN, in 1991, had the intriguing story of a young girl who at her parents' insistence marries a wealthy man in whose house she becomes "the Fourth Mistress." 1993 brought us into the current world of China with THE STORY OF QUI JU, a woman who attempts to fight the bureaucracy.
In TO LIVE, we cover some forty-plus years in China that include Mao's The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard, and the terrible toll on ordinary people. Yimou uses one family's travails as an illustration of what happened to the many millions who had to live through those years. As this review is being written, the film is banned in China even though it includes nothing of the current turmoil, imprisonments, etc.
As in most of Yimou's films, his favorite (on and off the screen), the beautiful actress Gong Li plays the lead. Here she is a mother with a young son and daughter, and a husband (Ge You) who, addicted to gambling, ends up losing their home. The film covers his career in the army, his trade, which is that of a puppeteer, (of a kind I have never before seen), his return to his home after the war to find that things have changed in many ways, mostly politically. The extremism of the Left appears no more gentle than the kind found among the Right in other countries of the world.
If anyone knows how to tell a story, to get you involved with "the big picture" as well as the individuals in it, Zhang Yimou is our man.
In Chinese with English subtitles.
4 bytes 4 Bytes = Absolutely must see. 3 Bytes = Too good to be missed. 2 Bytes = So so. 1 Byte = Save your money.
Ben Hoffman
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