TO LIVE
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ****
TO LIVE is an incredible story of life in Communist China from the beginnings of Mao's revolutionary victory through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and ending with ascendancy of the Red Guard. It is all told with the story of a single working class family with the husband played by Ge You and the wife by Gong Li.
The movie is divided by decades. Each of the three decades (40s, 50s, and 60s) in turn covers only a small time slice of the decade so that in the end you feel like the husband and wife are old friends that you have known for a long time and that, moreover, you know them extremely well. The script's layout and the brilliant writing make this possible.
We start with the husband as an idle landowner who ignores his wife and who wastes his life and his fortunes in the gambling dens that were popular just before the Communist takeover. His only passion and the only talent he has is his hobby of singing during shadow puppet performances. Soon, however, he is swept into the throws of the revolution. Throughout the show his puppet singing provides both a metaphor for the spirit of each decade and his constant solace.
I have never seen a more anti-Communist movie. The horrors of this ideology were everywhere. When they are ordered to give up all of their cooking utensils in order that the entire village could make the equivalent of three cannon balls, the people are told not to worry because Communism will provide for them.
In another example of the horrors of the time, the Red Guard takes over the hospital and throws out all of the doctors and nurses since they are old and counter-revolutionary. In their place, they have young students attempt to guess at what to do for sick people. Suffice it to say that it did not work.
In every decade, as their standard of living gets worse, they still believe that it will be good someday. It was not a very safe time to be alive either. If you were of working class stock, if you managed never to get to be a party official, and if you laid low and agreed to do whatever the party said and hate whomever the party said to hate including your (ex-)friends, then and only then did you stand much chance of survival.
The movie, however, uses the backdrop of Communism more as a way to explain the harsh living conditions of the family. This show is about family love more than anything else. If your family could survive this and be not only in tact, but happy, then it is a strong family indeed!
There are a couple of devastatingly awful tragedies that strike this family. It is easy to cry they are so terrible, and yet the film is never manipulative. I am glad the horrors were shown since it made their ability to smile at adversity seem even more amazing.
I know it will never happen, but Ge You deserves an academy nomination and maybe the award as well. To say his performance was moving is a gigantic understatement. Although Gong Li was not quite as good, hers was an outstanding performance. The movie is so real that you had to pinch yourself to remember it was not a documentary.
If you liked The Joy Luck Club, then you should love this since it is an order of magnitude better made and more realistic. TO LIVE was one of the most life affirming movies of the year.
TO LIVE is in Mandarin with easy to follow English subtitles. It runs 2:13 which is just about perfect although it was good enough to make it a 6 hour movie in my opinion. I recommend everyone over the age of about 10 see it. It is unrated, but I suspect it would be rated PG-13 for some scenes of violence. There is no sex, nudity, or bad language. I give it my top rating of ****.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: December 27, 1994
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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