Beginning of the Great Revival (2011) User Reviews (23)

actually quite dull

[dmuel · 2/10 · 18 June 2011]

OK, so here we have Beginning of the Great Revival. When I hear the word revival thus used, I think of religious shows in tents, but here it refers to the revival of China in the 20th Century. The significance of the "beginning" is, of course, that China owes its rapid and grand rise economically to the Communist Party, whose beginnings the story relates. The early parts of the film begin with the fracturing and collapse of the Qing Dynasty in China, then of course the brief time of Yuan Shikai, played by Chou Yun-fat as we know him in the West. Quickly we see the developing power of the corrupt Nationalist Party, and then a good part of the film is devoted to the young Mao Zedong. Mao appears to be a man who had the misfortune of being born with a receding hairline, with hair that naturally parts in the middle of his head. Joking aside, Mao is portrayed as an earnest and amiable young student who, after a very brief stint at Beijing University, returns to his home province of Hunan to help found the Chinese Communist Party. We meet his first wife, see their budding romance (no kissing), and see them go off to lead a life that was happy until Mao spotted his next love (not shown in film), and then the next, and the next...

If this all sounds like boring history stuff, that's because it's what most of this film is. There are no real surprises. We get a communist party view of historic events, complete with footage from Sergei Eisenstein's dramatization of the Bolshevik coup d'etat in Russia that was never quite the revolution depicted in Eisenstein's film. Much of the Beginning of the Great Revival seems to be an endless series of speeches--much loved by communist party leaders--some dramatic, some affected, mostly dull, interspersed with a few dramatic scenes of combat or mass demonstrations. To be honest, I forced myself to watch this film to the end, and once was more than enough.

A politics driven film

[lkyuri · 2/10 · 23 June 2011]

As quoted by a professor in China, "It is an era of irony. You are encouraged to sing songs of revolution, but you are discouraged to make revolution. You are encouraged to see a film of founding a party (Beginning of the Great Revival), but you are discouraged to really found a new party." Another quote from China netizen, "It is a film about a group of people fighting dictatorship, and finally became the ones they originally fought against." Facts are somewhat filtered and neglected from the film. If talking about May 4th movement, why the two main thoughts are omitted. The thoughts of democracy and science are main theme too. Why is this neglected? Why does the film selectively depict the May 4th movement with students just like Red Guard in Cultural Revolution - breaking into people home to catch and burning house. There are actually protest and strikes, and the protest started right from Tiananmen square. Why the most important scene is omitted? Why were open debate allowed in Beijing University's library at that time? What would happen if protest and open debate today? One of the two China communist party founding leaders is Chen Du-xiu. Ironically, he left the party later and refused any help from the communist party. He turned to liberalism instead.

The logic of the film

[lordsagacity · 2/10 · 26 June 2011]

I don't think this movie is intended for non-Chinese, who weren't taught that history (1910-1949) in China. Here is the logic. The Qing Dynasty, a symbol of Feudalism, had already resigned. The Beiyang government was good at selling nation's interest and shooting at students. Sun Yat-sen was too fragile to lead China. KMP was totally corrupted and lead the whole country into disaster. So only CCP could represent Chinese people's interest and lead China. (Don't raise your hands. Recite them and we'll have tests tomorrow.) Such series(foundation of party/government) are just a film version of history books.

This is actually not bad a film if you do understand.

[conanly1991 · 28 June 2011]

Just like the movie that came in about few years ago, propagating the government, and how they had established the "new China", this is a documentary film, trying to deliver the history at that time. I see that many of the reviews said that there were not a storyline throughout the film, and can't see the connections between them. However, as a historical documentary, I consider the film without a storyline, but rather, a timeline. The timeline went from 1909 (I think) to before WW2. I in fact do not consider this movie boring, and believe that it has its positive sides. Unlike some other government productions, this movie is rather subjective, with not too much intentions to propagate the govenment. Again, it was meant to go over the whole history of the communist govenment in this period of time. But some recommendations about the film, if you aren't Chinese, don't watch the movie, if you hate the govenment, I mean, by hate, don't watch it, if you do not know anything and don't want to know about the historical figures of China, don't watch the movie. I didn't find the film extremely interesting, but it briefly helped me go over the history of China.

Extremely epic but hard to follow! 3/10

[leonblackwood · 3/10 · 26 February 2016]

Review: What an epic movie! This film certainly looked great and the costumes and scenery is superb but I didn't have a clue about what was going on. I didn't know who was who or what was where. The small captions on the bottom of the screen and the subtitles didn't help and the different story lines just made the whole movie hard to follow. Its a shame, because the acting is great and the I did feel a sense of intensity throughout the film but it's hard to keep up with the epic, political concept which changed China forever. The director over complicated the concept and he even added a love story, so there is way too many things going on at once. It reminded me a lot of the Founding Of The Republic, which was also extremely hard to follow and I personally gave up watching after a while. They could have easily split this film into 2 movies, so the director could have concentrated on different elements of he storyline. Anyway, although it looks great, the storyline is all over the place and I personally lost the plot. Disappointing!

Round-Up: After watching a few Oriental movies, I did recognise a few faces throughout this movie but I still found it hard to follow. The movie was directed by Sanping Han who also directed the confusing Founding Of The Republic with Jianxin Huang. Sanping Han has produced some top movies like Shaolin, Confucius, the great Let The Bullets Fly, the Karate Kid and Mission Impossible 3, so he's certainly got experience when it comes to big movies but he really did over complicate this one. I have to commend the directors on there efforts and the scale of this film, especially in terms the huge cast and the amazing cinematography but from an entertainment perspective, there is just too much to concentrate on.

I recommend this movie to people who are into their history/dramas starring Chow Yun- Fat, Angelababy, Daniel Wu, John Woo, Andy Lau, Simon Yam, Chao Deng, Xun Zhou and Kun Chen. 3/10

to be fair, i will go for 2

[chenfei1980 · 1/10 · 29 June 2011]

Well, this is a movie made with political purpose, however it is not an extremely bad movie if you take off the political bits.

the producer has been working hard on the detail and it actually corrected several historical common sense of the general Chinese population.

Lot of famous local celebrities so it is quite fun sometimes.

Apart from that it is nothing, this is not a serious way to produce a movie for history.

BTW, the writer used to write comedy.

I think a fair score will be 2 or 3, however because of this movie, transformer 3 will have to be postponed till end of July therefore i will give 1.

The story is not important. It's the cast.

[jay_yan · 5/10 · 23 June 2011]

This movie was shot in China, still firmly controlled by Chinese Communist Party. Of course it will contain the story told by CCP. Undoubtedly it contains endless speeches to show how necessary and great CCP was. So please forget about that part. If you see the movie to look for art, drama, affection, of course you will be disappointed.

But what makes this movie different from the other Chinese propaganda movies is its huge cast. There are tons of famous Chinese, including Hong Kong and oversea Chinese, actors and actresses. You can never see so many stars in one movie, other than Jian Guo Da Ye, also produced by the same producer with an equally huge cast two years ago. The fun of watching this movie is to "count stars", instead of follow its boring and revisioned story.

some feelings

[j_movie · 5/10 · 30 July 2021]

On the plane, I looked back at this movie ten years ago. At that time, I went to the cinema just to count the stars. Now I see it again and find that it is really difficult to shoot. It is called "the great cause of the founding of the party", but ambition is to comb through the recordable modern history from the beginning, which is inevitable. However, it is not easy to balance commerciality and dedication. Although the theme of the whole film is unknown and no effective characters have been established, it is indeed the best work to balance the two characteristics mentioned above. In 1921, although the perspective is more concentrated and more "people-friendly", it has lost the opening and closing under the background of the great era and become more "small family spirit". When it comes to 110 years, we might as well follow the idea of the great cause of the founding of the party and make another concentrated attempt, which may have good results.

Communist propaganda film, with minor action.

[rigakhan24 · 3/10 · 17 February 2014]

The BAD. A prequel to Founding Of A Republic, and merely an another attempt at glorifying The Communist Chinese Party for its part in bring China under one banner.Personally this film would be a peace of garbage if it wasn't for the Chinese Super Stars that starred in this film.

The GOOD I enjoy the action sequence when the First Civil War erupted during the warlord era. But right after that the film was more Politically Motivated at making the CCP,(Chinese Communist Party), look good and bashing others. Jackie Chan's 1911 was more easily enjoyable then this Communist Propaganda film. As soon as I see a name of one of China's worst leaders,(Man responsible for the failed Great Leap Forward), I just knew it was gonna go down hill really bad. In the End the film was good for battle scenes and for it's nostalgic imperial clothing and 1911 post clothing that people wore back then. Other than that, this film was a Communist film all the way.

In 1900's and 1911 and on wards China was a country that had a revolution movement that was a ticking time bomb just waiting to be lit and explode. The Chinese Civil War ended with one victor. The Communist won. And China is the way that is today.

Average, if you take an unbiased view

[lifuxin2001 · 6/10 · 5 July 2011]

The reviews for this movie are too much plagiarized by US propaganda (rating this as 1) and Chinese propaganda (rating it as 10). If you take an unbiased view from a normal Chinese people, it's just a rather average movie. Hey, let's rate a movie based on its merit, the impression it gives people and so on, not just by politics!

The initial scenes are a bit dull and disconnected with the whole story. The film fails to tell the story of Tao Chengzhang (the guy with the bomb, later get murdered) at all so these scenes should be cut-off completely, just a waste of minutes.

After that it went quite fine with the story of Yuan Shikai (Chow Yun- fat) and Cai E (Andy Lau), it's quite touching to see General Cai could barely stand but still directs the victory over Yuan who elected himself as the emperor. And the Mao Zedong (Ye Liu) line is also OK and quite touching.

The May fourth movement part is a performed very well. For a Chinese, it reminded of a story the government often fails to tell. The tensions with the Japanese about the invasion of Shandong, the government's inability to make diplomatic maneuvers, and the fanatic approach of the students. I would say that's a nice historical lesson to take, especially in nowadays China where student movement is mostly a banned topic (because of the 89' Tiananmen square accident). Some of the speeches of Chen Duxiu (Feng Yuanzheng) are well carried out indeed, that it feels like the audience in the film were really convinced by him and were fully supporting his ideas.

However, the government side could be strengthened a bit. It talks about Wellington Koo (Daoming Chen) and his diplomatic efforts, but these were cut too heavily so the full story was not told very clearly.

Then the final scenes are not so good. The story lacks a climax and it looks to have ended without any major thing happening. OK the CCP formed, secretly while being hunted down by the police but so what? That ending can definitely be strengthened quite a bit. A few scenes on the things that happened in the next years, or a mere history time-line will make the epic feeling much better.

Overall, the film is ambitious in trying to condense 10 years of history into a mere 2 hours. But that turns out to be a bit too ambitious so in the end many things are told by just hand-waving. It could be made better by cutting off some of the less relevant scenes and making the main plot more concentrated on a few major characters (e.g., Yuan Shikai, Cai E, Mao Zedong, Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao). But in general, the cast is good most of the time and at least the told historical facts are accurate (of course there're a lot of omitted trivia, e.g., Chen Duxiu went too often to night clubs and was sacked by the Peking university because he was found fighting for a prostitute). So if somebody is paying (e.g. the Chinese government) for the tickets, it's worthy to see it for free. But I won't pay to watch it, so a good strategy for the CCP would be to make it freely available online, after they've netted the 8 billion box office gross by the left-pocket, right-pocket trick.

a film that is pretty good despite the fragmented narrative....until the point where it just skips out on history and becomes pure propaganda.

[a-twetman · 4/10 · 15 January 2012]

It seems that this movie has a low score due to being propaganda for the Communist Party of China. I choose however to judge the film as a film, not as a piece of propaganda.

The story, if you can even call it a story, is very disconnected, more like a series of events than an actual narrative. Almost all of the events, especially those early on, seem to be concerned with a bunch of Chinese men in thin mustaches speaking about different matters. At the start of each such episode, there i a brief text with a date and a short explanation. Since my Chinese is not good enough to read this, it is all a rather confusing mishmash of things happening. Since my knowledge of modern Cinese history is also somewhat limited I cant say if anything is historically accurate or just made up. What I do know is that an effort has been put into portraying a time of great conflict and political turmoil, and portraying a sort of general movement in the otherwise nonexistent story. I believe, that a person who understands Chinese would understand more of whats going on, I however found it rather tedious and boring at times.

There are scenes in the movie where the men in mustaches stop talking and start doing things instead, for instance there i a battle sequence (I have no idea who is fighting who) which is really good, all actions scenes manage to wake you up and capture the viewers imagination for a moment. Visually the movie is very nice, everything looks good, especially previously mentioned war scene. The music is fitting too and it all creates a lot of atmosphere, with such a fragmented plot, it almost becomes a case of style over substance, though i can sense that the substances is in there somewhere.

I think in the end tat, as a movie, "The Founding of a Party" is not bad at all. It has its boring moments and the disjoint storyline is a big problem but other than that, I think it kind of works, I would rate this at six out of ten but then there is that propaganda issue.

The film ends with an episode in 1921 (which I remember to be more or less historically correct from what little history i know) and then it fast forwards through World War II up to the modern day. This is all accompanied by a narrator (who wasn't translated in my version of the film) who seems to be telling about how china rose to power and everything was good. This whole ending really ruins it for me, especially the final shot of modern day Beijing with a portrait of Chairman Mao outside the forbidden city. The entire film is very one sided, buts that's just a matter of perspective, it is clear though, that this final part of the film is pure propaganda and I jut cant stand by that. Because of the propaganda part I have to lower my grade by two points.

The ignorant common people in today's world can not understand the true meaning of it

[n-03471 · 9/10 · 10 May 2021]

Most of the countries with status and power in the world today are capitalist countries, and the only one that looks "different" is China, which is run by the Communist Party of China. In China, the people are the masters of the country and the true masters of the country. In the case of COVID-19, we can see that foreign capitalists are demanding the resumption of production and work for the sake of interests, regardless of the lives and health of workers, while accusing China of not being good at fighting the epidemic. In China, the epidemic has been completely controlled, which is the real democracy! This is real freedom! Most of the critics didn't understand the real ideas behind the movie -- Marxism and communism. People in capitalist countries are just like a mob of people, under the spell of capitalists, who think they are very "free" to live under their invisible iron hoof. They do not know that they have been sold by capitalists long ago, but they are still busy helping the capitalists to count their money.

Not so bad...

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 21 September 2015]

THE GREAT REVIVAL is a lively retelling of early 20th century China, a tumultuous period where the old ways and the new ways collided and many factions seemed to continually war with each other in a bid for power. It's a complex and sometimes epic-feeling production, so I'm surprised to see it rated so low here on the IMDb.

I suspect the reason is that it's a blatant piece of propaganda, with Mao Zedong portrayed as a crusading hero; the story stops before the later troubles that surrounded his career. Now, I'm not bothered by watching propaganda films; I've seen plenty of North Korean efforts and, let's be honest, America makes their own share of flag-waving guff. Propaganda alone isn't a reason to rate a film down.

THE GREAT REVIVAL isn't a perfect film and anybody trying to keep track of all the main characters will soon be scratching their heads in puzzlement. Still, it's an expansive and expensive-looking production, and it's never boring even if some of the material seems extraneous or glossed over too quickly. The stuff with the students riots is particularly watchable, and spotting all of the familiar faces from Chow Yun-Fat to Daniel Wu, Fan Bingbing, Andy Lau, Simon Yam, and even John Woo, is a delight in itself.

A quick view of modern Chinese history

[d95112 · 7/10 · 3 October 2011]

This film starts with the 1911 xinhai revolution and quickly goes over the chaos of the early republic and its trouble with Yuan shi-kai. The May 4th movement is portrayed as the touchstone to the founding of the communist party (certainly a lot of the future leaders of the party started getting involved in politics at this time). This could have been a much longer film covering more in depth coverage of the personalities of this time and still have my interest because of my study of Chinese history. For a general audience this film may have too many characters they know nothing about and find confusing. Even more so if you are not Chinese or a student of this time in history. How many people know about the Japanese occupation of the Shandong peninsula and its impact on Chinese thinking about the west? If you do have some knowledge of the people and time in China during the years covered in this film you will enjoy this movie.

brainwashed Americans

[kwailo_john · 18 August 2011]

i note with sadness that every review here is from the USA and appears to be a political statement and nothing to do with the movie per se. statements such as "china is a military state" are pathetic when you consider the aggressiveness of Americans and their military state!

where are the comments on acting, cinematography, musical score, etc....i do not think in many cases a westerner can judge a foreign movie if you are going to be so biased about that countries' political system!

i do not see Americans lambasting their pathetic greedy monetary system that has enveloped the world in GFC in movies about some American hero in any movie about the stock exchange for example......go live in china for a year or more before you critisise!

not such a bad movie..... acting passable...story line is montage and example only for reminder to the people as to the origins of cpc.

I really love this epic film...

[corazongitano32 · 10/10 · 1 July 2011]

I really loved this magnificent epic. As an avid reader of Chinese history, I was surprised by the historical accuracy of this film. Now I realize why the Chinese people love Mao-Zedong; most of the touching moments in the film involve his beloved Yang-Kaihui and him. As for the film being propagandistic, aren't most films made in Hollywood propagandistic? Delta Force, Rambo, Top Gun, just to mention a few. I guess some narrow-minded people might consider it propaganda if it shows the Chinese point of view instead of the Western perspective. I truly recommend this film to anybody who is interested in politics and Chinese history.

While not as bad as its reputation, it is dry and moves way too quickly to give anything but a most basic understanding of events

[dbborroughs · 7/10 · 16 November 2011]

Know at the start I've over rated this film a point or two simply because the film is nowhere near as bad as the rating of 2.3 readers have given this film.

This film is a telling of the founding of the communist party from the point of the 1911 revolution on to the the actual founding. Its a star studded flag waiving puff piece put together by official Chinese authorities.

A great film to look at the film could have and should have been a masterpiece of more than the technical arts.The problem is that the films march to compress several decades of complex history into a couple of hours makes the film a highlight reel where we get clips of events which have the significance explained by titles on the screen. The result is not the living history they were aiming for, but rather it's a dull museum piece... or a lesser History Channel special. I kept waiting for Edward Hermann's narration to kick in and explain the away the slow spots.

On some level I kind of liked the film, but more because it gave me some basic understanding of the events that transpired. I completely understand that the film is tinged with pro-Communist propaganda but at the same time much of it is clearly visible...and beside things move so fast you'd have to be crazy to completely accept that this is everything that happened.

Worth a look see for those with an interest in Historucal epics... then again I'd go for the much better Founding of a Republic if given the choice.

More interesting than expected

[Kicino · 7/10 · 24 June 2011]

Very interesting to see history alive on the big screen. Very busy identifying the characters and the stars and associating them with what we have learnt in history class.

As a movie, character development is weak because there are simply too many people parading in two hours distilled from a turbulent 10 years of contemporary China. As an education aid for Chinese history, this is very interesting, lively and educational, thanks to the on screen description. As a mirror to reflect recent China's development, my eyes moist to see history not only repeats itself but somehow even moves backwards.

Same passion from the students, same type of demonstration against the weak and corrupted government. Same demand to open government doors. Even same style of kneeling down to appeal. Didn't we learn anything from history? The students in 1919 even hit some government officials and set fire on their houses. But the Nationalist government did not crash them to death or force them to leave the country. When some students started a hunger strike in jail and asked for newspapers to read as a deal, the prison guards gave in. Can't we see the film is trying to tell us a message about the present state through historic events?

A party based on the strength of workers, farmers and soldiers and the have-not's have developed into a unique style with Chinese characteristics where those at the bottom of the pyramid are still suffering.

The movie may seem boring or bland on the surface. We need to contrast that with reality. The message is safely disguised under the name of history. Where else in China can we see large scale demonstrations, deemed legitimate, in a Chinese movie? I look forward to seeing a movie on the Cultural Revolution and the June 4 incident with equal dedication.

Great Movie!

[nkwleeds · 10/10 · 25 November 2011]

Great struggle! What an impressive movie with great casts. The actors and actresses have done well. The movie was filled with lots of suspense. Chow Yun Fatt and Andy Lau were superb. There were so many well known actors and actresses in this movie. All the casts have done well to illustrates the titanic struggle to unite the country. The peaceful protest,demonstrations and the nationalism portrayed were very realistic. I have watched it several times and some scenes reminded me of the OWS movement. The movie did awesomely in portraying how the conspiracy to divide China inspired the people to go against the corrupted officials. I highly recommended all to watch.

Romanticised, star-gazing prequel to "The founding of a republic"

[harry_tk_yung · 27 June 2011]

LIU Ye's portrayal of young Mao is romanticised beyond belief, in scenes like the New Year Eve firework. It's generally known that Mao is just as much as womanizer as Jack and Bill, maybe with a little more kinship to Jack in their shared interest in movie stars, rather than to Bill's poor taste.

The selling point of star-gazing is also stretched to the limit. The culminating climax of the movie, the meeting that establishes the Chinese Communist Party, is set in a aesthetically unsurpassed scene: on a boat drifting on an idyllic, serenely misty lake that might have been lifted directly out of the frame of a traditional Chinese painting. What you'll likely remember from this scene is not the rousing sentiments of the men inside the boat cabin, but of beautiful ZHOU Xun (who cares what character she plays) at the front, in elegant period dress holding a parasol, a bewitching goddess of love and loveliness.

Just like "The founding of a republic" (2009), this movie is populated with a proliferation of Who's Who in ethnic Chinese movie world today, to the extent that to the general audience, their names may mean more than the names of the characters they play. The movie is not difficult to follow at least in the sense that events are presented in a linear and chronological manner, compared with the stock of temporally scrambled works we have become so used to. How much is recognized depend on how familiar one is what this part of Chinese history. But when the names (which appear on the screen at the characters' first appearance) are missed or not recognized, one probably surmises that in a movie of this sort, if they are played by the likes of Andy Lau or Daniel Wu, they must be good guys.

Nice historical lesson of China - but fails to address the shortcomings of the Chinese Communist Party

[Dr_Mark_ODoherty · 6/10 · 16 June 2017]

With an ensemble of fine actors, this movie offers a nice historical background of China. This movie also made me understand why the majority of Chinese people during that time had probably some gratitude to the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, who - to a certain extent - succeeded to bring unity and political stability, which China needed badly during that time. However, I have my doubts if Mao Zedong was really such a humble and gentle soul, being 100% committed to fidelity and monogamy as depicted in the movie. However, if the Chinese Communist Party insists on depicting Mao Zedong as a saint, I am prepared to swallow that, and whatever other divine virtues the Chinese Communist Party wants to attribute to Mao Zedong. The movie also emphasizes how important the student movement was for the CCP, and how important students are in general for the development of China - which is blatantly inconsistent with today's policy of the CCP; the Chinese Communist Party having succeeded to virtually ban the topic of student movement in today's China. I can understand that the 89' Tiananmen Square Massacre complicates this topic - especially as hardliners of the Chinese Communist Party are primarily to blame for this atrocity against Chinese students - but all the more reason that this needs to be addressed and resolved in China; including an apology by the Chinese Communist Party, which is still lacking.

you can find the clue if you know the history of China

[lionelchange · 8/10 · 21 June 2011]

I would first say that the movie is for Chinese audience, or for those who know Chinese and Chinese history. I don't mean to set a gap here, but if you don't know who's who, you may get lost. And then, when you finish the movie, you tend to draw a conclusion that everything is for the creation of the Communist Party of China. OK, you have no clue and thereby think it's all about politics. Indeed, the movie is not about a single story but a piece of history as long as 10 years. That may be why the non-Chinese audience quickly lose their interest and patience.

That's true that the movie is dedicated to the party. However, for the Chinese audience who were educated to memorize the big names of historical figures, as well as the famous student protest (May Fourth Movement), it would be very interesting to see how the event is restored on screen. Everything happens for a reason. If you can discard your doubt about the political purpose of the movie during watching, you may get to know the history better and then think for a while how it is transited from the beginning to 90 years later.

Besides, you would hardly understand the metaphor hidden in the "seemingly dull" plots if you don't know the contemporary Chinese society. I personally guess that the director learned a bit from the very popular Chinese movie Let the Bullet Fly (in theaters earlier this year). How? Think about the final words of the movie, which was read aloud on the boat ...

For its content, the censorship organization may worry that it is kinda sensitive for the vivid description of student protest. But considering its purpose, it must be in theaters (what did the incredibly many movie stars come together for?) So, I think that's the "novelty" of this movie.

Fantastic movie, focus on politics and student movements > war and conflict

[dylanchang-75837 · 10/10 · 1 April 2022]

The way Chinese movies like this are themed are a focus on the thought and diplomacy behind great events. I think the West is too used to 90 minutes of jam packed action, guns and swords blazing. The depictions in this movie are accurate and moving. The May the 4th Movement protest gave me goosebumps as a Chinese student. The hardships and ambition of the founders of the CPC and the students of Beijing is shown very well too. Just a shame that afterwards (not in the movie but in real life) most the founders of the party would be killed or defect before 1949.