lilianaoana

This was kind of a trippy experience for me and not at all what I would've expected after let's say Yellow Earth. It's very elusive with it's ideas, possibly due to the censorship, It's suggestive enough so that I have a few suspicions about some of what is happening, it has some dream-like scenes, which the director did not employ in any of his other movies that I have seen, it's got some beautiful visuals that are quite artistic in these very minimalistic sets and bare landscapes. That dried out tree is the subject of several surreal compositions. It's a climate I cannot make sense of, the area looks both lush and barren, droughty. The school is in the open air, apart from the thatched roof practically.

I don't really understand the ending, it was again a little trippy, I don't know whether the mountain on fire was just a reflection of that poem of a manifestation of the last line of dialogue and why. Maybe censorship caused the writers to get creative and lend the story to several interpretations. I resented that a little. The dialogues are also very inconclusive, especially when it matters. I had bad subtitles clearly, but all the same. The higher ups disliked his teaching methods. It's not clearly stated whether he was in a labour/reeducation camp, but it looked like it. He had been in the area for seven years but I don't think he taught the children more than a few months. It's said he was unschooled but he was clearly well read. It's a little annoying not knowing for sure. In Chinese it seems it's important to achieve knowledge of as many words as possible. The higher the number, the better. In that regard he was obviously qualified to teach. And then there's this guy's hair, which was trippy in itself. Was this a reflection of eighties' sensibilities or some people's hair just sits like that? See, I can't shake these thoughts...

A pushover obsessed with working the land, an invalid woman who has only known abuse all her life and a poor donkey come together in a harsh environment where big landowners farm out land in exchange for a year's worth of crops that they buy for next to nothing. Everybody takes advantage or everybody, even the poor despise those poorer or the meek who do not fight back.

What land is this that can grow such rich crops next to sand dunes?

It's a precious insight into how some people still live today. And how sometimes, maybe all too often, family does not raise you up, but drags you down and takes advantage of your kindness.

It's a slow movie that shows the sad reality of living in these remote communities in remote areas, underdeveloped, undereducated, malnourished, effectively abused and manipulated. That initiative to compensate for demolishing old houses in order to make villages more appealing sounds preposterous. It does not paint a pretty picture of contemporary rural China. Not surprisingly, it got pulled from circulation despite winning a bunch of national and international awards.

I love how he cares for her and how they become close. Except for that one time. But it was so obvious she was becoming thinner and thinner and more hunched over. His obsession with work reminds me of a lot of people in my grandma's generation. Working themselves to the ground. Return to dust.

Must be awful to feel and know that you're a burden, that your own parents wish they didn't have you. To be trapped by both your body and the people you have to depend on.

Clearly an awareness campaign type of movie and I resisted it for a while, but it got to me. It got to me big time with a few scenes that were well done. Or maybe just effective, which amounts to very much the same thing.

Jackson Yee does amazing work, there's no trace of the leading man here, he is completely lost in this role and it must be hard work and humbling getting to that level of disability.

I loved some scenes, some I found cliche or manipulative. But then again it's a melodrama so that's the whole point, to make us empathize. I really didn't see the point of the girl and I knew no good would come of it, unless the movie went into some very unrealistic territory. But I guess there's a girl like that in every boy's life. I thought the mom got off too easily and she absolutely had no excuse, not even her own absent mother. The speech at the mayor's office or wherever it was felt a little unnatural and rehearsed, not something he would say on the spot.

I liked the grandma. She's the best grandma anybody could wish for.