A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it seemed to have a decent reputation, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, to be honest, I did struggle to really connect with this movie. I mean, it did give an interesting and really bleak view on the life in China back in the 50’s and 60’s. In fact, while watching the damned thing, I was wondering how the director got away with making something like this in China. Well, he didn’t. Indeed, during the production, they apparently smuggled the movie out to Japan and then released the movie worldwide. Anyway, basically, it deals with some average people, living some average life and, apparently, they all went along fine in a rather peaceful community. However, following the drastic decisions of the Chinese Communist party, their lives were suddenly turned upside down and fear became suddenly a major factor in their everyday life. What stroke me was that you get to see them living for years under such a political system which was originally designed to be fair but, eventually, you didn’t see them experiencing any improvement on their living conditions at all. So, that was all quite interesting but the main issue I had was that, even though you spend more than 2 hours with the characters, you don’t get to know any of them after all. I guess it might be one of the virtues of this movie, the fact that you have to figure out on your own what these characters might be thinking or feeling. However, since I’m not Chinese and since I was born in the 80’s, it was rather difficult for me to relate with them. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really blow me away, it was still a very interesting movie though and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.