Friday, February 23
To Live(maps 1, 2)
dir. Yimou Zhang, China 1994

Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work. They raise a family and survive, managing "to live" from the 40's to the 70's in this epic, but personal, story of life through an amazing period.

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Life is very hard. But they survive under the new communist regime. (Ironically, the man who won his house at dice is executed as a counter-revolutionary landowner.) A childhood illness causes their daughter to become mute and hard of hearing, but in the precise arithmetic of matchmaking a likely partner is found for her: A supervisor of the Red Guards at a factory, who is lame.

The best art, it is said, comes from turmoil - from hard times. In China no serious filmmaking took place for decades, and now great films are coming in a torrent from that country. The authorities are not always so happy to have the nation's past examined with such frankness, and with films like "To Live" and "Blue Kite" (released earlier this year) there is a certain inexorable pattern: They are made, shown at foreign film festivals, honored ("To Live" won acting awards at Cannes), play briefly in a few sophisticated cinemas in Beijing or Shanghai, and then they disappear.

It is a big, strong, energetic film, made by a filmmaker whose vision takes in four decades of his nation's history, and who stands apart from all the political currents, and sees that ordinary people everywhere basically want what his heroine cries out for, a quiet life. It is exciting to see these new films as they emerge from China. They are history being written, celebrated, and mourned. - Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com