Zhang Yimou: The Road Home (1999)

If I were to make a comparison, this movie (The Road Home, made by Zhang Yimou in 1999) has the same simplicity and gravity that the stories written by Chinghiz Aitmatov have.



Like in Aitmatov's stories, it starts without haste and gives the impression of taking all along its time, while actually it has the hallow of a legend: something fabulous is happening there, and it is happening in all casualty. The miracle in The Road Home is a story of love against all odds: defying the traditions (love at first sight in a period of arranged marriages), as well as defying the loss of traditions (the insistence on carrying the coffin back home instead of using a car);defying the obvious difference of social category (he is a teacher, she is an illiterate charmed by his voice at school), defying the political harshness of the time (he is sent to a labor camp for being an intellectual, she is waiting for him to come back), defying the passing of years, defying even death.



The main character is played by Zhang Ziyi; it was her first role in a feature and she is amazing, playing the whole story of love only through the mimic of her face, through the joy in her eyes; and the movie camera is amazing, following her face continuously and discovering there the miracle: the incredible beauty of her face, reflected in the incredible beauty of the surrounding landscape.



Director Zhang Yimou made this movie as a tribute to Kiarostami: it is the road as a referential, in so many movies of Kiarostami, also in The Road Home. But, while at Kiarostami the road is the mean by which the main characters try to discover the surrounding reality and to be accepted in it, here in the movie of Zhang the main characters (the father, the mother, the son) discover on the road their own truth, their identity.

我的父親母親: 1/11
(video by chinamovie4u)

我的父親母親: 2/11
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我的父親母親: 3/11
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我的父親母親: 4/11
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我的父親母親: 5/11
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我的父親母親: 6/11
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我的父親母親: 7/11
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我的父親母親: 8/11
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我的父親母親: 1/11
(video by chinamovie4u)

我的父親母親: 1/11
(video by chinamovie4u)

我的父親母親: 11/11
(video by chinamovie4u)

(Zhang Yimou)