The Road Home
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Movie Reviews of The Road Home
Movie Review: Deep and tender love story! It's clean!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Road Home is best meant for the big screen. We get a taste of beautiful fall countryside and winter snow; this cinematography is special. What is ironic is that the parts of the movie in present time are black and white, while the past is in vivid color. There isn't a lot of dialogue, and the subtitles are very easy to read.
A man is summoned back home to North China because his father has died. He listens carefully to follow the wishes of his mother whose devotion is to bury him in exact tradition. She settles for nothing less. There is a need to hire younger men to carry the body. Determined, she wants his body carried through the journey on the road that was part of their love affair. It is so he "won't forget his way home."
Then, in backflash, we learn the love story when a beautiful young girl, Di, who sets her eye on a schoolteacher who arrives from the city. He helps build the school, the women each cook a dish for the workers, and she tries to get his attention by hopes that he picks her food on the lunch table. Di follows him through the countryside as he walks the children home. She draws water from the well close to the school to get a glimpse of him.
Then, abruptly, he is called away to the city for political questioning. He promises to come home and it is two years that they have been apart.
The Road Home is on Time magazine's 100 best films. Zhang Yimou also directed other award winning movies, Red Sorghum, Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lanturn, Note One Less, To Live, etc.
This is a tender, clean love story. .....Rizzo
Movie Review: A beautiful, simple movie
Summary: 5 Stars
The Road Home is a beautifully filmed, very well acted and well made movie whose simplicity masks a wide range of complex emotions and cultural commentary.On the surface, The Road Home is the simple story of a man who must return his father's body to his home village, as requested by his mother, and the story of how his parents met and fell in love. But the beauty of the story lies in this simplicity. There is no obvious pretense or ulterior motives that appear on screen. It simply is what it is. But there are so many feelings and messages contained within that they cannot be put into words. It has to be seen and experienced to truly understand. The dialogue and music are kept to an absolute minimum, the bulk of the "action" is conveyed through the subtle gestures of the main characters. Most of the dialogue is voiceover, and even then only to explain context. American audiences(and critics especially) might not be able to grasp everything that is going on in this film, and that is a shame, because I would think that this story could relate to anybody. Maybe it is just too simple to hold a western audience's attention, or I don't even know what their problem might be. But for me it tells the story of my own parents, and of my grandparents, and of all of my ancestors going back forever. It touched me very deeply and makes me long for a time when life was really this simple and pure. Absolutely breathtaking in my opinion, and worth a viewing by anybody who can bear to sit and watch a 90 minute film that lacks explosions, blood, nudity, or even a single kiss.
Movie Review: A simple, yet wholly moving and beautiful film.
Summary: 5 Stars
Eclipsing any romantic comedy or drama from Hollywood in the last 30 years, The Road Home achieves so much by doing very little. Master filmmaker Zhang Yimou successfully captures what it's really like to fall in love for the first time through his use of cinematography (sumptuous as always), unparalleled attention to detail, and, as always, a super strong cast (spearheaded by relative newcomer, the beautiful Zhang Ziyi). Unlike most romance movies, there is no love-making in this film. There is no kissing. The characters show their love through little things that we often take for granted: preparing food, giving small yet meaningful gifts, and other gestures. Like most of Zhang Yimou's films, there is relatively little music, however, the music that is there is perfect. It rises to the occasion when needed and dies down when not. All of the elements of this film work together like clockwork...better than clockwork. It manages to get its message across more than western romances through uncomparable use of setting and shot framing, costume and make-up, lighting (with some brilliantly-back lit shots of the actors), and figure behavior.
Now about the DVD. This is a film whose setting was meant to be seen only in widescreen. The picture holds up well both in sun-lit outdoor conditions and slightly darker indoor scenes. The voices are set at a nice level and when the score hits its high note, the sound is heavenly...even through a plain Dolby Surround system.
Plain and simple, this is a film which should not be passed up.
Movie Review: A romantic fantasy with a universal theme
Summary: 5 Stars
This 1999 Chinese movie is directed by Zhang Yimou, who also brought us "Raise the Red Lantern". It stars Zhang Ziyi, the beautiful young actress who, the following year , received international fame in the well received "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". "The Road Home" is a beautiful film, a romantic fantasy with a universal theme.The first fifteen minutes and the last fifteen minutes are shot in black and white, bookending the story within the story. It is set in a remote village in China, where the land is beautiful and it always seems to be winter. The schoolteacher has died in a distant city. And his widow wants to follow tradition and have his body carried home for burial. At first her son, an engineer in the city who has rushed home, is reluctant to make arrangement for this, but later agrees and her wishes are carried out.
This is not the main story though. Between these two black and white segments, there is another story, filmed in vivid color. It is the story of the mother and father's romance. It is sweet and touching and beautiful. The schoolteacher is only 20 years old. The girl is only 18. We watch them fall in love, suffer a separation, and then come back to each other. And this is all told without any physical contact between the two. It's a "feel good" story all the way.
I enjoyed the film and the simple story. And I also enjoyed the view of life in China and the fine cinematography. Recommended.
Movie Review: You never ran like this
Summary: 5 Stars
What Zhang Yimou can do with a hundred grand and a beautiful woman and a camera and landscape is uncanny. Hollywood filmmakers MUST cringe in envy when they watch movies such as The Road Home, because in their high-budget bliss they nor their actors cannot do what Zhang and his cast often do: offer real blood and real tears nakedly. The majority of Chinese students in China I have spoken to who have seen The Road Home expressed nothing short of disgust for the movie, which I do not find surprising, given their general affinity for all things Arnold. It took hundreds of millions of dollars and Leonardo DiCaprio to convince young people in the Mainland that the complexities of love can be overcome by will alone. So when a low-budget (by American standards) movie is released about a young woman, a schoolhouse in Northern China, a pair of school teachers, and a funeral march - all of which remind them only of things that have become taboo, things they'd like to forget ever occurred - they dismiss it passionately.
Meanwhile, grown men like myself are reduced to tears at the reminder that love can be so torturous, and no less complex in the countryside than in New York City. I am left with two distinct images from that movie: the pottery fixer rambling from village to village in the cold, fixing Di's bowl with spit, staples, and ties; and Di frantically pursuing horse and carriage departing the town. There was never such longing in the world; you never ran like this.