Together
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bing Liu (II), Chuan-Yuan Li, Hong Chen, Hye-ri Kim, Qiang ChenBrand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Primary Contributor: Hong Chen
Primary Contributor: Peiqi Liu
Primary Contributor: Yun Tang
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Mandarin Chinese (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 119 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-11-18
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Together
Movie Review: Sacrifice, meaning, and mystery
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very moving melodrama about the unlikely journey of a small town child prodigy traveling to Beijing with his father to seek success in classical violin competition.
Among all human emotions, perhaps none is more moving than the act of sacrifice - the word brings to mind Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac to obey God. In this movie we witness the sacrifices people make for art, the sacrifices parents make for children, and the sacrifices teachers make for their students.
Why are we willing to make self-sacrifices? The reasons vary, but ultimately it is a search for meaning. Set in modern China, a world where money and material self-gratification increasingly rule the day, people are still looking for the meaning of their lives. For the father, the meaning of his whole life is the musical achievement of his son. For the eccentric teacher, the meaning is taking care of all those abandoned street cats. For the beautiful young lady, there is no meaning in life other than money, until she finds one in the boy's pursuit of musical success. As the professor tells his students, techniques are difficult to master, but winning the competition requires more than mastering the techniques. One must inject emotion into the piece to make it alive and enjoyable. It is the "feeling" (professor's word) that is truly rare and precious.
Luckily for the boy, he has plenty of it with his father, his lady friend, and his teacher. It all comes together at the movie's climax.
But this movie is more than just feverish emotionalism. In the end, there is a mystery that motivates the whole plot: who are the child's real parents? And why did they abandon the baby at the Beijing train station with a violin?
We will never know. Just like we will never know why this universe was created. Neither does the man who found the baby and the violin by chance. But after moments of anxiety, the ordinary man became the father who devotes his entire life to follow what he believes is the intention of the baby's parents. He believes they are good people who for some reason cannot do what they want to do, which is to raise this boy to be an accomplished violinist. To his delight the child turns out to have a natural gift for violin and also loves music. Even though the son does not follow the father's every wish, after overcoming various shocks and crises (to name a couple, the money hidden in the father's red hat was stolen, the violin was impulsively sold to buy a white fur coat for the lady) he is able to get to exactly where the father wanted him to be: on the verge of international fame and success. At that point the father is ready to exit the teenage boy's life. His lifetime goal has been achieved. The country bumpkin is no longer "useful," if not a baggage, and his son is better guided by the professor in the future.
One may say the father is a fool - it is quite possible that he is totally mistaken about the meaning of his life. You may think that the baby's parent(s) left the violin with the baby because that's the only valuable she/he/them had and thus it was simply a payment for whoever found the baby to raise the boy. There was no other intention.
Read Cobe's interpretation of the movie's hidden light at:
http://2cobe.com/2009/05/25/sacrifice-meaning-and-mystery-review-of-the-chen-kaige%e2%80%99s-film-together-%e5%92%8c%e4%bd%a0%e5%9c%a8%e4%b8%80%e8%b5%b7/
Summary of Together
Chen Kaige, director of the Oscar?(r)-nominated* Farewell My Concubine, composes a richly imagined and 'tender symphony (Screen International) about love, ambition and destiny in China's high-pressure world of classical music. Surging with warmth, humanity and a sense of humor (The Hollywood Reporter), this lyrical, enchanting heartwarmer (Variety) is a 'sure-fire crowd-pleaser (Los Angeles Times)! When violin prodigy Xiaochun and his father headto Beijing seeking fame and fortune, they soon discover a fierce world of cutthroat ambition. But when Xiaochun is adopted by a famous music tutor, success finally seems within reachuntil a shocking discovery begins to unravel his entire world and the boy must make the most difficult choice ofhis life. Can he achieve the fame his father had always hoped for without losing the extraordinary passion that sets him apart? *1993: Foreign Language FilmDirector Chen Kaige moves from the epic sweep of Farewell My Concubine to a small, intimate story about a boy and his father--but creates just as rich an emotional impact. Liu Cheng (Liu Peiqi) takes his 13-year-old son Xiaochung (Tang Yun) to Beijing in the hope of finding a teacher who will foster the boy's talent on the violin. The adolescent boy soon becomes infatuated with one of their neighbors, a golddigger named Lili (the lovely Chen Hong), and becomes a pupil of Professor Jiang (Wang Zhiwen). But Liu discovers that a good teacher is not enough; if Xiaochung is to succeed in the world, he must have a teacher with connections--even if this ambition threatens to pull father and son apart. Together would be sappy if it weren't for the emotional honesty of the actors; under Kaige's clean direction, the movie is graceful and deeply moving. --Bret Fetzer
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