Together
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.42 You Save: $7.56 (50%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.86 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Together
Movie Review: out-of-this-world
Summary: 5 Stars
A master piece comes across only once in 10 years! Highly recommanded to all viewers and thumbs up for the producer!Movie Review: Best movie I have EVER seen!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the BEST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN I MY LIFEMovie 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/
Movie Review: Human spirit versus controlling possessiveness
Summary: 4 Stars
What I enjoyed most about "Together" is the subtle way emotions were portrayed - not raw and straight in the face of the viewer.
You have to look for them and note scenes that reveal key elements that are stiched together at the final stages of the film.
Chen Kaige has accomplished the highest calibre of creativity in film making (co-writing an original - as opposed to adapted - screenplay, directing it and playing an important role in it, that of Professor Yu).
There are many comments one could make about the beautifully portrayed characters of this film. However, the character I found most intriguing, is that of Professor Yu.
Music Professor Yu is possessive and controlling not only with the fate but also with the emotions of young violinists, although not in an obvious and dictatorial way but rather snobbishly and slyly. He lives and breathes through their success which he nurtures, their gratitude which satisfies and stimulates him, whilst he dominates their fate and their launch to stardom. In doing so, he is not a team player and has no time for anyone's emotions other than his own.
We are introduced to his character in a scene with the last prodigy boy he patronised. "They are not applauding for your performance. They are applauding for your reputation" he says, the insinuation being "...which I built for you."
A far more subtle scene is played in Professor Yu's upmarket Beijing flat, after Xiaochun's father shared the story of his son (which we do not hear at this stage) and which left Professor Yu's wife in tears. Professor Yu then says to her with a dry eyed smirk "he relly got to you, didn't he" insinuating an rock solid emotional insulation on his part, that shelters his goal and his possessive ambition.
When the boy is chosen by Professor Yu for the great night, the aircraft to stardom is once again lined up on the runway and Professor Yu wants no co-pilots. He asks Xiaochun's emotionally fragile father to leave Beijing and presents him with a ticket for this purpose. But the humble father, for reasons of his own, had already booked his ticket to the backwaters of forgoten provincial China, having compromised with the fact that his life there and that of his son in the metropolis of Beijing, would take diametrically opposite courses that would be unlikely to ever cross each other.
The catalyst, comes towards the end of the film through the least likeable character, the girl violinist that competes with Xiaochun, also under the patronage of Professor Yu. Her revelation triggers a twofold effect: On the one hand the viewer's opinion of her changes radically, thanks to the dexterity of Chen Kaige's direction, and on the other, both childern achieve what they most wish for, leaving the possessive and controlling Professor Yu at the back seat of their destinies.
One more factor I appreciated in this and in other films by Chen Kaige is the duration. A richly told story spanning two full hours is ample time to develop the characters and allow for the moulding of the viewer's emotions at the very able hands of one of China's most gifted directors.
On a technical note, my version of the DVD contained no interview with the director, as one reviewer mentioned, or any other informative material, other than a simple trailer.
Movie Review: Playing by Heart: Touching Drama about the Father and Son
Summary: 4 Stars
Leaving far behind the bad memory of thrill-less thriller "Killing Me Softly" (and I call it "Slowly Too,") acclaimed Chinese director Chen Kaige came back with this impressive drama about a boy and his father in modern China. Though this will not gain the worldwide praise he got with "Farewell My Concubine" or "The Assassin," "Together" will regain the status he nearly lost with his preceding work. And here is the story. Though a small boy, Xiaochun is a prodigy violinist. Leaving their hometown, he and his father Liu Cheng, determined to make him a professional, come to the crowded Beijing Station with a handful amount of money hidden in his cap, dreaming of the chance they might get there. But the reality is hard on them; the violin contest they counted on only gives the boy the fifth prize while one of the judges Professor Jiang knows that he deserves the first. But the boy has no money, which means he has no place there.
But the father stubbornly insists, and finally Proferssor (who lives with many cats) accepts the boy as a student. While living in the big city, the boy meets a woman living in his neighborhood named Lili, whose lavish lifestyle depends on the wallets of her many lovers (and she writes down the phone numbers of them on the mirror in pink lipsticks). While he comes to like her, and she him, Xiaochun gets a chance to be apprenticed in the house of commercially successful Professor Yu. But that chance also means the separation from his father.
What is great about the film is, I think, the acting of the two leads by the boy Tang Yun and the father Peigi Liu. They really look like father and son, and Peigi Liu superbly realizes the father's rather alarmingly ardent attitudes toward his son and his talent. In short, he does whatever he has to do in order to give his son a success. The strong bond between them, and how the boy will react to it, is the thing which will revet your eyes.
As is the case with recent Chinese cinemas, "Together" reflects modern Chinese social conditions influenced by money. And that is why the ending of the film -- which I for one find too sentimental. At least, I can say that many of us will think the flashbacks are too abruptly introduced for us to believe in its contents. And though I like the boy's final decision, the last scene slightly gives me an impression that the characters (Lili, Professor Jiang and the father), who have been so far lively and three-dimentional, are reduced very flat existence among the sugary conclusion. The final act needs more time to develop fully, especially after the introduction of the one-dimentionally drwan rival pupil Lin Yu, who really looks like a monster hungery for fame.
But as a father-son drama "Together" is a great achievement, always believable and affectionately depicted. Plus, good acting and good music are always welcome.
Some trivia: Professor Yu is played by Chen Kaige himself. And Lili's Chen Hong is his real-life wife. The boy Tang Yun is really a violinist, and at the national contest (where Chen Kaige came to search the suitable actor to play the lead), he really ended up with the fifth. But the actual sound you hear is dubbed by the violinist Li Chuan Yun, who appears as Professor Yu's pupil who is scolded after the concert.