Zhou Yu's Train
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Movie Reviews of Zhou Yu's Train
Movie Review: Journey without end
Summary: 5 Stars
Zhou Yu's Train (2002) is the follow up by director Zhou Sun to his successful 2000 film Breaking the Silence. Both star Li Gong, who is both a charismatic beautiful presence in so many films and surely one of the world's great actors.
A young woman, Zhou Yu (Li Gong), meets a poet called Chen Qing (Tony Leung) and falls in love with the man and his poetry. His passionate poetry reveals that he is in love with poetry, she with love itself. While visiting him in a distant city she meets a doctor who is able to reach parts of her nature she had not been aware of: his dour, cynical, pragmatic nature is in strong contrast to the introverted, shy poet she loves. How can Zhou Yu respond to both men while being true to herself? This is her journey, her train. The synopsis however can only trivialise the film.
Viewers who are used to narrative structure or frenetic action sequences controlling their viewing experience need to approach this film with caution. Zhou Sun seems to agree with Picasso that asking the right questions is far more important than finding the right answers. The film asks many questions, and is tactful enough to let the viewers find the answers for themselves. The director uses a structure whereby what events mean to the characters who experience them is far more important than the events themselves. The film tries to depict states of mind: films I am reminded of are Julio Medem's "Lovers of the Arctic Circle" and Ingmar Bergman's "Persona". While "Zhou Yu's Train" is not as good a film as these, the fact that the comparison can be made is high praise.
At several points in the film we are shown Zhou Yu holding a book of poems written by her lover Chen Qing. The book is called Zhou Yu's Train: the director clearly comparing his film with a collection of poems. The poems are full of emotion, very romantic and saturated with landscape (as so much Chinese poetry seems to be). The poems, the cinematography by Yu Wang and the music by Shigeru Umebayashi are all just as important in achieving the effect Zhou Sun is seeking as anything that happens on screen. The music is outstanding, able to stand on its own as Zbigniew Preisner's score for Kierlowski's Dekalog did. Yu Wang's work shows that exquisite landscape is still abundant in China. The film would not work with less outstanding actors in the principal parts.
An influence on Zhou Sun is surely Yasujiro Ozu, who used trains frequently to explore the situations his characters were in. Ozu was a master who could tell a whole story within just one frame and Zhou Sun is not yet as adept as this. But the shots of a train passing another going in the opposite direction is meant to tell us that here the characters who seem to interact are each going their own journey, with little chance of communicating. At times scenes are used metaphorically: we see the car Zhou Yu is travelling in to Tibet to visit Chen Qing spiralling into a river, and hear that a bus she is travelling on has met with an accident. These tell of wasted journeys, not literal events.
Is romance an ideal or an illusion? How far should we follow an ideal or an illusion? How real are the events that take place in our hearts compared to the events we experience everyday? Could love be the only experience we have that doesn't derive from our senses? Is compromise ever worthwhile? If you've ever thought of questions like these this film will move you deeply.
Movie Review: Took Some Time
Summary: 5 Stars
Zhou Yu's Train is certainly one of those films that some may not like the first time around. If you read up on it on some websites, they'll even tell you that you might miss a few things. I believe in this also but this movie for me gradually turned into one of my favorite movies.
The story is set in China and based on Zhou Yu who is played by the beautiful Gong Li and her travels to and from her boyfriends home. Of course, she travels by train and this allows everything from her conversations to her thinking to herself to be slowed down. This is where the film reminds me a little of a Wong Kar Wai film. The dialogue is very good but still not Kar Wai good. Zhou Yu's boyfriend Chen Ching is a poet who writes for himself but finds the courage to write a poem for Zhou Yu and give it to her.
The very first poem he writes for her is the one that makes her fall in love with him. Zhou Yu is an artist herself and maybe more artistic than Chen Ching, she makes beautiful vases. She runs into a man named Chen Qing during her travels on the train. Chen notices a vase she is carrying with her but he really just likes Zhou Yu. Although Chen and Zhou Yu have noting in the beginning, they entertain each other with good conversations during their travels. They start to gradually develop a close relationship. The story then starts to deal with Zhou Yu having trouble because she has two men that love her but she loves one more than the other.
I had a hard time watching this movie the first time. It was interesting, wasn't really boring but it gives you the feeling that you have to be in a certain mood to enjoy it. The continuous talking leads to good but light conflict between Zhou Yu and other characters but there is a surrounding mystery that gives it a bit of depth. Gong Li also plays another character who is that mystery but it comes to make sense by the end of the film. The acting was exceptional; I loved the playfulness of Zhou Yu's conversations with Qing and the seriousness of her conversations with Chen Ching.
I came to ask myself if she was really in love with Ching, or if she was just in love with his poetry. I loved the camera views, picture quality, and definitely the settings. Having two of the characters on a train makes them have talk to each other but it also shows that they come to need to be on the train with each other. It actually makes a surprisingly sort of serene setting. The writing was great and does not let you down at all. If anything, I would warn a future viewer to give this movie more than one chance. If you can't make it through the first time, watch it again and I recommend watching it on a nice night. To me it is just a 5 star movie, it had perfect acting, a great story, and an ending I did not quite favor but it was still acceptable.
Movie Review: Simple Beauty Captured on Film
Summary: 5 Stars
Zhou Yu's Train is one of those films that is simple, but so powerful. It is pure beauty captured on film with feeling and a grabbing story. The story and the atmosphere will pull you into the film.
Zhou Yu's train takes place in northen China where it follows the story of Zhou Yu, played marvelously by Gong Li, a woman who falls in love with a shy poet. She loves him deeply and wants nothing more than his love. The only problem is that they live an one day traintrip for each other. So two days every week, Zhou Yu takes the train to be with her lover. But life is't easy and problems start to develop. She meets an animaldoctor who falls in love with her. She is attracted to him but is deeply in love with her poet. A struggle deep inside her heart begins.
The locations in Northen China are so beautiful. Eyeopening landscapes let you feel the atmosphere. Also the camerastyle is one of the things that makes the film feel different. Next to those beautiful pans and steady shots, this film has some unsteady shots that put you right into it. It helps you to feel the story. Sometimes I had the feeling I was there, right next to the characters. It gives you pure realism.
The music in the film is gorgeous and makes you feel the story as well. The theme is wonderful and will stay in your head for some time. Even though music is present in quite a few scenes, mostly you just hear the sounds of the surroundings which also gives pleasant realism to the film.
Considering casting this film is a true masterpiece. The beautiful Gong Li acts so powerful, that with one glance of her eyes you will know how she feels. She is the one who carries the movie and makes it work.
The film is a slowpaced, may it be simple, but oh so powerful story about love and will. It feels like a romantic mystery. And I am happy to have explored it. I am blown away by it's simple and beautiful power. It is an emotional journey through the heart of a normal woman.
This film is one of the proves that China can give so much more than just epic Martial Arts films. Sometimes one of these little masterpieces comes along.
See for yourself and drift away with Zhou Yu on her train of Love.
Movie Review: Emotional Journeys of the Heart on a very special Train
Summary: 5 Stars
ZHOU YU'S TRAIN is another beautiful film from China, refreshingly romantic and intimate film giving us a break from the constant onslaught of the Chinese martial arts films that have so deeply influenced the movie market around the world. As directed by Zhou Sun this low-key tale concerns changes in the lives of three rather simple citizens of Northern China. The simplicity is gratifyingly successful.
Zhou Yu (played with exquisite subtlety by the magnificent Gong Li) is a working girl who is carrying on the family tradition of painting porcelain for exporters. Unassuming, she meets Chen Ching (Tony Leung) who is a poet afraid of his talent and self-deprecating to a fault. Zhou Yu hears the beauty in his work and falls in love with both the poetry and the poet. Chen Ching lives out in the country and Zhou Yu must take a train to enjoy her very frequent trysts.
Fate intervenes and on one of these train trips she encounters Zhang Qiang (Hanglei Sun), and affable handsome young Veterinarian who at first pursues her for her 'art' and is rebuffed by Zhou Yu, but the mustual initial physical attraction is undeniable. In time Zhou Yu seeks out the rather secretive Zhang Qiang in his country setting and the two begin a lusty affair. Zhou Yu is torn between the poet and the doctor. How the ultimate love triangle is resolved speaks to the age old questions of passion, art vs. science, and equivocation of the entangled heart.
The scenery of China is beautifully captured and the camera says much about the current social levels of living in China. The music is strangely completely Western when a bit of the old China music seems to be more appropriate to such an intimate tale.
But it is the luminous, multifaceted performances by Gong Li especially and Tony Leung and Hanglei Sun that bring a rich credibility to this small tale. Highly recommended. Grad Harp December 2004
Movie Review: Poetic Appeal
Summary: 5 Stars
Zhou Yu's Train is a dreamy exploration of love's magic within a world of impossible expectation. The story resonates with deeper elements of romantic nature and many of the scenes require an intuitive understanding of infatuation's complexity and mature love's decisions.
This is not a movie to observe casually (reading all the subtitles greatly enhances the meaning), although the movie can be viewed for the pastoral beauty of the countryside and the romantic fusion and deeply satisfying chemistry mingling with train scenes and travel adventures.
When reading between the lines, this movie seems even more about unspoken longings and desires that are somehow buried beneath lakes and hidden in the mist of time.
Zhou Yu is caught between two men who both seem deeply interested in her for numerous reasons. The relationships seem to follow a similar pattern, but the degrees of passion vary dramatically. A slow building satisfying love with a man living close to her gives Zhou stability, while her passionate longings for a poet and a long distance relationship constantly seem to cause her to veer off track emotionally.
I can watch this movie over and over again and each time fresh nuances appear and the movie only becomes more meaningful.
~The Rebecca Review