The Blue Kite

Rating:
Summary: It is obvious why the Chinese government banned this film
Review: The Chinese government is forever banning films that when viewed do not appear to be overly subversive, but when you watch "The Blue Kite" ("Lan feng zheng") you know exactly why Beijing banned both it and filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang. For us in the West the film is almost more of a documentary, providing a unique look at contemporary life in China (unlike most Chinese films which set their story before the coming of the Communists for the most part). The upheavel of the Cultural Revolution is happening out on the the streets and we witness its impact on the friends and family of Tietou. We see the main character as an infant (Tian Yi), child (Wenyao Zhang) and teenager (Xiaoman Chen). As the politics change under Chairman Mao, so do the very fabric of the society. The standout performance in this film is Liping Lu as Chen Shujuan, Tietou's mother, and Zhuangzhuang's direction is to be honored more for making the film rather than great artistry. The ending is one of those shattering conclusions we have come to expect from such films and the scathing indictment of China under Mao is quite forceful. This 1993 runs rather long (138 minutes) and is in Mandarian with English subtitles. Final note: the problems some have with understanding the specific historical context of "The Blue Kite" is rather surprising to me. This film tells the story of an oppressed nation and the specifics of the Cultural Revolution, which was basically just intellectual window dressing for a massive purge, seem to me no more necessary than watching similar films from Eastern European nations. I guess I do not want to believe that cultural differences really get in the way of our recognizing oppression.

Rating:
Summary: It is obvious why the Chinese government banned this film
Review: The Chinese government is forever banning films that when viewed do not appear to be overly subversive, but when you watch "The Blue Kite" ("Lan feng zheng") you know exactly why Beijing banned both it and filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang. For us in the West the film is almost more of a documentary, providing a unique look at contemporary life in China (unlike most Chinese films which set their story before the coming of the Communists for the most part). The upheavel of the Cultural Revolution is happening out on the the streets and we witness its impact on the friends and family of Tietou. We see the main character as an infant (Tian Yi), child (Wenyao Zhang) and teenager (Xiaoman Chen). As the politics change under Chairman Mao, so do the very fabric of the society. The standout performance in this film is Liping Lu as Chen Shujuan, Tietou's mother, and Zhuangzhuang's direction is to be honored more for making the film rather than great artistry. The ending is one of those shattering conclusions we have come to expect from such films and the scathing indictment of China under Mao is quite forceful. This 1993 runs rather long (138 minutes) and is in Mandarian with English subtitles. Final note: the problems some have with understanding the specific historical context of "The Blue Kite" is rather surprising to me. This film tells the story of an oppressed nation and the specifics of the Cultural Revolution, which was basically just intellectual window dressing for a massive purge, seem to me no more necessary than watching similar films from Eastern European nations. I guess I do not want to believe that cultural differences really get in the way of our recognizing oppression.

Rating:
Summary: Quietly devastating humanistic masterpiece
Review: The first time I saw this film, it left me feeling empty. Even though I knew something about the horrors of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the film didn't affect me like I thought it would. It is undramatic and almost introspective in mood, and lacks the dazzling cinematic artistry of Zhang Yimou's "To Live" (which deals with the same subject). But then a few months later I watched it again. And then it really hit me. The movie is quiet on the surface because the protagonists generally keep their emotions hidden. But as the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu once said, "moments of joy and sorrow are times when we keep our emotions most to ourselves." When I finally understood that in The Blue Kite there is suffering going on all the time even when it is not expressed, the impact of the film became much greater.

Even though "To Live" is better in many ways, I now think that "The Blue Kite" is the more devastating of the two because of how it portrays the slow but relentless buildup of an immense weight of injustice suffered by one woman (Shujuan) in the name of ideology. Think of Shujuan multiplied millions of times and you will begin to get a sense of what the Chinese people suffered under Mao.

Rating:
Summary: It's so real.
Review: The story in this movie would happen to any Chinese family during 50's to 70's. However, it is hard to understand completely without living in that environment.

Rating:
Summary: an epic
Review: This film is a powerful epic masterpiece. It leaves the viewer drained and exhausted at the end. the story line about the lunacy of the Chinese communist regime and its polices in the 50's and 60's can equally apply across time and cultures and borders. After viewing the film one wonders if there is a right time to go to the toilet but such episode played so subtly only reflects the director's wonderful touch . There is none of the tear jerking and sentimentality one usually finds in the Chinese sad films but the story line just slowly and methodically develops and draws the audience into the bottomless abyss of human insanity and the cruelty of rigid regimes while on the surface children played in the streets and vendors hawked their products and everything seemed normal. But the characters slowly got affected and human beings were being twisted and bent and knocked down and inconviences turned into unhappiness into sufferings and into death or interminable pain. The director used symbols of macular degeneration for the blindness of the people, nursery rythmes to emphasize the horror perpetuated by navie people , kites for hope which kept being lodged in trees and the adults 'uncles' kept promising a new one. In the end all lives were ruined and the boy lay on the ground bloodied and bruised looking skyward at his blue kite shattered and lodged in the tree blowing in the wind. The director left the viewer to decide if a new kite will indeed be flown again and lodged again and broken again or will it soar into the sky by the two kids earlier in the film free and strong and above all human pettiness and conflict.
That secne will be in my consciousness forever.

Rating:
Summary: an epic
Review: This film is a powerful epic masterpiece. It leaves the viewer drained and exhausted at the end. the story line about the lunacy of the Chinese communist regime and its polices in the 50's and 60's can equally apply across time and cultures and borders. After viewing the film one wonders if there is a right time to go to the toilet but such episode played so subtly only reflects the director's wonderful touch . There is none of the tear jerking and sentimentality one usually finds in the Chinese sad films but the story line just slowly and methodically develops and draws the audience into the bottomless abyss of human insanity and the cruelty of rigid regimes while on the surface children played in the streets and vendors hawked their products and everything seemed normal. But the characters slowly got affected and human beings were being twisted and bent and knocked down and inconviences turned into unhappiness into sufferings and into death or interminable pain. The director used symbols of macular degeneration for the blindness of the people, nursery rythmes to emphasize the horror perpetuated by navie people , kites for hope which kept being lodged in trees and the adults 'uncles' kept promising a new one. In the end all lives were ruined and the boy lay on the ground bloodied and bruised looking skyward at his blue kite shattered and lodged in the tree blowing in the wind. The director left the viewer to decide if a new kite will indeed be flown again and lodged again and broken again or will it soar into the sky by the two kids earlier in the film free and strong and above all human pettiness and conflict.
That secne will be in my consciousness forever.

Rating:
Summary: more than two long hours of bleakness
Review: While respecting the moviemaker and the people who participated in making this movie for their courage, I find this movie unbearable:
- the characters are paper-thin: the protagonists' reason for existence in the movie is to suffer. The communists' reason for existence in the movie is to parrot the party line and to act arrogantly. There is really no fleshed out characters in the movie.
- the plot lacks subtlety: the movie begins with a wedding delayed by the death of Stalin, and ends with brutal violency by the Red Guard. There is a glimpse of happiness at the beginning of the movie, and it disappears completely under the bleakness of the plot, which is no more than a string of tragedies linked together. In contrast, To Live, My Favorite Concubine, Burnt by the Sun still manage to show the hope and the humanity shining through the desperation. That's why, for me, the endings of To Live and Burnt by the Sun are much more devastating than this movie's.