The Road Home - Puts you on a road straight to your Soul

DVDs:

	• The Road Home Ziyi Zhang, Honglei Sun Sony Pictures Classics, 2001 average customer review:based on 139 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Road Home - Puts you on a road straight to your Soul

This is the first film (not TV) that Zhang Ziyi made (at the age of 19 or 20) playing the part of 16/18. It is not a "action" film but it is one of her best. After seeing "The Road Home" I had to "google wikipedia" for a list of all her films and am presently working thru all of Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh's films. If you want to see a "Real Love Story" this is the film to see. I only wish that "The Road Home" film had been longer. I regretted to see it end

A touching and compelling love story

This is not as opulently beautiful as some of Zhang Yimou's films but the story is compelling and wonderfully told with deep affection for the characters. It's a love story beginning in the present with the death of a beloved village school teacher whose widow demands that he be honored by having his body carried--not driven--from where he died to his home in the small mountain village where he taught for over 40 years. The expense seems extravagant and where will the pallbearers come from? Most of the young people have left the village for the cities.

Returning for the funeral is the dead teacher's son. He realizes how important this ancient tradition of actually, physically carrying the body home, and so he goes about making that happen for his illiterate mother who is now all alone.

The real focus of the movie however is the extraordinarily beautiful face of the then 19-year-old Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2000; Memoirs of a Geisha 2005) who plays Zhao Di, the mother as a young woman. We are flashed back to the teacher's arrival in the village and to the young Zhao Di doing everything in the exuberant way of first love that she can to catch his eye. Again and again Zhang has his camera focused tightly on Zhang Ziyi's face as she experiences love at virtual first sight and goes through all the emotions of love's labors. Pointedly Zhang Yimou shows only her face. Her body is covered in the padded winter clothes of the Chinese north.

In this focus on the skill, charisma and beauty of Zhang Ziyi one sees perhaps the influence of some Western directors like Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Roget Vidam who made movies in homage to the beauty of their young stars, Bergman with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, Kieslowski with Juliette Binoche and Irene Jacob, and Vadim with Bridget Bardot and Jane Fonda.

As always in the films of Zhang Yimou one sees in the background or off to a side a gentle but penetrating subtext on the effect that communism has had on Chinese society. Here he gives not criticism but guidance as he carefully insists that the traditional ways have value and should not be completely shoved aside.

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A sweet movie.

I thought this was a great movie about love. The way the main characters expressed themselves and thier budding love. And the love of the son for his mother and father. I was touched by this story.

Most excellent of movies!

I couldn't love a movie more. Others have shared my opinion when I turned them onto it.
That's if you like heartfelt love stories.

Pure cinema telling life's story of the heart

A simple story. The story in everyone's heart. The camera tells the story far more than the words and music although both are excellent.

A rural life few can understand in modern life in the city. I was a farmboy. I can feel the life in this movie.

It is the best movie I've ever seen. It is like a book showing how to use a camera, words, music, and scenes.

I wish it will be released in blu-ray with many extra features.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The story of a man's parents' courtship unfolds when he comes home to bury his father.
Genre: Foreign Film - Chinese
Rating: G
Release Date: 27-NOV-2001
Media Type: DVD

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