My parents see themselves in this movie, I think

The Road Home

When I proposed to my parents to watch “The Road Home” with them, they were so happy! My father things that it’s Zhang Yimou’s second best movie after “Red Sorghum” which is quite a surprise for me, as I have always believed there could never be a better Zhang Yimou movie then “Huozhe” after all.

Consequently, it really was a lot of fun to watch this movie with them. The slow pace of the movie made it possible for my parents to comment and discuss the movie; while some people seem to hate discussing movies while watching it, it can greatly contribute my own pleasure of watching a movie. (Why else would you want to watch movies together with other people anyways?) In this case, my parents were overjoyed whenever they saw Zhang Ziyi’s longing face full of love and excitement whenever she ran across the fields to see the man she loves. It was incredibly cute to see, and I do admit that the recurrent image of a running, twin-tailed Zhang Ziyi in those red and pink peasants’ clothes that make her double as fat as she ever was, is incredibly charming and I understand why so much time is devoted to the repetition of this image at different times.

Apart from this, it was also interesting to see that nothing really happened in the movie compared to that spans different episodes of the main characters’ lives. For Zhang Yimou, “The Road Home” tells a surprisingly simple story with one single main actress who spends the majority of the movie’s screentime looking cute, miserable and hopelessly in love.

Finally, I don’t think we necessarily have to free ourselves from kitsch as critics of this movie seem to propagate. Of course an overdose of kitsch doesn’t result in a rush of emotions but make me rather feel cold towards a story or a speech, however, this light level of kitsch actually feels very naturally to me, and makes me go “awww” through the whole movie. When the mother heard her son holding a class, I felt like crying too. These kinds of subtle emotions are precious in my opinion and few movies actually make me feel like this.

My current ranking of Zhang Yimou movies looks like this:
1. Huozhe/To Live
2. The Road Home
3. Hero
4. House of Flying Daggers (which will be reviewed soon)
5. Keep Cool
Ultimately, I liked all of them a lot!