Coming Home (2014)
"Gui lai" (original title)
- Drama
Lu and Feng are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. He finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife no longer remembers him.
Director:
Yimou Zhang
Gong Li plays Wanyu, the devoted wife of Yanshi (Chen Daoming), an intellectual sent to prison during China's Cultural Revolution. Their daughter Dandan (Zhang Huiwen) grows up resentful of a man whose effective outlaw status has adversely affected their standing in the schoolroom and in society. When his long imprisonment finally ends, Yanshi returns to his family – only to find that Wanyu no longer recognises him.
There's a lot to appreciate in Zhang's bittersweet (emphasis: bitter) film. The tragedy of this love story plays out in beautifully devastating images: Wanyu waiting with a painstakingly hand-made sign at the train station for a man she won't recognise anyway; Yanshi sitting with a chestful of letters, each filled with cramped, light-starved words pledging love for a family he might never see again. There's an unmistakable undercurrent of political darkness here, too: the Cultural Revolution has, quite literally, robbed Yanshi of his identity, and returned him to his wife a stranger.
When placed in the larger context of an oppressive China, the film and its sad, broken romantic centerpiece make a lot more sense. On its own terms, however, the love story at the heart of Coming Home is only barely-disguised melodrama – and thus, more likely to frustrate than engage.
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ഒരു അഭിപ്രായം പോസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്യൂ