Return to Dust

A pushover obsessed with working the land, an invalid woman who has only known abuse all her life and a poor donkey come together in a harsh environment where big landowners farm out land in exchange for a year's worth of crops that they buy for next to nothing. Everybody takes advantage or everybody, even the poor despise those poorer or the meek who do not fight back.

What land is this that can grow such rich crops next to sand dunes?

It's a precious insight into how some people still live today. And how sometimes, maybe all too often, family does not raise you up, but drags you down and takes advantage of your kindness.

It's a slow movie that shows the sad reality of living in these remote communities in remote areas, underdeveloped, undereducated, malnourished, effectively abused and manipulated. That initiative to compensate for demolishing old houses in order to make villages more appealing sounds preposterous. It does not paint a pretty picture of contemporary rural China. Not surprisingly, it got pulled from circulation despite winning a bunch of national and international awards.

I love how he cares for her and how they become close. Except for that one time. But it was so obvious she was becoming thinner and thinner and more hunched over. His obsession with work reminds me of a lot of people in my grandma's generation. Working themselves to the ground. Return to dust.

Express various details and rural life scenes with the most tactile audio-visual, the slowest and slowest rhythm without driving force, and the gentle lens, depict the rustic rural characters, build the most stable and peaceful picture of rural life, and write the happy and beautiful love story of two people who met each other under the traditional "power" of the Chinese relative without any sex that only Chinese directors can do it. But in the end, they could not escape the heartbreaking elegy.

It can be used as the color scheduling of allusion psychology, but it is not in place. It is very realistic and too gentle. The artistic atmosphere is strong, but in the fast-paced society, it is too arrogant.

This is the most artistic art film in my heart, and it is also the epitome and portrayal of China's rural society today.

It is the farmers that give free blood to the city time and again. How ironic!

What retreats is the dust of love, and what returns is the dust and smoke of the city.

--2022.07.17.

This is the story of an unlikely love in a world on the brink of extinction.

In a capitalist China, where the economy is growing at an astounding pace, there is no longer a place for peasants, who live self-sufficiently from what they produce, in the adobe houses they build and which the government subsidizes the demolition. They need to be moved to social neighborhoods, where the houses have balconies and lots of light. But as the protagonist rightly says, where do I put the donkey and the chickens?

The portrait of a rural China on the verge of extinction and the unlikely love between a couple of peasants, rejected by their families, who build a simple but happy life in the house they built with their own hands, from tireless work in the fields.

A poem to old China, which quickly disappears, at the mercy of speculators who drive BMWs and suck the blood out of peasants.

She lovingly cradles a little cardboard lightbox from him with holes that make her room appear like it is full of stars, and he gently places wheat husks on her wrist in the shape of flower petals. This late blooming romance between a poor farmer and an abused woman fills them each with such overwhelming happiness that anything seems possible. A rainstorm that washes away their work of many days, a demolished home, oppressive cold, and poverty, are nothing compared to their love. They find pleasure and wonder in everything; a nest full of swallows, hatching chickens, a wandering donkey, and bottles built into the roof of their home that make the wind sound like it is playing a melody. Still, the challenges of living in modern China constantly test their resolve, patience, and determination.

In addition to being a captivating and tender love story about a mature couple, Return to Dust provides an intriguing picture of the current affairs of China and the ways the developments are affecting the lives of rural populations, food supplies, and China's soul. People are encouraged to move to 70 story apartment towers when their homes are demolished, farms are flooded for massive hydroelectric projects, and artisans are replaced by machines and factories. I witnessed these issues at play in a visit to China in 2018.

It is heartening to witness this loving couple appreciate the small joys of life and peacefully accept adversity, and devastating when society seems to want to grind them into the dust in pursuit of questionable goals. "Where do our chickens, donkeys, and pigs live?" they ask when they are pushed to move to a condo. The couple is so kind to people and animals, and their greatest treasure is each other, so you wish them and those like them all the success in the world.

Screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.

For most Chinese people living in big cities, we don't know much about what it's like to be liviing in rural China. On all social media platforms available in China mainland, we are infused with the knowledge that all the people are living happy lives. But this movie gives us a perfect glimpse into a kind of life that's totally different than ours.

When I was watching the movie, I saw many people leaving comments below. Many of them said they have similar experiences when they lived in rurual when they were young. I know many Chinese people are still struggling with basic needs, but I didn't know they need to struggle so hard. Seeing the couple in the movie living a humble life but still keeping their kind hearts makes me cherish my comfortable life more and even makes me want to be a kinder people

Many say the scene is somewhat exaggerating the real situation, but what makes it curious is that the movie is banned by the Chinese government. This made me believe more that maybe it is actually like in rural China. I have to say I believe the government is trying to make people's lives easier, but it doesn't mean depictions of the other side of a propserous China can't be shown to people.

It's National Day Holiday here in China right now. When I was searching for a movie available in movie theaters, I didn't have much options other than movies paying homage to the government.