Huang tu di

Not far from the yellow river there is a big area where the earth also is yellow and the climate and living are very harsh, this time because of a drought. First we see a wedding ceremony with the bride little more than 12 years old, a happy occasion for everyone except for the skeptical onlooking Cuiqiao whose fate will be similar in short time and the bride herself. Enter folk song collector comrade Gu who stays with her family for some time. His talk of whats going on in the south, the end of arranged weddings and equality of women sets a deep impression on Cuiqiao, but also her mute brother.

Much of the film is told in its folk songs and its pictures. Cuiqiaos misery is told with songs: "of all the people//girls are the most miserable" and her new hope with the songs of the Party.

The pictures leave much room for the environments to sink in. Distances are big and the landscape homogeneous, that is earth covered mountains and a wide yellow river. In a setting such as this, the figures get small, and even more so by the devotion Zhang Yimou gives to the vast sky.

This movie is, to say the very least, a work of art. No other movie has ever evoked such emotional tears from my eyes as Yellow Earth. From the foreshadowing wedding ceremony, to the repetition in Cuigiao's own wedding, from distant silhouettes, to the ominous slow motion running of Hanhan during the ceremonial rain dance at the end, I have never felt the extent of sympathy for characters in a film as I have during and after viewing Yellow Earth. The folk songs reiterated the intensity of the sorrow through their text and solemn melodies. Ch'en Kaige beautifully crafted this film, bringing a little understanding of the plight of traditional China, and the revolutionary attempt to better their situation.

Ugh, this is a hard movie to watch. It is both boring and depressing -- and yet really good! How crazy that it works out that way. Maybe because it's a little TOO close to the experience of real life. Here we have a film that's a window into the life of Cuiqiao, and her tiny family of peasants, in a north-western province of China during World War II.

The music is a motif and the main thematic element of the film, expressing the misery most eloquently. The plot sees a lowly Communist officer trying to catalog or find folk songs for the Communist foot-soldiers to sing as morale-boosters. The best singer in town is the shy and depressed Cuiqiao whose life is pitiable. I won't go into details, but it is depressing for reasons that are equally social and economic. The officer seems nice, but he seems like another pawn in a bigger power game -- a guy who really isn't so sure of his faith in the party beyond a means of escape. He's just another guy staying one step ahead of the virulent poverty the main characters suffer through.

Seriously, the stuff is really affecting and memorable. The funny scene or two in this movie is all the more smile-inducing because you're just so glad for the break in the bleak atmosphere. And the songs -- mein gott, what grating stuff to spoiled western ears, but simultaneously so gut-wrenching! I'd call this a period piece, but the experiences of rural western villagers in China are probably pretty timeless. I mean, the landscape is certainly changing, but there are a lot of places that are still like this.

Watch it, you spoiled punks!

including the communist ideology.

Great directorial work in describing the harsh conditions that not only resulted from unforgiving nature and political turmoil, but also from the burden of traditional Chinese culture, which is partly to blame for the political turmoils of post-revolution era. The film is one of the pioneers in the re examination of Chinese tradition and although it has not gone into detailed criticism like later films such as Bian Lian (Change Face) of later era, it was a good beginning.

In this handsome but dramatically subdued portrait of life in the harsh, mountainous hinterland of mainland China a plucky young bureaucrat, collecting folk songs for the communist army, befriends a penniless widower and his children, before learning to his horror that the winsome teenage daughter is to be sold against her will into marriage with an elderly local farmer. Director Kaige Chen shows a photographer's eye for visual composition and symmetry, but the narrative structure of his film is almost non-existent. This is storytelling completely uninfluenced by Western techniques and standards, unfolding for the most part through imagery and song. Whether the result is a refreshing change of pace or an exercise in tedium will depend entire on the viewer's attitude toward classic Third World cinema.