This film is up there with the best of them; equal to The Horse Thief and the King of Masks , my other two favorite Chinese films. These films are generally superior to Hollywood films in every respect except bod office receipts; and that is an important exception. Movies are generally made for money, and this one did not make a lot of money. You can pretty much mark that up to massive Western ignorance of good Chinese cinema. Very few, if any, films about China illustrate the initiation of collectivism in the early days of the CCP. Then, without effort, the film glides to the elimination of private property and businesses, and then on to Hundred Flowers Campaign, which, to put it in simple terms for uninitiated Westerners, is like someone asking you for your honest opinion, and then putting you in jail after you give it. People who differed with the CCP during this period were known as rightests and counter-revolutionaries. In reality, the vast majority of people who rendered opinions, were merely rendering their opinions. For this, they were sent to work farms, prisons, and other places far away from home. This impacted on the most sacred part of Chinese tradition; the family. Unbelievably, the upheaval got worse with the Great Leap Forward, which was more like a great leap up and down without going anywhere. Needlessly killing sparrows for some obscure reason, and tryin to make steel from ordinary household items that contained only fragments of iron. It was as if an idiot was in charge of the country giving idiotic orders. After 20 years of chaos and labeling people things they were not even remotely guilty of, things actually got worse; The Cultural Revolution caused three times as many deaths as the Jewish Holocaust in Europe, yet, in the West, only one of a hundred Westerners knows anything about it. What could be worse than stating that schools and books were useless? Leaving young gangs roving the streets to commit horrendous crimes. Replacing all parts of society's leaders with inexperienced youth. Brilliant. Hospitals struggling with doctors and nurses and replacing them with clueless students, who allowed millions to die because they didnt know what to do. No education, health care or business was tolerated. Brilliant. All this ended with Deng Xiaopeng in 1978, and now you know why he ran over the students in Tiananmen Square in 1989. No more Cultural Revolutions would be tolerated in China. No more student takeovers. China had learned its lesson, but the West condemned Tiananmen Square because they were totally ignorant of Chinese History. The film shows all of these events up to 1968, and does it with the greatest of ease. Great directing and cast.
