El papalote azul

Beijing of the 1950s, as seen through the eyes of Tietou, a little boy. As a child, his father gives him a blue kite. The events of the day sweep the family into chaos, including the father, Lin, who becomes entangled in political intrigue with Mao's communists and winds up in a work camp. Hedies soon afterwords by a falling tree.

Tietou's widowed mother marries her dead husband's former colleague, Li, who tries his best to improve his wife and stepsons lives. The Great Leap Forward occurs and the wave of starvation claims Li as a victim.

The third husband is a party member with a relatively luxurious home at the time of the cultural revolution in China and they get caught up in the terrible violence of the Red Guard and I'll just say that no one lives happily ever after. The Blue Kite is a brutally honest look at China's interesting recent history; a sad but true tale.

I had to add a review of this movie, mainly because of certain reviewers choosing to criticize the politics instead of the actual film. To all of you budding western Mao-apologists...before you debate the merits of this story and the veracity of its presentation of life, you should consider learning Chinese, going to China, and talking to people. You will learn two things: 1)this period of time was hidden from an entire generation and is only now being discussed, re-examined and virtually condemned by China. 2)The culture of fear, paranoia and brutality among ordinary citizens is very real and its memory, and vestiges of it, still exist in those old enough to remember that era. Understanding this film is key to understanding the century of virtual trauma that China underwent, at the hands of others and then at the hands of its corrupt, megalomaniacal leaders and even its own people. And if one finds the tone a bit dark, remember: at the time of this film, the Tianamen square crackdown (that still is largely unknown in China...none of my college or high school students had ever heard about it...) was only 4 years old. China today is full of hope and looking forward, but still afraid to speak about the past.

This film is right up there in educating the masses on a bold, but chilling truth. The first time I saw this movie it not only made me cry, but it haunted me for weeks. Exposing the truth has been a difficult endeavor when it comes to China, but this is one of those films that has done it with grace and style.

This movie is great. It ends a bit abruptly but it is still a great movie. It sums up the way of life in China up until that part in a very poignant touching way without overdramatizing. I give it a ten. The sad part is that it was banned in china, only for telling the truth.

According to some sort of reason, I didn't know this movie until these days. After watching it, I cannot stop thinking this might not be true, but I know it is a real story. Or I'd rather say "they are real" because this kind of story almost happened in every Chinese family.It might be fortunate that I'v got a complete family, but I can imagine what would happen if they, my parents, were not so lucky.

Everything in the story are as real as they might be. To stigmatize and to be stigmatized, to live and to die, to resist and to be resisted, to beat and to be beaten while life was still going on. Attacking the rightists, perish the four vermins, big lunge, making steel, disasters of 3 years... all these things were filled in the daily conversations of Chinese nowadays.

but I don't think we'v paid enough attention to this period of Chinese history. Especially young people do not even know it. This movie is still forbidden in China. Willing to see its public show.