Mao's Last Dancer

This cineaste and balletomane had given up many years ago any hope of ever seeing the dance rendered adequately on film. Enter Bruce Beresford. I suppose every ladies' book club in the English-speaking world has read Mao's Last Dancer, so if you wanted to make a film based on that autobiography, you'd first have to find a brave director. Well, this is it. Linking together life in desolate inner China and a sophisticated western world has been done before. But there is an emotional story here, and the casting agencies deserve enormous credit for finding such competent people. I mean, do you find an actor and teach him to dance, or do you get a dancer to act? Whatever; the lead in this film can dance very well indeed, and his acting is more than competent. I won't retell the story. Just let it be said, that at the performance I saw, most of the audience sat through the credits. Those who left early looked mystifed by the applause. A ladies' book club cum chick flick? I think not. Sure, the tissues were out, but this is one surely exciting film.

One clever element of this film is the way in which various people who are significant in Li Cunxin's life, tell him stories with a message. The frog trapped at the bottom of a well is one. He hears from a toad at the top of the well that the big wide world is worth seeing.

The whole film is a story with a message - and the message is one that uplifts without in any sense being cloying. Beresford, the director, even manages at several stages to invoke the idiom of Chinese revolutionary film and theatre. The scenes actually shot in China are some of the most authentic in the film, which is not uniformly good in this regard. Somehow, the slightly stagy acting of some of the Huston Ballet Company characters, ceases to matter because the lead parts are well carried and the storyline is strong.

Li Cunxin defected to America partly for his art and partly for love. The wonders of the materiality of Huston are perhaps a poor substitute for losing your country; yet that country was deeply scarred by the Mao's cultural revolution. To watch the part early on where the benefits brought by Chairman Mao to the Chinese people, are laid out by Party Functionaries, has a dark poignancy, given that today we know he was directly responsible for the death of many, many millions.

The dance sequences are done very well and the film pleases at that level as well as a tale with more twists and turns than you might imagine.

A film of some subtlety and considerable beauty; recommended.

My husband and I went to see this movie yesterday and thought the acting was great from relatively unknown, at least to us, actors. I had some idea of what the movie was about prior to going to see it but it was even better than my expectations, and the lead actor was a truly magnificent dancer, as were the others.

The story was moving with a few humorous moments, and showed how disciplined a person must be in order to become a great dancer. I have to say it has been my experience that people generally leave before the credits but, like myself, they stayed, which says something for the acting and the movie itself.

I would recommend this movie to everyone, even those who are not fans of ballet.

A charming, stirring, visually and emotionally stirring film. The best I've thus far seen in '10. The story of a mainland Chinese 11 year old boy,supposedly forever indoctrinated by daily school- taught commie propaganda garbage,is chosen to attend a special school to be trained for ballet. He does well and in due time, is sent to the USA to the Houston Ballet Company. Then and there he awakens to not only his manhood but to the realization that all he's been taught about the "glory of Chairman Mao's communist revolution, was the furthest thing from the truth. Not only is the lead a wonderful danseur but his acting ability could win him a Best Actor nomination as well. A film NOT TO BE MISSED.

Mao's last Dancer tells the true story of Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin who grew up in rural poverty in Mao's communist before being given the opportunity to dance in the West in the early 80s. Li is forced to examine his conscience as he must choose between his career, family, culture, politics and love whilst having to make heart-wrenching decisions of what he must choose to sacrifice and what he must choose to save.

Li Cunxin is played magnificently by Chi Cao (as an adult) as well as Chengwu Guo (as a teenager). Chi Cao, a highly recognised ballerino in his own right, must receive the bulk of the accolades for what is truly a seamless breakthrough performance by a first time actor. The rest of the cast are also fantastic including Bruce Greenwood who plays the difficult and complex part of a slightly camp Ballet Director who must confront his own values.

Kyle MacLachlan ("Sex and the City") takes a relatively brief but delightfully forceful turn as a Houston lawyer and Australians will delight in the cameo by the ever wonderful Jack Thompson.

As an Australian production I was extraordinarily proud. Bruce Beresford has produced arguably his finest picture to date (and yes, I've seen "Driving Miss Daisy") as the pacing, musical score, use of ballet on camera and story structure were all pitch perfect. The film jumps around between 80s USA and Li's Chinese upbringing at the beginning before settling into a groove during the middle and end. And just when the film could be in danger of straining it's audience Beresford delivers moments of levity and humour that remind us of the characters' humanity.

The backdrop of politics against which the film plays is neither ignored nor focused on. Had it gone one way or the other, the film wouldn't have worked nearly so well but Beresford dealt with this delicate theme with such craftsmanship that it never becomes an issue for the audience.

Jan Sardi (who also wrote Shine and the Notebook) has also produced a highly commendable script for what must have been a daunting project - given the success of the book the movie is based on.

At 132 minutes, the film is long and this can be felt slightly in the middle. However, the fault is only minor and I defy any viewer to watch this without being moved by Li's story.

Many who have read Li's memoirs (as I have) will be anxious to know whether the movie does the book justice. I'm overjoyed to say that it does. I openly wept several times in the film as did most of the audience members around me. There were a few subplots and parts of the novel left out but I found that, unusually, this didn't bother me as much as it normally does with movies based on true stories.

This is because the film told the essence of Li's story extraordinarily well in this irresistibly moving telling of one man's struggle as he's caught between two cultures at a time of when they were pushing against each other.

This year's Slumdog Millionaire upstart is Mao's Last Dancer.