Yi jiu si er

Feng Xioagang can be considered China's - possibly Asia's - most substantial film maker. His output is increasingly imposing and his box office clout means that the content of his work must come under intense official scrutiny. That made the IF I WERE THE ONE movies quite amazing as an expression of the notion that to be rich is glorious.

BACK TO 1942 is clearly a tent pole movie for the Chinese cinema and then carries a double load. It is an intense, long, demanding account of the 1942 Hunan famine and refugee exodus, made more terrible by the parallel war with the Japanese and also a revision of history with Chiang Kai Shek now shown as both calculating and remote, as well as caring and authoritative but only a support player in the story of the land lord and serf reduced to destitution on their awful journey.

Intriguingly, Theodore White writer of sixties Wolper Documentaries and "The Mountain Road" shows up effectively in the person of Adrian Brody, as a character.

Master crafted, some of the staging is exceptional. The bombing raids are great set pieces and the film manages to keep disaster chic in hand, even if it's so grim.

Essential for the serious movie goer, a strain on the casual entertainment seeker.

In 1942, China and Japan are in war. In Henan, the drought brings famine to the locals, but the wealthy landlord Master Fan Dianyuan (Guoli Zhang) has enough grains and food to supply to the villagers. Out of the blue, the village is looted by a gang of bandits that kills Fan's son and burns down the village to the ground. Master Fan is forced to flee with his wife, daughter and daughter-in-law and his servant Shuan Zhu (Mo Zhang) and they join the refugees. Along their journey, they are rob by the Chinese soldiers and bombed by the Japanese airplanes. Soon the starvation reaches Master Fan and his family with tragic consequences. Meanwhile he stumbles on the road upon the snoopy Time correspondent Theodore Harold White (Adrien Brody) that heads to Henan to investigate the famine and finds evidences of cannibalism among the survivors of the starvation.

The underrated "Yi jiu si er", a.k.a."Back to 1942", is a magnificent and heartbreaking Chinese epic, with the sad drama of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The plot follows the journey of the landlord Master Fan from his wealthy village to the need to selling his daughter to prostitution for food. The only problem is that it seems that in Mandarin the character speaks less to say the same thing in English. Therefore, it is hard to follow the English subtitles in the Blu-Ray and the end of some sentences is lost. But anyway, it is difficult to understand how an intelligent viewer can rate this film with less than eight. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

A tamer version of my review in desensitized words:

Good film, could've been a great film.

A rather controlled and somber depiction of a dark chapter in modern history, subtly echoing another tragedy that happened 16 years later. Surprisingly un-judgmental and un-sentimental for a historical film recreating despair and lowest possible form of human existence.

Feng presents the multiple layers of clues and facts that lead to the ultimate tolls almost as-matter-of-factly, leaving the audience putting together the puzzles and drawing their own conclusions, which is a rather clever way of avoiding censorship and engaging the audience.

Could have been A LOT grittier and more affecting. The acting is powerful in this film. However for a film depicting a major famine that claimed over 3 million lives in recent history, not much huger is shown as visuals in the film, most of the lingering hunger is talked about/acted out (as opposed to being displayed visually) which reduces the general affecting power of the film.

Xu Fan and Zhang Guo-Li are amazing in this film with their acting. Xu gives her most powerhouse performance yet, portraying the tough bottom- feeder hillbilly b*tch who would attempt anything/everything in defending her and her family's rights to live. However for a country woman who's been starving for over 100 days and more than willing to sell her bottom half for a couple of crackers, what's with her double- chin? (think Jennifer Lawrence's face in The Hunger Game – she can act all she wants but I'm sorry, girlfriend is just NOT that hungry) What TF happens to her makeup artist team and special visual effects people?!

Adrien Brody is effectively engaging as a very eager T.H. White who's desperately trying to expose the truth, whether driven by his journalist instincts, Pulitzer, or a genuine sympathy for the poor and depraved. However don't even get me to start with Tim Robbins - why is he even in the film??? The couple of scenes he's in are cringe-inducing. Even if you edit them out altogether it would not affect the story's flow whatsoever.

A well made and serious film you shouldn't miss.

Back to 1942!How many movie-goers were born before 1942? I think very few...

The film is all blood and tear in Chinese history-if you ever read any Chinese history you would know a bit of how the corrupted national party of China ran the country(how they handled the famine) and the history of Japan invaded China (how cold blood of their behaviour against civilians)at the time.

To younger people who never experienced war and hunger...please don't expect entertaining plots.

Before I went to watch this movie, I thought it might be another attempt by another Chinese director to win western market. I thought it might be another hero, a weird martial arts movie that surprisingly pleased western market but not me, a Chinese who grew up with martial arts culture.

How wrong I was, this movie was all about Chinese: government corruption, Chinese fighting Chinese, and bureaucratism, the movie showed them all, and more importantly, real. This movie does not only have the stunning visuals all the big budget Hollywood movies have, but it also has an amazing way of telling history. The movie showed the how cruel a war could be, by telling story of a rich family in Henan province at 1942, when there were a drought and a war threatening. The overall tone was serious, but you will be laughing at some little humors now and then.

I would definitely suggest this movie to anyone who is interested in Chinese culture. For it displayed a real china, unpleasant, even sad, but its real.