Fang hua

I feel that this story is awfully idealized and romanticized and the characters' behaviour carefully curated. There's no way they would be this "pure" as the Asians like to say. Very fit, strong and attractive young men and women thrown together for years and barely any innuendo or liaison, all acting so cute and coy. Even the bullies are mild compared to the stories you hear about hazing.

I also feel this was designed for the box-office and probably made a killing. It's actually done well, but too clean and drawn out and aiming to cover so much scope. I was monitoring the progress bar and I felt the length. It got better for me in the last hour let's say when things get more serious. The war scenes are brutal and the outcomes horrific. When real life comes for our heroes things get serious. And I shed a few tears for Liu Feng and He Xiaoping. These two go through a lot. I guess the melodrama works much better than the slice of life part in the beginning, which I cannot believe for that era of China's history. I'm pretty sure they did not lead such happy and carefree lives in those times. The only hint at hardships is the fact that some of their fathers were political prisoners serving lengthy sentences. And tbh Liu Feng's punishment for that hug was unbelievably harsh. Dingding you jerk... Suizi is too kind to you.

Might have worked better for me a few years ago or even in a different mood but I've seen too many Chinese movies about the post-cultural revolution years to buy into this pretty picture.

" Youth " was a nice movie. The only thing that actually made me reduce my rating from nine to seven was the second half of the movie. Even though the start was really good, with a nice introduction of the characters and the setting where the events took place, the final half rushed things up. Especially when it came to the leading lady, with her story and take on the war, they just threw that "that is that from now on" and they didn't give a deeper look into it. Plus, the ending could have been better too, not about the actual ending, but the way they wrapped things up. That said, the performances were pretty good from everyone, especially when it came to the dancing scenes. So, overall, seven out of ten.

Absolutely beautifully filmed Chinese movie. Most "nearly great" movies like this require a little suspension of belief and a "just go with the flow" attitude. Knowing what I do about the Cultural Revolution, I assume this is a fair glimpse of a very small facet of it. The tragic side: the burning of books, children sending their parents to prison, the destruction of careers and reputations, is not shown, but most informed people should know this by now. And, there are hints of it. And, in a totalitarian country, what else could you expect from a Chinese film.

I was very irritated by the review of this movie on RogerEbert.com by Simon Abrams. Though it's hard to tell, I think he was criticizing this movie for some over-simplified view of the Cultural Revolution. I say "hard to tell" because some of Abrams' sentences are incomprehensible and make no sense. But, clearly this movie is not responsible for informing everyone of the whole story of the Cultural Revolution.

Maybe the best measure of authenticity of "Youth" is the fact that it is being attended in the U.S. by droves of Chinese Americans. Many of these, at least their parents, may have lived through the Cultural Revolution. When I went, my friend and I were the only non-Chinese in the theater.

The directing, the acting of all the cast, the camera work...they all deserved an 8, because director Fong is still one of the better Chinese veteran directors who has been continuously gave us some more serious and more matured movies, unlike those ones who could only produce brain-dead farces which now seems to be the main stream Chinese movies titled themselves as "Comedy". If you looked at what Director Fong gave us in the past years, almost, I mean, most of them, were worth watching.

I've watched a documentary about how this film was made before viewing this film, about how Fong worked so hard to make this film more like what that pathetic era in China, a huge compound was built according to the old building structures, and how he painstakingly chose the new generation young actors to play those roles, and how he insisted them to live like those people in that era, to think like those old generation, he even insisted them to wear clothes inside out like those people in that era, he paid so much in details including how those young people really went through in a large group, lived, ate, trained and slept together, making these actors he signed up to be exactly like those people. This was a very very serious production under the insistence and persistence of Fong's movie ethics and philosophy, and indeed, he never gave way to any hardship and difficulty when tried to make this film. The preparation of making this film was about a year long, all the actors lived together with him, trained under his production experts. Yes, if by such point of view, this should deserve a high rating.

But if you look at this film from a different angle, it's completely on the opposite. Because it's an ideological propaganda film under the guidance and instruction of the Party. Because Fong and other more liberal directors were then pressured by the government to produce more political correct films instead of either commercial-wise or personal-wise films. The Party needed the young generation to learn something from the past, about how that generation was so obedient, how simple-minded, how easy and pure to be mouth-fed with the dogma of the Communism, how to follow the Party to anywhere and anytime when the Party required them to do, to think and to live. So Fong produced this film to please the Party and won the nods from the high-up Party leaders.

But Fong was also smart enough to use a flexible movie title to allow the viewers to develop freely with their imagination. "Fang Hua" in Chinese, means the best but short Youth, a duration when people is more creative, more passionate but at the same time, more naive to be fooled and brain washed. "Fang Hua" is part of a Chinese four words idiom, the other two words that hidden behind and follow Fang Hua is "Shu Du", i.e., "Completely Wasted". And indeed, if you look back to that ridiculous era and those 10-year long Culture Revolution, twenty millions Chinese were wasted, dead and buried; all the young people were forced to leave their homes and hometowns to the remote, deserted countryside, to the mountains, to the fields of wildness. Those short and the most precious years of human lives were completely wasted and could never get back or live it again. A generation, young and should be so promising, but totally lost. Fong somehow hoped that his viewers would have the least passion and realization of how precious the so-called "Youth" should be well supported, guided and tutored and should not be wasted like those young people in that era that this film portrayed. He did not just want to give you some nostalgia or melancholy deeply emotional and sentimental journey to the past, he also wanted you to realize how young people should not waste their precious but short period of their lives in vain and be fooled by the Party to willingly and unconsciously poisoned by such big foolish words like "Patriotism", "Unconditional Sacrifice for Your Motherland". So as I've pointed out in the very beginning, if from the ideological and political viewpoint, knowing this film was just for the purpose to please the Party, this film only deserved a 0.

A sprawling story taking place during and after the Cultural Revolution in China mainly following three characters of a theatre troupe (Liu Feng, He Xiaoping, Suizi).

The film does not directly condemn nor does it fully praise this tumultuous dark time in Chinese history. Instead, as the title intimates, the film focuses on the relationships between the young troupe members and the transition from youth to adulthood. In this way, this film reminds me of Jiang Wen's, "In the Heat of the Sun".

The scenes of the girls bullying the main character and new member, He Xiaoping, rang with such authenticity and personal pain. The stories of Suizi and Xiaoping's fathers that were "rehabilitated" are heartbreaking as well. This might be because these scenes may have come from author Yan Geling's personal experience (she was also a dancer in a performance troupe). I personally appreciated the female perspective, though the film's gaze is somewhat male, (director is Feng Xiaogang), it felt as if I was peeking behind the curtain of the women's locker room, not for perverted reasons, but to see another world of intrigue I'm unaware of.

The more epic scenes of war did not ring as true and seemed a bit overly patriotic too be honest. I wonder if the film did not have to go through Chinese censors how it might've been different.

Regardless, the film does not shy away from the failures of the Cultural Revolution and portrays the horrors of war vividly. Be careful, there are a lot of shaky camera, handheld, steadicam movements throughout the film, so if you get close seats, you're likely to get motion sick.

As the film ends, the tone of the film begins to regain it's authenticity particularly in the relationship between Liu Feng and Xiaoping. Their story is equally tragic yet hopeful and full of love. When Xiaoping finally asks Liu Feng her question, it's sweet and heartbreaking.

The film worships those young carefree days, at times too excessively with it's montages and emotional music, but at the same time it shows how much heartache is experienced during those times. That's part of the beauty of youth, that heightened sensitivity to the whole spectrum of emotion: love, anger, longing, hope. It may be why I'm also kinda over it.

Some middle sections of the film meandered and I felt could've been shortened. Overall, I enjoyed following the story of these youth and seeing the mishap of their relationships.

Side Note: Watching this film, I realized how alien this world was to me. Growing up in the U.S., I've also felt certain moments of this alienation when watching the movies here as an Asian American. This gives me further inspiration to pursue telling my own personal stories.