Terra Amarela

Yellow Earth is a classic film, which reflects that the situation of peasant's life is in yellow earth. At the beginning of the film, with a folk, the screen shows audience the background of this movie, which is a soldier came to yellow earth for collecting folk. With the development of story, the viewer can find that the situation of local environment is poor and austere, their thought is conservative and antiquated, and local people is humane and ignorance. However, through the soldier's describing, you can make comparison between yellow earth and the South in thought, education and so on. Although these traditional rules and culture were the same before many years ago, with the development and changing of society, China was changing. However, local people still live in the primitive China, their life is poor, cannot get education and keep the old traditional custom.

In Yellow Earth, there are some details reflecting thought of Confucian. The girls must obey parents' order and have matchmaker making match, which is the traditional thought for marriage. For example, when the soldier told them that girls can own choose husband and marriage by themselves in South now and people claim loving in freedom, Cui Qiao's father cannot accept this thought. He still thinks that daughter's marriage need traditional rules. If not, he thinks that it is not good for the girl. It not only reflects that thought of Confucian, but also shows that local people' thought is antiquated, adamant and old- fashioned. In the film, although Cui Qiao's father knows that Cui Qiao is not willing to marriage, he cannot change mind and persuade Cui Qiao agree. Except for this, When the soldier asks Cui Qiao's father about his daughter's marriage, the man told him that couple do not need premarital feeling, which means they do not need love each other. This action and thought is like in the antiquity. At the antiquity, girls do not know who will be her husband and what his appearance is. And Cui Qiao's father says this marriage was confirmed when Cui Qiao was a child, which is another traditional culture.

Second, in the film, it reflects that the position of women is low and the position between man and woman is not the balance. Girls cannot choose husband and have liberal love. Except for this, generally, the man can be older than girl and the differential of age is big. Like Cui Qiao and her husband. The reason why Cui Qiao will marry with her husband is when she was a child, her home is poor, and, for his brother, her father agree this marriage. In the local place, it is the common phenomenon. However, this kind of marriage is cruel and cannot be accept for girls. In the film, the bride does not have smile including not only Cui Qiao but also the bride is at the beginning of the film. For marriage, girls are not satisfied but they have to accept for their family and themselves. At yellow earth, girls have only one way that is marriage. However, only one way is that they cannot decide and choose by themselves, which is dolorous.

Third, it is conflicted for local people to see yellow earth. In the film, a shot is Cui Qiao' father stand on yellow earth, he looks at sky and feel helpless, sad, because there is no rain for a long time. He told the soldier that no one want to farm in yellow earth because this sod is not suitable to farm, but they cannot give up yellow earth because they depend on this sod to live. This is a conflicted emotion. Local people know the problem of sod but they think this sod feed them, so they cannot give up yellow earth. And, Cui Qiao has the same conflicted emotion. She cannot accept her marriage but she cannot oppose for her brother and father, which reflects that she is a humane and dutiful daughter.

Except for these, through film, I find that local people have not good education at that place, so it causes that they are unknown and thought is antiquated. When the soldier wants to write a couplet, Cui Qiao refuses him because no one knows words. They cannot get education, it caused that their thought is antiquated and do not want to know new information and rules. They still keep to tradition. And in the film, there a lot of time having no dialogue. Local people are silence. They do not talk with others, only when they meet difficulty, they can sing a folk to say about the difficulty of their life. At the end of film, Cui Qiao wants to change her life, she try her best to find the new way. She wants to get freedom. So, she leaves her home, cut her hair and find to the Red Army by herself. It means the girl aspire to freedom.

Thus, I think that this film – Yellow earth is good film. It lets the viewer know that farmers' life in yellow earth at that time and a traditional custom.

This movie is, to say the very least, a work of art. No other movie has ever evoked such emotional tears from my eyes as Yellow Earth. From the foreshadowing wedding ceremony, to the repetition in Cuigiao's own wedding, from distant silhouettes, to the ominous slow motion running of Hanhan during the ceremonial rain dance at the end, I have never felt the extent of sympathy for characters in a film as I have during and after viewing Yellow Earth. The folk songs reiterated the intensity of the sorrow through their text and solemn melodies. Ch'en Kaige beautifully crafted this film, bringing a little understanding of the plight of traditional China, and the revolutionary attempt to better their situation.

Yellow Earth by Chen Kai-ge (Farewell My Concubine, Life on a String) was the first film of the so-called fifth generation of filmmakers who introduced a new aesthetic and social awareness to Chinese cinema. It is set just before World War II in Shaanxi province in Northern China near the Yellow River, an area referred to as gian shan wan he (thousands of hills and ten folds more gullies). Based on Ke Lai's novel, "Echo in the Deep Valley", the film shows the struggle of the peasants in the area known for its unyielding harshness and the folk traditions they drew on to express their anguish. As the film begins, cinematographer Zhang Yimou creates a feeling of desolation with panoramic shots of the vast landscape as a soldier from the Communist Eighth Route Army, Gu Qing (Wang Xueyin), walks over the barren hills to a small village. He says he is there to collect folk songs for the army to use so that "the people will know why they are suffering, why their women are beaten, and why they should rise up".

Comrade Gu stays with a poor family that includes 47-year old widowed father (Tan Tuo), his 13-year old daughter Cuiqiao (Xue Bai), and almost mute son Hanhan (Liu Quiang). Rather than relying on traditional narrative to convey the film's message, Kai ge uses long static shots and songs of the people to express mood and tone. The father has become embittered with his life of constant deprivation and sings "Life is hard for seasonal workers. They are hired in January, dismissed in October". Conditions are tough and the farmers pray for rain to alleviate the drought but there is no rain. At a wedding, the serving of wooden fish figures covered with sauce underscores the lack of adequate food. The film also dramatizes the sorry condition of women, showing how they had to carry heavy buckets of water on their backs for miles, and how they were forced into arranged marriages at a very young age.

Gu is seemingly confident of the fight he is waging. He lets the family know that in the South, there are no longer any arranged marriages and tells Cuiqiao about women who cut their hair, fight against the Japanese, and can read and write. She hears about her older sister's unhappy marriage and does not want to endure the same fate. "Of all us poor folk," she sings, "girls are the saddest." Cuiqiao is infatuated with Gu and wants to leave home and join the Army 200 miles away in Yanan. She knows that if she stays she will be forced to marry an older man in an arranged ceremony. When Gu leaves to return to camp, he promises to return in April. Promises alone, however, cannot change Cuiqiao's growing feeling of entrapment or the terrible consequences that follow. In its heartbreaking portrayal of people caught in lives of "quiet desperation" that even Communist ideas or marching songs cannot redeem, Yellow Earth speaks a universal language.

Ugh, this is a hard movie to watch. It is both boring and depressing -- and yet really good! How crazy that it works out that way. Maybe because it's a little TOO close to the experience of real life. Here we have a film that's a window into the life of Cuiqiao, and her tiny family of peasants, in a north-western province of China during World War II.

The music is a motif and the main thematic element of the film, expressing the misery most eloquently. The plot sees a lowly Communist officer trying to catalog or find folk songs for the Communist foot-soldiers to sing as morale-boosters. The best singer in town is the shy and depressed Cuiqiao whose life is pitiable. I won't go into details, but it is depressing for reasons that are equally social and economic. The officer seems nice, but he seems like another pawn in a bigger power game -- a guy who really isn't so sure of his faith in the party beyond a means of escape. He's just another guy staying one step ahead of the virulent poverty the main characters suffer through.

Seriously, the stuff is really affecting and memorable. The funny scene or two in this movie is all the more smile-inducing because you're just so glad for the break in the bleak atmosphere. And the songs -- mein gott, what grating stuff to spoiled western ears, but simultaneously so gut-wrenching! I'd call this a period piece, but the experiences of rural western villagers in China are probably pretty timeless. I mean, the landscape is certainly changing, but there are a lot of places that are still like this.

Watch it, you spoiled punks!

My first viewing of this film was in a freshman seminar here at the University of Michigan aptly called "Chinese Cinema." Immediately after the viewing, my professor left the room and the majority of the class let out a syncronized moan. "I believe that was the worst film we've seen this far," he said. Never could he have been more wrong.

After viewing the film again and taking extensive notes for a paper on the film's earth/ sky imagery, I can say in objectivity that Yellow Earth is a landmark of not only Chinese, but Worldwide cinema. To those who would pay close attention, the film is a piece of art that is inexhaustible in its symbolism and technique. The film's cinematographer, the now very famous director Zhang Yimou, gives each frame its proper condition to the story. Every shot is composed with detail and beauty. The story is inextricably steeped in allegory, each character placed remarkably in relation to the others and to the landscape around them. This composition and the wonderful editing make this film a great cinematic achievement.

The key to the movie's wonder, however, is its ambiguities and its ambivalences. All the editing patterns, the quick cuts and the long stretches, and the masterful composition are strands that are woven as the viewer wills them to be. The ways to interpret everything this movies gives us are endless. Speculation on the film is a task never ending. If you can understand this and cherish the wonder that this film creates through its ambivalence, Yellow Earth is a pleasure with few peers. I recommend that every person interested in Chinese Cinema and classics of all foreign cinema watch this at least once.