Amor Para a Eternidade

Zhang yimou done it again. And Gong Li is more than ever - one of her best roles...i'm always hoping that she does more movies. And when Yimou and Gong Li work together it always comes an amazing movie. I wish they could go on professionaly together."Coming Home": It is a simple story, yet with powerful meanings. Everything is beautiful: the performances, the direction, the photography, the music... And that piano scene... Achingly. Every yimou's movies has such sensibility. He really knows how to touch.

Thank you Gong Li and Zhang Yimou.

An applause too for the male actor and the girl who played the daughter - hope she will get a great career.

Coming Home is a great example of the way in which a movie can move you, play on your emotions, without being sentimental in a negative sense. Without being a tear-jerker. And without harsh images of struggle and war. But with excellent acting, small gestures and not so much words. This movie is all about empathy, first among the characters in the story depicted, but by consequence also among the audience, that is swept away and taken in by the sentiment.

This doesn't mean that the story is only about love and compassion. The Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976) was far from being peaceful and compassionate. People were separated for years without any information, were forced to report any 'wrong' behavior that could 'harm' or 'threaten' the Communist Party. Coming Home shows how such an environment affects people at the individual, family level. People get damaged and family relations are shattered because of betrayal.

Coming Home succeeds in portraying the consequences of such a regime, by showing what humanity and compassion mean. And that is what makes it special, and refreshing in a world where it sometimes feels like these values are hard to find.

I'm was born in early 90s in China. As I grow up, my parents always consciously saving up everything. They do not waste anything, food, clothes, etc..

My mom is good at stitching clothes. Even thou she can afford buying a new pair of socks, she chose to stitch up the worn ones. I thought I'd never understand why my parents are so thrifty, until I watched this movie.

I came to realize what a hard, tough and poor life my parents had went thru after watching this movie. I was even surprised that my parents could actually survived that period of time.

I realized that people don't need that much of things to survive. When my friend and I shopping in mall, talking about cosmetics and luxury bags, and living a wealthy and "fancy" life, while my mother when she was in my age, struggling to live, wearing the same clothes everyday, celebrating her birthday by only eating an egg, running after trains in order to pick up the "coal ball" (trains in old time use coal as the fuel and the coal ball is the coal which was not fully burned, and could still being used for generating a little heat).

This is a great movie to honor that harsh period of time in China's history. And I'm also glad to see that Chinese government now allows people to talk about that period of time and even make a movie about it.

Some of the dialog at the very beginning not quite correct and right during the Chinese Culture Revolution. The Chinese people in that darkest ten years torment, many jargon would not be said like what we heard in this movie. If the protagonist is a "Spy" as his daughter called him, he would already have been shot instead of banished to a far away poor farm as a labor. Such labors at that time were tagged as "Anti-Revolutionist" , "The Left Extremist", "Stinking Old Nine" or "The 5th Black Category Member". There were many carelessly written labeling names or words that didn't comply with that atrocious era. I was just amazed how the billion Chinese would let go of such torturous and treacherous when the Culture Revolution lost its goal and suddenly ended after 10 years living hell. Most Chinese are not like the Jewish people who had suffered so much that they would never let it go and so easily forget what their ancestors suffered. But the Chinese people are such weird species with extremely short memory. When every absurd but cruel movement ended, what they had experienced was just like the old Western saying: "Water under The Bridge", they just took it for granted and awaiting the next movement coming up to torture them. This is also explained why the CCP regime still exists so far, and again, the Chinese people are suffering the prison-like deadly control during a lightweight Omicron virus crisis. They are whining, crying and complaining, but I guess when the CCP decides to end the siege, they would immediately forget what they once suffered, just like what their parents and grandparents had suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Living under the iron fist of the CCP, Short Memory, Letting Go and Moving On maybe are all must-have for the 1.4 billion Chinese subjects?

I had high expectation for Zhang Yimou's latest film Coming Home, because he finally went back to tell a simple and plain story. So when I heard there was an advanced screening on May 11, I immediately went to see it. However, after watching this 111-minute movie, I was disappointed. To be precisely, I had mixed feeling about the film, I think it is Zhang's best film since House of Flying Daggers, however it is still not a good film. The story is simple, the cinematography is simple, everything is simple in this film, just like what Zhang promised. He intended to make everything simple, trying so hard to drop his color- using style and maintain simple. However, such simpleness is intended, it is not natural. For simple life story movies (Yi Yi, Platform, The World, A Simple Life), the key to be a great movie is if it could give audience a special feeling and a deep theme through its simpleness. And such thing behind its simpleness is the soul of the movie. However, Coming Home didn't achieve that, I can barely feel anything behind its intended simpleness and schmaltz. Its soul is empty. Still, I have to admit, there are some good sides of the film, especially Gong Li and Chen Daoming's amazing acting. Their performances are superb, one of the best performances I've seen in recent years. Also, I love the well-crafted first 10-minute and the sentimental ending. All in all, I appreciated Zhang's trying of going back to the simple and I wish he could continue that. Coming Home may not be a fantastic film but it is still a well-crafted movie with some touching moments. My score: 7.1

(PS: To understand the film ,be sure to learn some background information and the history about the Cultural Revolution. Due to the censorship in China, Zhang can't tell something about the story too obvious, so if you know nothing about that history, you will be confused by something happens in the film.)