beejames

This movie is actually two different stories. One is Bunin's short story Sunstroke which is shown in a beautiful and poetic way in the movie. It represents the past, old Russia, the time Bunin never dropped in his mind. The other is taken from his famous anti Bolshevism book Cursed Days. This part is shown in the movie, in a wet and muddy way, about a group of old officers waiting for their destiny after signed their declarations of surrender.

It is understandable that the director tried to divide these two stories. Old is good, elegant, beautiful, lovely, honestly. New is chaotic, dirty, brutal, empty. Although one may not fully agree with it, but this is what Ivan Bunin's understanding of Bolshevism Revolution and the opinion is widely accepted after the collapse of Soviet Russia. Nikita Mikhalkov's most famous movies are almost about the same attitude.

But the director also used his movie to pay tribute to old Soviet movie traditions. There's an astonishing shot of a baby carriage rolling downsteps, which is obviously something reminding Eisenstein. There's also certain images reminding Bondalchuk.

So far there's no problem with the two stories go in parallel. But at the very end the stories tried to reach a point of combination. This became so hard to believe that the climax felt a little bit strange.

Still it's a great movie. Despite its length, the storytelling speed is extremely well that one hardly felt the time's gone. It might also be one element the director had in mind. Time went without raising attention, old time went like river never comes back.

God save my poor English, let me do this in the easiest way.

First, say something good about this movie.

It's about a dancer, a quite famous one. Although Mr. Li's name was rarely mentioned in mainland China, anybody who works inside the art circle knows a little bit about him. He's once a model to every dancing students in China. After his decision of living in America, everything changed. He's like most of other artists live abroad coming from the Red China, remain as someone called traitor. It's good to have his story filmed and I think it will help his book, an autobiography, asked by people who's curious about that period. This is the first good thing.

As a movie about a dancer, dancing should no doubt take a big role in it. As I see in the movie, those sections from Giselle, Le Sacre du Printemps, Swanlake and event a glimpse of Red Female Troops which is very famous and is indeed created under the direction of Madame Mao. Those dancing sections are long enough and performers are so skillful to handle that. I think it's been a great job for the choreographer who made these dances. Thank to who ever responsible for this.

The script is not so strictly connected to the period, but it's still can be called objective. With some confusion of time and language they use, the basic idea inside the characters are quite real.

So much for praise, and I should move on to criticism.

First is about the book. I don't think these kind of books can be really trusted, though it is called autobiography. People with such background as Mr Li often connects other's stories to their own. I don't mean this affirmatively, since I haven't got any chance to read this book. I just say that there should be some doubts in it. If everything is so clear in it, there shouldn't have been so much confusion in costumes, buildings, ideas which are showed in the movie. I hope these confusions are from the script writer or other crew members who are not so familiar to Chinese situation in that period. It had been a great change after Chairman Mao's death. The clearness of time and policy connected to that will be very helpful to people who watch this movie.

Secondly, I want to say that the part in which Mr Li's parents was brought to Houston to watch a ballet performance is to affected. It's totally beyond what will happen to Chinese. In such circumstance, most Chinese will still act restrained. Also the last part where Mary and Li dance under a red flag. It's just stupid. The director should really cut this part out instead of the rehearsal of the revolutionary ballet scene which is now edited out but kept in the bonus section of published DVD.

Still it's a worth seeing movie. But I really think it doesn't worth more than six stars.

It's a great honor to be the Chinese translator of this movie. As one of the series cooperation between Art Channel Shanghai and the Euro Arts company, we made a Chinese subtitled version and showed in UME cinema Shanghai. When I saw this film for the first time, the conversation between Mr. Barenboim and E. Said affect me a lot. But as the translation work progressed, I became more touched by the Children in the orchestra. I fully recognized the difference between Palestinian youth and Israeli youths, but also noticed the common language of music behind that. When music starts, everything turns into harmony. That is successfully carried out by the director's shot and editing.

For me, the conflict between Daniel Barenboim and the Minister of Culture is the most sad scenes in the whole movie. I'd rather cut it out, but I know that it's the power point of the movie.