Good to see a piece of history not often recalled in the U.S. However, ...
The movie has big weaknesses.
* Mao Zedong is portrayed as almost childish at times and as leaving most of the work to Zhou Enlai and others. In fact, he worked hard on a mountain of issues.
* Areas where Mao worked hard were the military campaigns (with Zhu De) and land reform in the newly liberated areas. Yet the movie gives most of its time to maneuvering among the "democratic parties" of the capitalists and intellectuals; the CPC; and the KMT. We hardly see peasants.
These faults in this 2009 movie are a result of Deng Xiaoping's turn to capitalism, reversing the socialist line of Mao Zedong.
(I posted these remarks as a comment on the Youtube page for the movie. They disappeared overnight. Whenever it can, the Chinese government uses the same instant-censorship apparatus around the world that it uses within its borders.)
* Mao Zedong is portrayed as almost childish at times and as leaving most of the work to Zhou Enlai and others. In fact, he worked hard on a mountain of issues.
* Areas where Mao worked hard were the military campaigns (with Zhu De) and land reform in the newly liberated areas. Yet the movie gives most of its time to maneuvering among the "democratic parties" of the capitalists and intellectuals; the CPC; and the KMT. We hardly see peasants.
These faults in this 2009 movie are a result of Deng Xiaoping's turn to capitalism, reversing the socialist line of Mao Zedong.
(I posted these remarks as a comment on the Youtube page for the movie. They disappeared overnight. Whenever it can, the Chinese government uses the same instant-censorship apparatus around the world that it uses within its borders.)
- charles1848
- Dec 11, 2021