The Road Home

For fans of faster-paced movies, be forewarned: this is extremely slow. For others who love a beautifully-filmed movie or a touching romance story, this Chinese film will do nicely.

Zhang Ziyi, who has now become an International star thanks to Crouching Tiger, Hero, House Of Flying Daggers and Memoirs Of A Geisha, never looked prettier and more appealing than here. Maybe that's because she plays such a sweet, innocent, non-violent (no martial arts here) character: a woman smitten with a new teacher in town and one who will go any lengths (in a totally pure sense) to be noticed and attract this man, mainly in the form of incredible patience.

This is one of the prettiest movies I've seen on DVD. It helps to be a fan of Ziyi and appreciate her beauty, because there are many shots of her face as she just stares looking for her man. This character gives new meanings to the words faithful, steadfast and devotion.

The film is actually two stories: the here-and-now about an old man and woman, and a long flashback telling the love story of how they met. In the first segment, the man had just died and the woman is grieving and making funeral arrangements. They involve walking with the casket a long way home, hence the title. The middle part of the film, the romance, features Ziyi. That middle segment - the courtship - is in brilliant, almost stunning-looking color. The beginning and end of the film are both in black-and-white. The cinematography for both parts is magnificent.

The Road Home is a movie about a very standard and simple love on the first site story. The beauty is in the great acting and the spirit that comes out of the actors.

I liked a lot to watch how people in such villages live and how they dress and the movie gave attention to many daily events of those people.

Again, the acting is gorgeous, but the values that the movie is showing is great also and the strong bounds in the family is there in the movie and you can see how much the love and respect of a sun would make him do to meet his mothers wishes and how grateful student can be to a teacher gave his life to them.

Another point that I liked in the movie is how the director use color. In the current events, you will see black and white scenes and when flashbacks start the colors will come a life. The old days are better and there was the real life for the characters of this movie not the current days, except for the day the sun took his father's place in the school and start teaching the students of the village.

Great movie that I would love to watch again and again.

This movie should have been released in mainstream theaters!

Simple, yet superb storytelling... a profoundly emotional experience... genuine and heartfelt... exquisite... breathtakingly beautiful...

Some movies leave you feeling dirty as you walk out of the theater, but this movie leaves you feeling clean and refreshed!

This is one drama that should be seen on the big screen, definitely.

I feel sorry for the mainstream people who missed it in the art-houses or don't know how good it is or don't know that it exists!

This film would have been a success in the big multi-plexes. I really believe that. An add campaign featuring colorful full page adds highlighting the films' critical praise and the actress Ziyi Zhang would have done the trick. The public is more sophisticated than Hollywood thinks. I'm sure significant numbers of young people would have flocked to see this film had it been released in mainstream theaters. Cinematic experiences like THE ROAD HOME are a rarity indeed.

In my country you can "rent" DVD and VHS movies for free at the local libraries. One day I visited my local library and picked out a few random dvds and went home to have a movie marathon-weekend. One of these dvds was "The Road Home". By looking at the cover, I didn't think this was a movie for me, but anyhow I started watching it late at night. After the first few minutes had passed I thought it looked like a pretty boring movie. The first scenes are shot in black and white from a snow covered little village somewhere in the Chinese wilderness... I quickly decided to turn it off and hit the bed. The next day I had little to do. The weather outside was crap so I decided to stay in. I got bored and had nothing to do so I reluctantly started watching "The Road Home" from where I left off... This is probably one of the best things I've done so far in my life ;-) Since that day I've bought the DVD and seen the movies about 4-5 times and it's simply one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen (and I've seen a few!)... To give you an idea: I persuaded two of my best friends to join me watching the movie. They didn't have high expectations as this is as far from the Hollywood action they normally favourise when going to rent a movie. They are men in their 30's and one of them is a pretty "macho" guy. When the end-titles started scrolling, both of them had to wipe their eyes :-))) They where actually crying! I guess this is more of a story than a movie review, but I hope it's enough to give this movie the attention it deserves ;-)

Get out the hankies! This film earns your emotions--if you are willing to watch a very simple story about unquestioning devotion, about respecting your elders, about simple values in spite of politics; the main story about a simple peasant girls initial infatuation with the new town schoolteacher is bookended by an after-tale of the present, an emotional gathering earned by the strength of an old woman's wishes and her son's willingness to meet her old-fashioned demands; what a shame that our nation prefers stylish junk (probably the top money earner this week at your local multiplex) which cleverly endorses brute violence as a solution to almost anything instead of modeling human behavior at its best