Most Helpful Customer Reviews
60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chinese New-Wave Cinema's Finest Hour, October 15, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Yellow Earth [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This is a beautifully choreographed masterpiece about a young girl about to be married off to an old man in a feudal village. It's 1939. Mao's Red Army are sweeping across China against the Guomindang forces, and they're gathering in strength at every turn. But in young Cuiqiao's village, things are still very much unchanged and marriage to a man she doesn't want seems inevitable. That is until a Red soldier comes to visit the village to collect folk songs for the army to turn into propaganda to fuel the souls of the soldiers. He tells her of the great freedom the women of the South enjoy - they fight equally alongside their male comrades and duties are shared. Asking him to take her along, he demurs until he can get proper permission. But Cuiqiao can't wait that long, so she takes the matter into her own hands. It was from this film that I first began to really like Chinese folk song. The dry harsh Chinese landscape is brilliantly filmed - it's the kind of cinematography that makes me wish I'd been able to watch it on the big screen, and the messages within are many. Excellent.
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sad and beautiful, August 13, 2003
This review is from: Yellow Earth [VHS] (VHS Tape)
A soldier visits an impoverished community in Northern China hoping to collect folk songs for the army. While he is there, he stays with a very poor farm family; a widowed father, an adolescent daughter, and a young son who seldom speaks. The home of the farm family is silent and somber; perhaps the death of the mother many years ago created an atmosphere of unmitigated grief. The idealistic soldier brings hope, laughter and new ideas into their home; that men can sew, that young people can choose their own marriage partners, that women can cut their hair, join the army and fight the Japanese, that poor people don't have to be hungry, etc. I don't want to give away the ending so I won't talk about the plot anymore. However, the film is remarkable for it's use of sound; the sound of the wind on the barren hills, the sound of the water rushing in the Yellow River, the sound of a lonely song echoing across the landscape. Warning: this film is a tear-jerker. It also has an oddly abrupt ending. See it if you get the chance!
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a visual and musical feast, July 10, 2000
This review is from: Yellow Earth [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This first film by Chen Kaige (who recently directed "The Emperor and the Assassin", a must-see film) is wonderful. The cinematography, by another superb director, Zhang Yimou, is glorious, with stark landscapes and sumptuous use of color. The poetry and melodies of the folk songs are marvelous and for those who have an interest in Chinese music, it's a treat. This is a beautiful film to look at and listen to, and politically should be taken in historical context, and viewed with the harshness of the life depicted in mind...a harshness that is hard to conceive of as we sit in front of our computers. It's an extraordinary debut by a man who would become one of the greatest geniuses of filmmaking, and it will widen your horizon and enrich your soul.
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