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81 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the best movies you will ever watch!, August 17, 2000
Zhang Yimou and his fellow members of the 5 Generation of Chinese Directors have given us such great films. Farewell My Concubine, Blue Kite, and the Emperor and the Assassin. Personally I enjoy Yimou's films the best. Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Latern, and my favorite To Live. Yimou's films are powerful glimpses into Chinese culture and history. Yimou's directing and the acting of his muse Gong Li made these films so good. Not One Less is one of his first films without Gong Li. In fact, I do not think any of the actors in the film are professionals. But that does not matter. Not One Less is one of the most powerful and moving films you will ever watch. Not One Less is the story of rural China, poverty, and education. Without giving too much away NOt One Less is about a young girl who becomes a substitute teacher in a one room school house. She is told she will not get paid if any kids drop out. One kid does and this little girls goes across China to find her. This movie is more than a story of China. It is a universal story of education, poverty, children, and hope. I saw three great Chinese films this year: Emperor and the Assassin, King of Masks and Not One Less. I highly recommend all three. Emperor and the Assassin was a historical epic. King of Masks was a heartwarming period piece dealing with the role women and Not One Less. This is a great film. I recommend getting this film.
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63 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This movie tricked me..., February 22, 2003
The movie seems simple enough. A girl, really nothing more than an older student, is selected to watch over the school while the schoolmaster is away. The teacher is stubborn (if not too smart) and suggles to keep the class intact till the master comes back. When one boy, needing to make money for his family, goes to the big city the sub follows, to try to find him. The cast is made up of normal people. The students are real students, the shop keepers are real shop keepers and the street bums, for all I know, are real street bums. At first the film seemed slow. Sometimes the movie tried to be TOO clever and did things that I seemed to see coming a mile away. But it was a trick, like when the kids in Rome hold up a newspaper in front of your face while another tries to pickpocket you. The director is using what seems like formula scenes that any Hollywood hack could write while slowly weaving a truly emotional story that only hits you near the ending. Maybe it is because the cast are NOT actors, or the actions taken by the cast seemed so normal, or the scenes of street life were so REAL. By the end of the movie, when the teacher was on TV asking for the boy to come home, I found myself crying. THAT is not the norm for me. The movie is like a mass-produced car that some artist has worked on. Outside it seems plain but on the inside it has real power. In some ways more powerful than 'The Road Home'.
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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
So much from so little, August 7, 2004
I have yet to see all of Zhang Yimou's films, but I am beginning to suspect he must be considered among the greatest of all film directors -- ever. I am sympathetic to the tremendous challenge of making a living by having to continuously churn out creative material, but how some of this man's films compare with other modern fare is absolutely stunning. How this man makes such evocotive films with so little resources can only be fully appreciated when one considers so many other films made with infinite resources that are utterly bereft. If this is not proof of genius in his field, I don't know what might be. When I first starting watching Zhang's films I became charmed by the lack of predictability. I found myself thinking: Now if this were an American film, this would happen. But something different usually happens -- something so true to life that you become involved with the characters of the story on a deep and satisfying level. I hope he can resist the temptation to immitate his Western peers -- it is they who should immitate him. This very simply told tale has a large message that I think Zhang wants to tell about his homeland. In Maoist times, the Chinese people were strongly persuaded that the ideal countryman was a souless, thoughtless, slogan-chanting, agrarian worker who bred the next generation of obeying automatons. The characters of this story are those whose lot in life is to endure the system that regime had wrought, and when our 13 year old heroine journeys to the city, her goal is to retrieve the missing boy for her own narrow purposes. However, when she is interviewed on television, her humanity, in spite of herself, comes forth. Furthermore, the spontaneity of her emotions touches the local viewers in a way that shows China is a land where the oppressors failed to extract the souls from their subjects. If you have kindness and caring in your soul (of course you do) you will connect with this movie. If you are also new to Chinese film, you will begin to question what you thought made a worthwhile film.
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