[.ca] Blue Kite

more than two long hours of bleakness:
While respecting the moviemaker and the people who participated in making this movie for their courage, I find this movie unbearable: - the characters are paper-thin: the protagonists' reason for existence in the movie is to suffer. The communists' reason for existence in the movie is to parrot the party line and to act arrogantly. There is really no fleshed out characters in the movie. - the plot lacks subtlety: the movie begins with a wedding delayed by the death of Stalin, and ends with brutal violency by the Red Guard. There is a glimpse of happiness at the beginning of the movie, and it disappears completely under the bleakness of the plot, which is no more than a string of tragedies linked together. In contrast, To Live, My Favorite Concubine, Burnt by the Sun still manage to show the hope and the humanity shining through the desperation. That's why, for me, the endings of To Live and Burnt by the Sun are much more devastating than this movie's.

an epic:
This film is a powerful epic masterpiece. It leaves the viewer drained and exhausted at the end. the story line about the lunacy of the Chinese communist regime and its polices in the 50's and 60's can equally apply across time and cultures and borders. After viewing the film one wonders if there is a right time to go to the toilet but such episode played so subtly only reflects the director's wonderful touch . There is none of the tear jerking and sentimentality one usually finds in the Chinese sad films but the story line just slowly and methodically develops and draws the audience into the bottomless abyss of human insanity and the cruelty of rigid regimes while on the surface children played in the streets and vendors hawked their products and everything seemed normal. But the characters slowly got affected and human beings were being twisted and bent and knocked down and inconviences turned into unhappiness into sufferings and into death or interminable pain. The director used symbols of macular degeneration for the blindness of the people, nursery rythmes to emphasize the horror perpetuated by navie people , kites for hope which kept being lodged in trees and the adults 'uncles' kept promising a new one. In the end all lives were ruined and the boy lay on the ground bloodied and bruised looking skyward at his blue kite shattered and lodged in the tree blowing in the wind. The director left the viewer to decide if a new kite will indeed be flown again and lodged again and broken again or will it soar into the sky by the two kids earlier in the film free and strong and above all human pettiness and conflict. That secne will be in my consciousness forever.

Ones Need to Express Oneself...:
An important fact is that Zhuangzhuang Tian was barred from making films in China after Blue Kite was released in the United States. This film was also banned in China after he had received the 1993 Tokyo Grand Prix in the Tokyo International Film Festival. Blue Kite is a powerful film that displays Tietou's upbringing in Beijing during the beginning of the Communist era when large numbers of people were arrested for different thinking. The film begins with the birth of Tietou, which is a result of his mothers agony after the death of Stalin. Tietou's name, Iron Head, is also a tribute to the day Stalin died. Tietou's family seems happy, however, underneath the audience can feel an undercurrent of worry where people are afraid of expressing their ideas and values. The reason is that there are frequent messages announced over loud speakers around the neighborhood about ill-fated individuals who have been arrested by the Communist Party for having notions that are against the belief of the party. During this time, the infant Tietou is growing up and plays on his street with the neighborhood kids. One day, his kite is flies into a tall tree and gets stuck. His father, Lin Shaolong, tells Tietou with a strong expression of love and care, "I can make you another one." This is very unusual, since it seems like the social environment in which they live inhibits most people from expressing themselves in any way due to fear of the Communist Party. Unfortunately, a friend of the family gives Lin Shaolong's name to the Communist Party and he is sent to a reform camp. In the camp he is accidentally killed, which leaves Tietou and his mother, Chen Shujuan, alone. However, Tietou is too young to understand the complexity of death and tells his mother to get another "Happy Old Uncle". His mother does so, but it is the same man who gave her husband's name to the Communist Party. The story repeats itself again as Tietou grows into a teenager. The audience is delivered a strong message through this daring film that stopped Zhuangzhuang Tian's ability to continue expressing his own notions and feelings on the screen in China. At the end, an overwhelming flood of sympathy flushes over the viewers through this brilliant cinematic experience.

I DISAGREE:
I strongly disagree with James J. J. Janis' review on The Blue Kyte. An effective film doesn't mean that it is a two hour movie that covers everything about the subject, but a two hour movie that opens your minds up to the subject. It'd leave you thinking and wondering. It'd make you want to find out more, asking why and how. Personally, I was very moved by the movie. I too came to the movie with some background knowledge of the topic, but I did not watch the movie thinking that I learned nothing from it. Even though it somewhat echoed a book that I recently read, Son of the Revolution, I still feel like I left the film understanding more and wanting to find out even more. However, I have to acknowledge the I do believe that people who can understand Mandarin would appreaciate the movie a bit more than those that don't. Because the subtitles sometimes skips or mistranslates some important phrases. Yes, he might be right that there are scenes that can be cut out to make the film at a reasonable length, but for what? To match Holleywood filmmaking standards? How can you cut any realistic scenes from a movie that is to tell the story. What and who is to determine that only certain details of the peasants' life tell the Chinese communist story and others are just simply unrelavent? Overall, I give this movie a 5 star rating. Because I cannot find another movie that shows more truth about the China under Mao's influence in the late 50's and 60's more than this one particular film.

A glimpse of life under Mao:
For me, this movie did not go far enough to show the great suffering under Mao's leadership, but that might be understandable if there was any hope that the Chinese government would not ban it. Also, this film might not make much sense without some prior knowledge of The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Otherwise, the acting is good and the story is poignant enough at times.