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a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Note (2009): Looking back at this review, now eight years old, I can remember the excitement I was feeling as I began to discover great Asian filmmakers. Zhang Yimou is one of the filmmakers responsible for expanding my horizons and introducing me to a quality of art that made my life richer. I recently wrote an article for Image about my favorite discoveries in this journey. I remember the giddy enthusiasm I felt writing this review, even though films like this led me to far more thrilling discoveries. I’m still very fond of this film.

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You’ve heard critics, audiences, and me rave on and on about the special effects stirred up this year by Steven Spielberg (A.I.), Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) and the folks that made Final Fantasy. Nothing was on the calendar that looked like it could come along to top these films for spectacular visual wizardry.

Well, leave it to the Greatest Set Designer of All to come along and top everything else out there. That’s right. Just call God this year’s Oscar winner for Best Special Effects. With the help of storyteller Zhang Yimou and cinematographer Hou Yong, The Road Home treats us to eyefuls of some of the most dazzling and vivid landscapes, colors, designs, and details that the silver screen has had the privilege to display.

The Road Home, directed by Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern), is a simple love story set in a rural and remote area of China. The story follows a young woman, Zhao Di, who falls for the town’s new schoolteacher, Luo. Her yearning is so intense that she waits by the road after school just to watch him walk some of the children home. She hopes to impress him and win his heart.

We know that they will be married, because most of the movie is narrated by their son, who promises to share with us the story of their legendary love for each other. The movie opens with the son coming home from his busy life in the city. He comes to bury his father, and finds his mother quite properly heartbroken. She is sitting outside the schoolhouse, mourning him in the midst of a bitter winter wind. We wonder how she can stand it. But then the son takes us back in time, telling us the tale. The movie turns to color.

We are introduced to the storyteller’s mother as a young woman, played perfectly by the increasingly impressive Zhang Ziyi (the young tigress of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Zhang’s marvelously restrained work gives us a unique character without speaking more than a handful of lines. She uses her dark, beautiful eyes to draw us into a very private world of fear, admiration, infatuation, and frightfully deep emotion. Lonely but dutiful, she lives out her days caring for her aging mother and wondering about her future.

There is little explanation about why her heart clasps on to the schoolteacher so powerfully; we are told it is his voice. Perhaps that’s all we need to know. Actor Zheng Hao is certainly charming as the young bachelor, and I would have liked the movie to spend more time with his character. But it is clear, in his brief time onscreen, that he possesses an integrity and a spark that sets Zhao Di’s heart on fire.

True love is difficult to explain. It is so much more than the surface-level swooning of prime time soap opera. My wife often asks me, bewildered, why I love her, and I find myself groping for the same insufficient explanations for the powerful force that draws me to her. Similarly, I can’t fathom what draws her to me. Ziyi portrays Zhao Di’s passion with a quiet power, reminding me of Juliette Binoche in Kieslowski’s Blue, whose face filled the screen silently for most of that incredible film. She is quickly becoming, like Juliette, one of my favorite screen actress; you can’t take your eyes off of her. By the end of the film, we will know just how much this woman endures out of love… how her feelings make her seemingly oblivious to the deadly power of the elements.

There’s not much more to tell, really. It’s such a simple tale that afterwards you can’t quite figure out where 110 minutes went.

If you’ve read this far, then I probably don’t have to persuade you of the value of expanding your horizons to enjoy contemporary Asian cinema. Most readers probably skipped over this review when they realized this movie wasn’t going to have chases, kidnappings, and sensual sex scenes. That’s too bad. The Road Home does have a chase scene as breathtaking as anything in Run Lola Run. And it also has so much of what is lacking in American movies. It possesses a patience that allows the camera to discover moments that are miraculous, things that the rapid-cut editing of Hollywood movies will never notice. It also knows that characters can say as much in silence… in fact, more… than they can when they’re machine-gunning dialogue.

When was the last time you saw a movie that kept you glued to the screen, and told you about the value of honoring your parents? Or when were you last reminded that the elderly are full of the same passions, stories, yearnings, and surprises that the young and the restless possess? When did you last hear a story about a love so strong that it would keep a person standing by the road through a life-threatening blizzard? In comparison, the silly lovers’ games of American comedies and dramas seem frivolous, petty, and not very resilient.

The movie would be just a big sappy valentine if it weren’t for the director’s relentless attention to the small, physical details of these lives. We are so accustomed to things made in factories, things made in vast quantities. We are so accustomed to speed. We are used to throwing things out when they break and buying a new one. The Road Home swims against that stream. We watch a scarf made as a woman works a loom. The red threads are stretched out like taffy, poured like honey, the reddest reds you’ve ever seen. We watch… and this is my favorite scene in the film… a pottery repairman do his work with intricate tools that are primitive and homemade, and yet they are precise and rather miraculous in what they accomplish.

If I have any misgivings about the film, they are due to the strength of the love on display. This woman loves this man fiercely. But is there anything left for her if he is gone? What if Luo hadn’t returned Zhao Di’s love? Would life be meaningless? I am always hoping for a happy ending in such stories, but since I was assured that these two would end up together, I found myself troubled at the idea that their happiness was so dependent on the other person. When we make our own peace dependent on another flawed human being, we’re building our house on shifting sand.

Still, in this age of marriages built on conditional love, I’m moved by Zhao Di’s love, such a powerful demonstration of fidelity and devotion. And when the son carries his father’s body down the long road to his home, it is a beautiful picture of honor and respect. It’s a rare thing, to see such virtues blazing on the big screen, when most movies define love in shallow, frivolous expressions.

The more I explore contemporary Asian cinema, the more grateful I become. It reconnects me with things that matter, and shows me that great art is still possible on the movie screen, no matter how much American movies try to prove otherwise. For the way it gave me room to ponder all that it suggested, for the gift of its colors, and for the sometimes-delicate, sometimes-ferocious performance by Zhang Ziyi… The Road Home is easily one of my favorite films in this great big-screen year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 9:02 am and is filed under Film Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.