This review may contain spoilers
"...and life will get better and better..."
To Live aka Lifetimes put Zhang Yi Mou and Gong Li in the penalty box for two years due to what was considered a critical view of some of the Chinese government's policies. The film followed a family from the Civil War in the 1940's into the Cultural Revolution. The little family chose to adapt and to do what was necessary to live as the volatile political climate changed around them.Xu Fu Gui (Ge You) was an inveterate gambler married to Jia Zhen (Gong Li) with a young daughter and a baby on the way. His gambling caused him to lose the family mansion and his wife. Fu Gui lived in dire poverty with his mother as he attempted to sell thread and needles on the street. Jia Zhen came back to him with his daughter, now a mute due to a fever, and a baby boy when she heard he'd stopped gambling. Gifted a box with an elaborate shadow puppet set by the same man who maneuvered him into his losses, Fu Gui created a traveling troupe and took his show on the road.
While on the road, Fu Gui and his friend Chun Sheng become conscripted into the Nationalist army where they pull canons and entertain the troops with their shadow puppet show. The Red army overruns the Nationalist army and they end up doing the same thing for the other side. Fu Gui is finally able to go home and he finds a very different environment. His wife and kids are selling and delivering drinking water. Nui, a local communist leader oversees their neighborhood. Long Er, the man who ended up with their mansion was executed for being a counterrevolutionary after burning the house when the government tried to confiscate it. Fu Gui declares it's good they are poor and that he'd lost their house or he would have been the one executed.
The 1950's arrive and during the Great Leap Forward everyone is required to "donate" all of the iron items they own leaving them without cooking utensils. As Nui states, "We're racing toward communism and you're worried about food?" You Qing, their son, fights back against his sister's bullies and the family is almost labeled saboteurs. The next morning, after very little sleep he and all of the other young school boys are required to smelt iron. His mother tries to keep him home but Fu Gui is afraid of the repercussions if the child doesn't go. Tragedy strikes and an old family friend is reminded that he owes them a life.
The 1960's bring the Cultural Revolution. Fu Gui is ordered to burn his shadow puppets or risk being declared a capitalist. The neighborhood and homes are covered in Mao propaganda and images. Their daughter Feng Xia is wed to a lame Red Guard leader at a factory. When the time comes for her to birth their child, her parents discover that all of the doctors and medical professors have been imprisoned for being reactionaries with only young student zealots left. Feng Xia's husband brings an imprisoned doctor to help, but he's starving and of no use.
Some of the family's own choices led to their suffering as in Fu Gui's disastrous gambling habit. But the political situations had more than their share of tragic effects on the family. The lack of sleep so many suffered from caused a death. Locking away doctors and intellectuals left people vulnerable to unskilled students. With only one party, corruption or paranoia could lead to innocent people being arrested as capitalists, especially when no dissenting opinions were allowed.
Fu Gui's shadow puppets became symbols for part of the story's theme. Initially, they were used only for entertainment with the artistic freedom to make the show lewd or comical. Later the puppets told more propagandistic stories. Eventually, Fu Gui was forced to burn them lest their feudal and subversive nature land him in prison. His family became part of the neighborhood theater instead. When Feng Xia married, the song sung, toasts given, pictures taken, and even the presents all revolved around Mao. They didn't even have the freedom to say, "thanks, that's just what we needed, another Mao statue/picture/mural/book" as they glance over at the table and walls filled with them. The family never complained as the political landscapes changed, they merely dressed the part and endeavored to recite the party lines whatever they were. Only at You Qing's grave did the family crack, removing their masks and let loose their true feelings toward the governmental perpetrator.
The performances were phenomenal. Ge You gave an outstanding performance as the complex Fu Gui. He won a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. The film also won the Grand Prix award. Gong Li's part was smaller as the wife and mother, but her performance was powerful and compelling. Her tears, dignity, and rage pulled me in and never seemed contrived.
To Live showed how people adapt and survive even in tumultuous and dangerous times. The family conformed and persevered clinging to each other in order to live. Once he kicked his gambling habit Fu Gui realized why he wanted to live---his family. "There's nothing like family." Despite tragedies, Jia Zhen only desired "…a quiet life together" and repeatedly and doggedly chose to live. Together they weathered the political changes that created financial and social upheavals in their lives, never letting hope completely die. As Fu Gui declared to his grandson, "life will get better and better" without any evidence that it would yet he still chose to live in expectancy. To Live used the political changes as a structure to show how people are able to endure and to live with dignity even when the world tumbles around them. Zhang Yi Mou made a beautiful film about the tenacity of the human spirit and one well worth trying.
6/9/23
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