Details

  • Last Online: Jul 13, 2024
  • Gender: Female
  • Location: Brooklyn, NY
  • Contribution Points: 2,469 LV10
  • Birthday: April 05
  • Roles:
  • Join Date: August 12, 2013

Kadiance

Brooklyn, NY

Kadiance

Brooklyn, NY
I Belonged to You chinese movie review
Completed
I Belonged to You
0 people found this review helpful
by Kadiance
Nov 20, 2016
Completed
Overall 10
Story 10.0
Acting/Cast 10.0
Music 10.0
Rewatch Value 10.0
This review may contain spoilers
Every day, we constantly overlook certain people in our lives because we take them for granted; the neighborhood police, the DJ(s) on the radio that we listen to every morning/night, a person who's constantly trying their best to improve our lives with silly inventions, a person who's trying their best to chase after what he loves, these are some of the characters in this movie and because they're mostly not "noticed", after you finish the movie, it makes you really want to go up to one of these types of people and say, "Thank you for all you've done." After all, these are people who you might have crossed paths with. I started this movie for its star-studded cast, Deng Chao (The Breakup Guru, Devil and Angel, The Four) and Bai Bai He (Monster Hunt, Love is not Blind, A Wedding Invitation), king and queen of Chinese movies (of course, not the only king and queen). Then there's Yang Yang, Zhang Tian Ai, and Xiao Yue Yue who recently exploded in popularity (Love O2O, Go Princess Go, I Belonged To You). I learned of this movie because of Yang Yang, but put it on my PTW list for Bai Bai He and Deng Chao because in my opinion, they've never disappointed me and probably never will. Most of the movies they've ever been in always deliver some meaningful/important message, and this movie is not an exception. From what I know, almost everyone took up a role that they haven't performed in any other project and it made for a nice, new experience. There were some Chinese reviews that said the only good point about this movie was the cast. I disagreed and decided to write a little. This slice of life movie gives two sides of everything, good things can happen and so can bad things. This is NOT a spoiler, because that is how life is and it is what I appreciated about this movie. There wasn't anything I disliked about the movie. The director did an amazing job because... (if you haven't watched it yet, you might consider below a spoiler but it's just a minute detail that most people might not have noticed and doesn't give away big plot developments) 1. There was camera focus on people like taxi drivers, the grocery peddlers, grocery peddlers who have to take care of their kids at the same time, factory workers, security guards and others. People who (might) have a difficult time with their personal lives but still have the time to smile at us and sell us their service every day. There was also camera focus on ordinary office workers, students, and just ordinary people in general. No one was excluded in particular, but when I thought deeper about how many people I pass by every day without knowing how they live, then I connect it to the radio messages that Deng Chao says, I can't help but tear up and feel sorry. Even though I might not change how I look at passerbys in my life, but I think I might start to value these relationships that I have with passerbys. 2. Beautiful cinematography. Although there weren't a lot of city shots, but everything else was just as beautiful, from small towns to Daocheng. Not much can be said about how much I appreciated what the director included in the movie, I think it's best personally experienced by watching the movie (#sellout). 3. The music was absolutely fantastic. There were a couple of soundtracks that I particularly loved: In This Whole World, Who Listens to You? (Yoga Lin) Unspoken (Li Ronghao) You Are Waiting for Me at the Endpoint (Wang Fei) Love is a Crazy Word (Yang Yang) This might be the entire soundtrack, but everything was just so amazing. Even if you watch the movie just for the music, I think that's already worth it. From all the Chinese titles, it's hard to determine what the English translations are, and even harder to understand in Chinese what they actually mean. However, when you finish listening to it (whether in Chinese or with English subs), you can grasp what it's trying to tell you, and that's how I came up with the English translations for the song names. Not only are the original soundtracks amazing, but the background instrumentals were just as awesome! There have been worse movies than this, but I think this is one of the best movies to be produced this year. From the beginning, I didn't understand why the English title was "I Belonged To You" when the Chinese title's direct translation was "From Your Whole World, I Passed By". Then, I watched the movie and thought about this question again. Perhaps, you'll think about it as well as you're watching it, or maybe you've already thought of it, but it doesn't change this sad but hopeful feeling that I have. No matter who passes by in your life, no matter whether they're special to you or not, we should all be thankful for being allowed to connect with those people once in our lives. If we think about it, out of the 7.4 billion people on this Earth, we were able to make contact with certain kinds of people and that is one kind of ?? (fate) that we should also value. Of course, not everyone we meet is a good experience, but isn't it because we've experienced the bad ones that we appreciate the good ones? That is also something that I think reflects in the movie, and all in all, there are just so many simple realizations that you can experience from this movie that doesn't happen too often nowadays with Chinese movies.
Was this review helpful to you?