This is a very pretty film but it is far from a great movie. It has some nice aspects to it but the problems are huge. First, the central part of the film (the effort by a young girl to attract the notice of a new school teacher in her remote mountain village) is totally lacking in drama because we are told, over and over, that the two characters marry and have a child. So, what could have been a drama is instead nothing but nostalgia. Second, there is no relationship between the young girl and the school teacher. They meet (on film) exactly two times and only have perhaps 5 minutes of dialog. The rest of the time the camera is focused on Ziyi Zhang's admitedly beautiful face, or the camera follows her running through the woods, or follows her walking to the well, etc. This is NOT a love story, instead it is about a beautiful, uneducated young woman's single-minded quest to gain the notice of a young man.
A love story would show you both characters, this movie is completely one sided, it is totally focused on the young girl. I really had to wonder what the attraction was between the two. Yes, she is beautiful, a good cook, a fine weaver, and she is in love with the new teacher. But what does he want? What does he care about? Who is he? We, the audience really know almost nothing about him, all we know is these educational mantras he says to his students. These mantra are all about learning and knowledge and yet his wife shares none of these goals or beliefs about writing, reading, or learning in general. So, what does he see in her? Her own mother tells the girl that she has no chance to win him and reason would say she is right. Yet it happens and instead of exploring this strange event, the movie robs it of any drama and never explores the relationship between the two characters.
Why the movie spent fully 40 minutes of run-time on the present-day is a mystery to me. It was uninteresting, it added little to nothing of my understanding of the characters.
All in all, a failure of a movie. Pretty, good potential, but a wasted opportunity.
A love story would show you both characters, this movie is completely one sided, it is totally focused on the young girl. I really had to wonder what the attraction was between the two. Yes, she is beautiful, a good cook, a fine weaver, and she is in love with the new teacher. But what does he want? What does he care about? Who is he? We, the audience really know almost nothing about him, all we know is these educational mantras he says to his students. These mantra are all about learning and knowledge and yet his wife shares none of these goals or beliefs about writing, reading, or learning in general. So, what does he see in her? Her own mother tells the girl that she has no chance to win him and reason would say she is right. Yet it happens and instead of exploring this strange event, the movie robs it of any drama and never explores the relationship between the two characters.
Why the movie spent fully 40 minutes of run-time on the present-day is a mystery to me. It was uninteresting, it added little to nothing of my understanding of the characters.
All in all, a failure of a movie. Pretty, good potential, but a wasted opportunity.