"Di jiu tian chang" is a Chinese movie also in the Chinese language from 2019. This one was directed by Xiaoshuai Wang and he is also one of the two writers here. He has worked for a quarter of a century already in the Chinese film industry, but this award-winning film here is maybe the one that also makes him famous internationally and I am curious if he is going to direct a Hollywood film at some point. Anyway, this is a really really long film at over 3 hours and actually this is the second Chinese 2019 film i have seen I believe and the second with such a massive runtime, so it is not completely unusual I guess for films from this country these days. It has turned into quite a success with awards bodies already, so it surprises me a bit that China did not pick it to represent the country at the Oscars this year. Maybe the reason is that it is at least partially critical when it comes to how it depicts China and its politics and traditions. I am talking about the one-child policy here specifically, but I'll get to that later in detail. The one thing that is always really a big factor in Chinese films is the subject of family and here it is really the defining aspect. We have two families and their kids are born the very same day and they are friends and one character says during a birthday party that they will be friends for life. It is a pretty memorable quote in my opinion. Well, he was partially right because tragedy strikes and one boy is killed and the other is not completely innocent of what happens and at the very end there is this confession scene. However, the other boy's parents do not bear a grudge because they were just children and that was actually the way I expected them to react. Also if we look at the very end, it was a bit surprising to me really how the mother of the dead boy for the first time looks relatively healthy and in peace with everybody and everything around her because she has been suffering a lot. And it is also a bit ironic because the other mother, the one who died from brain cancer, always seemed to be the healthier one. But that is just one little snippet that came to my mind.
Now you see I am already avoiding the actors' names because unsurprisingly I do not know any of them. But that is okay. Maybe you do if you are from China because they were all pretty good and I am sure some of them acted in a lot before this one here. I want to mention the one though who played the father of the deceased son because he was really really good through the entire film and maybe the best thing about the entire production. And just on a side-note, Xi Qi is really stunning. But that is just me maybe. Another thing I recognized was how they used several American songs at times or well i could say Chinese songs based on American melodies because Auld Lang Syne you will here in this one on several occasions. And also the film reminded me how much I like the song "Rivers of Babylon". In general, I felt the soundtrack was nice, also the score. One thing I did not like too much was that it was not chronological, but maybe that is just me. Here and there I struggled a bit with recognizing which time we are right now again. The looks of the characters did not always help. And I would like to say that, even if it is a major factor at the very end again, the film did not feel that much about two families as you could guess from the plot description here. The couple who lost their son is clearly in the center of it all and we actually do not find out too much about the other family compared to the one at the center. I mean okay they are their son's parents-in-law as we find out at the end and they were obviously really close friends, but still. The ending was also slightly too happy maybe with the other boy calling them out of nowhere again. But the last shot and the scene with the two at their son's grave was better again. I did like that one. So yeah I just mentioned the other boy. This is actually how the film starts with us seeing him with his "parents" and the "s are there because we find out quickly afterwards that he is adopted. Which may or may not explain the struggles they have with him because he really seems to be a rebel and even when his mother (the more pacific one) brings cookies to him and his friends and talks to him, there is no chance for them really making up again. So his call at the end surprised me. But also it was not the most loving statement when the dad told him that basically he was nothing but a proxy for their deceased son. Anyway, I somehow felt this film would be more about the adopted boy, but he quickly vanishes until the end then.
So as you can see from my description already, the father is not really a saint either. He has a one-night stand with his female, much younger protégé and the result is that she gets pregnant, but does not want to have the child, so she offers him that he can have it. Of course, he would have had to tell his wife about what happened and while they were really longing for a child, i still found it fairly absurd I must say to even consider this idea because the poor woman would have to look the rest of her life at somebody who is the evidence of her husband cheating on her. But it shows still what big of a role kids played back then in China and at least partially still do today. However, this scene also shows that he is a loving husband that he does not even consider the idea of telling his wife with how much she struggles anyway already, in terms of health and everything else. And at the end, it was really interesting to watch him how curious/anxious he is when he finds out that she may (or may not) have kept the child. I won't tell you the outcome. Back to the subject of pregnancies, this one is really important here too and I already mentioned China's one-child policy that was intended to prevent further overpopulation during the time when this film plays. There is no exception if your child dies either, which I did not know. When the woman gets pregnant already, she is forced to have an abortion and it is pretty ironic to watch the ceremony later on during which the two are honored as a role model example of China's one-child policy. This was maybe a bit over-the-top this scene, even if their fake forced smiles stay in the head with what happened to them before that. So now you know this film spans over several decades (no surprise given the running time) and it is also the small details (like mobile phones being used near the end) that makes this an interesting watch. In general, this film has nice attention to detail. Competent execution by everybody involved from beginning to end. The truly great moments were maybe slightly too scarce for me for a really enthusiastic recommendation and including this one in my 2019 favorites, but there is no hesitation for me in giving this one a thumbs-up. Go watch it if you have the steadiness for over three hours, especially if you like Asian films. We normally get a lot more from Japan than China, but if the quality is like in this one here, it would be nice if that changed at some point. The audience seems to be interested enough because my vieweing was really full which surprised me a lot. That's all.
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