The Blue Kite (1994)

As Good As It Gets

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I use movies for teaching, i.e. I show movies from different parts of the world to my students in a remote rural part of India. Last year I showed the Blue Kite but found it was a bit too slow moving and unrelentingly grim. Then I showed To Live, which covers a similar part of history in a similar plot, and found it much easier to watch. I'm not saying that this movie is not great, just that for teenagers, the Blue Kite is a bit too slow.With both of these movies I think it is essential to know background information about the periods of history covered. The things that were done in China of those decades are so hard to believe and fathom. If you are interested in China of the 20th century, this movie is essential.

As you knew about the fate of this movie in the motherland, I can get DVD or tape from rent store even from illegal DVD seller. It seems that we can do nothing at this kind of circumstance. But director told the predominant story and outstanding mother in that special years. It just like that children's song has been sung again and again in the movie. I wondered how all those actors and actresses who acted as Hong Wei Bing (Young guard soldiers) thought during made this movie. Actually they didn't go through this kind of special history. they just got limited information from books. And I believed that all these limited information can not let them understood fully it. probably these stuffs have not covered everything. But i appreciated that director is bold to tell people what's happening. When people can face their history and mistake they made, I believed that nation of those people will be stronger and stronger you never imagined.

I would like to say to the history professor that whether it is hard to keep track of the people doesn't depend if you're Chinese...there are subtitles... and that Chinese people can see it, because you can buy the DVD of it in China, this one girl in my class did.My professor said that the blue kite represents the boy's hopes and dreams of a future and that China Commi is represented by the tree it gets caught in. We considered why Farewell my Concubine and To Live were not banned yet this was. Because those were pretty racy. But Blue Kite has this ambiguous ending, where you doubt if things are going to be okay, so that makes every thing look really bad. Other movies, even if the commies look awful, at least the movie is on their side and celebrates them.

According to some sort of reason, I didn't know this movie until these days. After watching it, I cannot stop thinking this might not be true, but I know it is a real story. Or I'd rather say "they are real" because this kind of story almost happened in every Chinese family.It might be fortunate that I'v got a complete family, but I can imagine what would happen if they, my parents, were not so lucky.Everything in the story are as real as they might be. To stigmatize and to be stigmatized, to live and to die, to resist and to be resisted, to beat and to be beaten while life was still going on. Attacking the rightists, perish the four vermins, big lunge, making steel, disasters of 3 years... all these things were filled in the daily conversations of Chinese nowadays.but I don't think we'v paid enough attention to this period of Chinese history. Especially young people do not even know it. This movie is still forbidden in China. Willing to see its public show.