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The Road Home
Chinese society has changed so fast that most people feel lost. The Chinese cinema reflects these developments. These days the market economy dominates everything and our cultural life has lost its way. Really vulgar commercial films dominate our screens. Directors who would once have been ashamed to make such films are nowadays proud to put their names to them. It's a sad state of affairs, and I find myself wondering if people really like such films. I made my last two films
Not One Less and The Road Home as a reaction against the current tendencies in Chinese cinema, against the logic of the market. I wanted them to be simple, immediate and anchored in reality. I believe the public will accept them, since they address the viewer with real feelings and emotions.
The budgets for these two films were way below what I had for such films as Shanghai
Triad. What I wanted to show was the thinking and dreams of ordinary people at the close of this century in which China is changing so radically in the wake of so many upheavals. The pressure of the market is intense. We want to remain true to ourselves, but how should we do that? In the 1980s, films found their audience naturally. Now it's much more difficult. But I'm proud to have made these two films. It's incumbent upon us to preserve the best traditions of the Chinese cinema. Look at the Italian Neo-realist movement or the French 'New Wave': they built something which has lasted and which belongs to a fine tradition. Chinese cinema shouldn't allow itself to be so much influenced by Hollywood.
I very much like Abbas Kiarostami's films, and I often discuss Iranian cinema with my friends. I say to them: "Look, we think we have it hard here in China, but the pressures of Islamic orthodoxy in Iran are far worse than anything we have to contend with here. But despite the pressures, Iranian directors succeed in making great films!" What really counts is not the circumstances we live in or the historical moment but the deepest wishes of the director, what he or she wants to show, the way of showing it, the underlying principles. In such respects, Iran shows us the way forward.
The Road Home, which is set in the present day, is very different from
Not One Less. It's closer to another Chinese tradition, that of the poetic narrative. It's oriented towards a certain kind of beauty, very carefully framed in Cinemascope images.
Half of the actors in the film are non-professionals. I had as much trouble finding them as I did finding the non-professional cast for
Not One Less. At the same time, the professional actors in the film are very young and don't have much experience that goes particularly for the two leads in the film's long flashback, both of them are 20 years old.
The film's storyline is very simple, built around the character that narrates it. He's a man who works in the city, far from the village where he was born. When his father dies he comes home for the funeral. He spends three days with his mother, thinking back to the period in which his parents met and fell in love. There is a certain strand of autobiography running through this, although I'm not telling my own story in the film. My own father died in 1997, while I was working on
Turandot for the Florence Opera. I wasn't with him when he died. I went back to Xian for his funeral.
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