The movie "To Live" gives us an interesting perspective on a typical and unsuspecting family in the midst of a cultural, social, and political transformation. The story is centered around this family and the man/husband especially. He struggles with a gambling addiction that costs him his estate, the death of his father, and his wife and kids who leave briefly and return. Just when he turns his life around and becomes a puppeteer to earn ends meat, he is abducted and forced to join the liberation army and is separated from his family for some time. When he finally returns home, he finds his neighborhood "transformed". Suddenly people who were on top in the society are now on the bottom. The man, who knows now twice, what it feels like to lose his family tries to adapt to the new values and standards in the communist regime. However, it seems as if his judgment is consistently wrong and leads to tragedy. Because of everything the man has been through, he believes, "family is the most important thing". But the introduction of communism often makes him choose between being politically adroit or hruting his family. Since we haven't finshed the movie, my suspicion is that one of the themes is that communism has a negative impact on family life, and individual life in general. His wife and his son especially, are depicted as free thinkers. This is incompatible with a communist totalitarian regime. ie. his son is dead.
Posted by ted at October 21, 2004 12:09 AMI agree and I also thing these communist problems were evident before things began to get out of control. I agree that "To Live" depicted the family’s strive to make it through the changes, even the difficult problems brought about by communism. The problems evident in the first half of the film, I think, revolved around problems in the communal nature of life. When Youqing dumped the bowl of food on the boy’s head the community reaction was symbolic of their reaction to communal living. It was a good idea, but it is difficult to employ. People may accept the idea that things will be great if they do an share everything, but when it comes down to it not everyone will get along and not everyone will want to share everything they have. Throughout the film family was pictured as the most powerful element. They made it through many tragedies and political situations ultimately saying that communism isn't necessarily as great as they had initially hoped.
Posted by: julianne at October 22, 2004 01:20 PM