Champcai Every life is bound to be born and last in a certain period. This film tells a story of a husband（Fugui) and a wife(Jiazhen) and how how they manage to live through China's tumultuous periods.The time line of the story is quite long. It starts from China's civil war to the Emancipation of China and then to the times of great leap forward and finally to the cultural revolution till its end. As for the characters, the status of Fugui and Jiazhen also changes from landlord to peasant.Due to the habit of gambling, Fugui lost all fortunes of the family, which accidentally saves his family as, with the communist party coming into power, they become peasants and avoid the fate of being killed. Later on, their son dies of an accident when melting irons in the times of great leap forward when all metals of every family are collected to produce irons. Their daughter dies of hemorrhoid when delivering her baby during cultural revolution when all the doctors and professionals are criticized and replaced by Red Guards who are not equipped with sufficient medical knowledge.To a large extent, the fate of Fugui's family is beyond the control of themselves. As opposed to an era, one person's life is like a grain of corn in the wild sea. However, no matter how harsh the living environment is, they make efforts to live because only when alive, one can feel hope.As the old sayings goes, it is better to live indecently than to die decently. In one word, what the common people need fundamentally is to live.

amandla-10-725802 This is the best movie that I have ever seen.I watched this movie because I was taking a class on the politics of China. When I saw that this movie covered such an expansive time period I thought "great, I will learn something." That I did. I cried, I cheered, I stayed up very late... I made my then future husband watch it... he liked it too, not as much as I do.I tell everyone in conversations about movies that this one is my all time favorite. It took the place of American Beauty, a movie that I have watched about eleven times.So, I recommend it. If I had a lot of money I would pay people to watch this. It is THAT great.

info-16951 My disbelief resisted suspension. For one thing, no wife, anywhere, would be dumb (or masochistic) enough to return to such an irredeemable reprobate. Also, since Everyman's misery was self-inflicted, he never seemed worthy of redemption. The scenes of the Civil War seemed gratuitous plot-padding. I could go on, but to my taste, Japanese movies of the 1950s were much more subtle than this episodic, overambitious oeurve manqué. De gustibus non est disputandum. Line added to meet silly 10-line requirement. Line added to meet silly 10-line requirement. Line added to meet silly 10-line requirement. Line added to meet silly 10-line requirement.

boboman-2 I usually don't really watch movies from China but after watching a few titles such as Not one less and a few more to name including this one I must say I'm moved by movies from China. The movie is about one family life before the communist take over to the 70s where almost end of cultural revolution. The movie is perfectly done and pictures are perfectly shot. The realistic of the movie and the beautifully shot pictures made me stick to my chair without moving and wonder what happen next. This is a master piece indeed. I agree with the previous poster its a shame indeed that this movie is not popular. This apply the same with all other China movie. I suppose the promotion is not hot enough to bring the China cinema to all over the world. People just don't aware that they exist. When you go to the Cd's store, almost 99% of the movies are hardcore action or love and sex movies putting out by Hollywood. I really recommend this movie to all viewer.