The puppets enable Fugui to regain his self-esteem and give him a sense of creativity, as he is now capable of articulating his thoughts through the puppets. He is able to make a better living as a traveling entertainer than as a seller of needles and thread.
When it became too painful to live in his old town where he was once so wealthy, Fugui flees and goes on the road with the Nationalist Army. When the communists are obviously going to win, he easily and quickly switches alliances, just as easily as he gambled his life's fortune away. Following the Red Army, he makes his way back to his old town and life and is reunited with his family, who now accept their newly chastised father. Fugui throws himself into the New China, praising Maoism for what it has taught him about virtue, discipline, and the best way to live life. His earlier decadence seems to validate Maoist assumptions and he rejects of his old ways.
But the communist revolution or fate is hardly portrayed in a positive way in "To Live." Like the decadent aristocracy, it also becomes corrupt with the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Due to no fault of the family, Xu Fugui's daughter goes deaf and mute after a long illness. The only man who will marry her is lame, a factory worker far different than the wealthy man envisioned as her husband when she was still a baby. She dies in childbirth because there is no one in the hospital where she gives birth who knows anything about medicine -- higher knowledge and anything intellectual is a forbidden art during Mao's revolution. Doctors are imprisoned as criminals the only doctor available is suffering from indigestion. The scene is funny, sad, horrifying, and tragic all at once. The only hope is Fugui's grandson, whom the old man grows to love. He marvels at the great changes he has overseen during his life, as he looks at the young boy and also wonders what the child will see and suffer as he grows.
The film is intensely episodic -- all of the scenes are dramatic, and many of the self-contained episodes could have been subjects of an entire film themselves,...
In this area, meanings with their endless referrals evolve. These include meanings form discourses, as well as cultural systems of knowledge which structure beliefs, feelings, and values, i.e., ideologies. Language, in turn, produces these temporal "products." During the next section of this thesis, the researcher relates a number of products (terminology) the film/TV industry produced, in answer to the question: What components contribute to the linguistic aspect of a sublanguage
Film Reaction -The Cooperation Film Reaction -- the Corporation Unsettling Accounts The chapter that dealt with the investigative reporters who worked for Fox News on a show about the prevalence of bovine growth hormone in our milk supplies particularly resonated with me. I was struck by what a microcosm this vignette is with regard to the production and disclosure of knowledge in contemporary society. Multiple and competing demands are nothing new for science,
Movie Accounting An analysis is done of the accounting methods employed in the world of glitz, glamour, fame and money in other words the movie industry to assess the increasing disparity between the techniques adopted by them to arrive at the financial statement figures as opposed to those stated in the "Generally Accepted Accounting Practices." The standards and regulations of the accounting world have been twisted to give them an entirely different
Lam the manager, or the foreign purchasers? Who do you think has more power to improve things for the workers? Mr. Lam and the Western companies were equally at fault for the deplorable conditions endured by the Chinese workers in the film. The Western companies deliberately contract with foreign manufacturers to circumvent the very laws and public policies of their own societies that are designed to protect their citizens from
Film Analysis & Critique: Movie Lost in Translation A film can have numerous motives. A film may possibly have the purpose of conveying a message, to reveal an aspect virtuously for its aesthetic appeal. However more often than not a film may have the purpose of attaining an emotional reaction from the audience or viewers. It is imperative to take note that attaining this emotional response from the audience is largely
It is far from the epic drama of DeMille, but it is dramatic, and moving, and the story lines - the Holocaust, and thou shalt not covet the neighbor's whatever, which is entertaining as it is thought provoking. While both films cause the viewer to go to that place of trust, faith, love; they take us there in very different ways. DeMille is much more Biblical than Kieslowski, and because
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