Zhang Yimou-Wo de fu qin mu qin ('The Road Home') (1999)

For the first time in many years businessman Luo Yusheng drives to Sanhetun, the village in North China where he was born. The district mayor called him to tell him that his father died suddenly, and Yusheng is rushing back to be with his mother. He finds her grief-stricken, keeping a sad vigil outside the decrepit village schoolhouse. But she is adamant that her husband's funeral will follow age-old local customs, even if they are rarely observed nowadays. She will personally weave the funeral cloth on the village loom, and local men must carry the coffin from the hospital back to the village. SONY




City businessman Luo Yusheng returns to his home village in North China for the funeral of his father, the village teacher. He finds his elderly mother insisting that all the traditional burial customs be observed, despite the fact that times have changed so much, and that it involves many people carrying his father's body back to the village - the road home. As Yusheng debates the complications involved in organising such a big feat, he remembers the magical story of how his father and mother first met and got together. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0235060/plotsummary)




At the start of the most recent film from Chinese director Zhang Yimou, a young man returns to his native village after the death of his father, the village's schoolteacher, who died while trying to raise money for a new schoolhouse. His body is in a neighboring town; the young man's mother insists that it be brought back on foot, lest his spirit not find his way home. From this starting point, the young man recounts the tale of his parents' courtship, which involved a red banner, mushroom dumplings, a colorful barrette, and a broken bowl. The Road Home is beautifully filmed, particularly the luminous face of Zhang Ziyi, whose performance is a heartrending portrait of hope and yearning. A simple but deeply emotional film. (–Bret Fetzer - Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com)




Zhang Yimou, whose credits include ``Red Sorghum,'' ``Raise the Red Lantern'' and ``The Story of Qiu Ju,'' was a cinematographer before becoming a director, and his mastery of color and mood and his attunement to nature lend this elemental love story a penetrating hum of universality. Much of the film is set during the winter in a pristine, hilly region of northern China that is connected to the outside world by a single unpaved road. There is no electricity in the town, and water is pumped from two wells. SONY




``The Road Home'' isn't about politics but about how the echoes of ideological wars waged in distant capitals affect ordinary people who have only the most tenuous connections with those struggles. In villages like Sanheutun, life goes on as usual, and change, when it comes, arrives gradually. Not once in the film is the name Mao Tse-tung mentioned or his image shown. The revolution that turned most of China upside down is merely a dim flicker of lightning beyond the wintry horizon. SONY




Easily holding its own alongside other, more analytical films dealing with that period of Chinese history which preceded the Cultural Revolution, "The Road Home" is a refreshing change in tone being always lyrical, romantic, and suggestive. Yet it is still a deeply eloquent film about an especially difficult period in China's recent past. BBC