The Road Home

This movie The Road Home by Zhang Yiu-mou had seriously moved many hearts. It is a beautiful story about the fairy tale like flash back of a pair of lover’s courtship through their son’s eyes. The love the two lovebirds shared were so pure, it’s as though love really is that simple yet so outstanding. Living in a reality world like this, love is never that simple anymore in the minds of human. In this era, love is just something that we “fall in” and “fall out” off. Unlike shown in the movie, Zhao Di’s love for Lu Changyun was actually “love at first sight”, and that her love for the primary school teacher stayed until the very end. The best part of the movie is that the lovers did not even touch, hug, kiss or have sex. In this movie, it’s all about the way Zhao Di looks into Lu Changyun’s eyes when they walk pass each other when Lu Changyun accompanies his students back home, it’s about the irony she went through when Lu Changyun had to leave the village, it is about how she waited, looking and hoping for Lu Changyun’s arrival back from the city, it’s about how she yearned to listen to Lu Changyun’s voice teaching. The actions the actors make is just so sentimental, so into the “love” realm. It is just something like filming a real couple’s courtship rather than actors just acting the role out. This movie is just so different, compared to the movie Titanic. Titanic was all about the passion and sense of touch, scenes that provoke the audience to cry such as the time the main male character in the movie died.
Zhang Yiu-mou did put in some symbolic meanings in the movie too. The broken bowl symbolizes Zhao Di’s heart when Lu Changyun had to leave the village. The bowl was not thrown away but her grandmother has it repaired. The bowl meant too much for Zhao Di to be thrown away, it reminds her of her way of showing her love to Lu Changyun by cooking her best dishes and hoping that he will eat her cooking when the men were building the school. Zhang also did show the differences between the past era of China and the present one. Back then, it was bad luck for the women to go near men that are working so all they can do it to cook, bring the food to the construction area and sit to see the men work from a far. It is different now because women work too. Last time, education was hard to come by; therefore it is really a privilege when a person gets to study. In today’s era, education is given to everyone. It is often taken for granted by most people that sometimes education does not mean much to them. Education back then was something that they look forward for; going to school was an important event.
I personally like Zhao’s way of making the movie, the past in colored scene while the present in black and white. It shows that the past was even so much more beautiful and lively than the present. A lot of shots were taken at the same place too, such as the well, the bridge, the road that connects the village to the city, the school and Zhao Di’s house.
This romantic movie did made me cry in certain scenes, I was actually impress by how touching the movie is even though the closes Zhao Di and Lu Changyun could get to each other was when Lu Changyun handed Zhao Di a hair pin and said that it suits her red sweater. After the movie I could still remember the particular scene where Lu Changyun describes Zhao Di being as beautiful as a painting on the wall. It was just so lovely how the shot was taken when Zhao Di lean against the door waiting for Lu Changyun to come in. I also realized that there is a lot of close up on Zhao Di in the movie. It is good in a way as it shows the expression of Zhao Di’s face clearly.
This movie also shows how the son respected the mother’s request of bringing his father’s dead body back the traditional way, by foot. It is done so because it is believed that if the body is bring back by foot, the spirit of that body will know the way back to his home. At the ending of the movie, the son taught at the school, his father had taught before, as to respect of his father’s wished. That scene was also one of those that made me cry.
I remember turning to the person next to me right after the movie and said that I would also like to have a love life, as innocent, simple yet splendid like how Zhang Yiu-mou had portrait it to be.