Cast: Zhang Ziyi, Sun Honglei, Zheng Hao, Zhao Yuelin
Director: Zhang Yimou
Producer: Zhao Yu
Screenplay: Bao Shi, based on his novel, "Remembrance"
Cinematography: Hou Yong
Music: San Bao
U.S. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
In Mandarin with subtitles
For celebrated Chinese director Zhang Yimou, The Road Home represents a short journey on a path not previously taken in his career. This simple love story, which is poignant, sensitive, and emotionally-satisfying, lacks Zhang's characteristic hard edge and political subtext. The Road Home is a chaste romantic melodrama that engages, but does not challenge, viewers. The movie features emotional intensity, but not breadth, and offers little in the way of subject matter that could be considered controversial. The Road Home works, but may not offer followers of Zhang's work the kind of experience they have come to expect from his outings.
The movie transpires in two eras. The framing story, which comprises The Road Home's first fifteen minutes and final fifteen minutes, is presented in stark black-and-white and takes place in a modern-day village in north China. The bulk of the film occurs in the same village forty years ago, and is photographed in color. In the bookends, Yusheng Luo (Sun Honglei), a successful businessman in his late-'30s, returns to his native village to help his aging mother, Di (Zhao Yuelin), bury his recently deceased father. The extended flashback details the fairy-tale courtship of 18-year old Di (Zhang Ziyi) and 20-year old Yusheng Luo (Sun Honglei), who broke with tradition and married for love rather than based on an arrangement.
Zhang has developed The Road Home as a pure romantic fable. To that end, he has used color for the flashback sequences to enhance the emotion, and has deliberately reduced the film's political content to a background element (despite the fact that in 1958, all of China was in a state of political upheaval). Although there is a veneer of authenticity surrounding the characters and events, most of what transpires in The Road Home is pure fantasy. The kind of relationship that develops in the film would have been unlikely in the extreme in any Chinese village during the 1950s, but it's the nature of movies, especially romantic fantasies, to take the unreal and make us believe in it, if only for 90 minutes. Zhang does that.
Although The Road Home is a Chinese movie, it has almost certainly been made with world distribution in mind. Zhang's brush paints with broad strokes using themes that will be recognized everywhere - a child's responsibility to his parents (Yusheng Luo coming home to bury his father), the veneration society feels for education and educators, and, of course, the idea of pure, perfect love. The emotions felt by Di and Luo are the kind that are more often dreamt about than experienced in reality. The Road Home's chaste approach to the romance (there are no embraces, nor is there kissing or touching) is unusual in the genre. In a way, the movie reminded me of My Fair Lady - another romance that featured class differences and an emotional bond of love that was developed without physical interaction. Like The Road Home, My Fair Lady is a romantic fantasy set against a real-life backdrop (albeit one in which the characters sing and dance), and the lack of any overt erotic content does not neuter the intensity of the emotions experienced by the protagonists or those watching from the audience.
The lead actress is Zhang Ziyi, who was an unknown when Zhang Yimou cast her for this part. She was subsequently cast as Jen in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and, as a result, has suddenly become one China's best known actresses in the international arena (she is scheduled to make her Hollywood debut in Rush Hour 2). Zhang shows more poise and ability in Crouching Tiger than in The Road Home, but her screen presence in this film is undeniable, as is her energy. The camera frequently lingers on her beautiful, expressive features. Glances and sustained gazes play a big part in The Road Home's love story, and Zhang has no trouble captivating the camera.
One thing that occasionally hurts this film is a tendency to descend into obvious manipulation. It would be easier to forgive some of Zhang's missteps in this area if it wasn't for the overblown, grandiose score that occasionally wreaks havoc with the movie's delicate construction. Obviously influenced by James Horner's work for Titanic (a fact that is underscored by the presence of Titanic soundtrack posters in the background of an early scene), composer San Bao has lost sight of the fact that Titanic was the kind of big movie where this kind of music can work. The Road Home is smaller and needs a less intrusive score. We don't need the music to tell us when to feel.
In Zhang's canon, The Road Home must be considered a lesser effort (especially when compared to some of his great movies, like Raise the Red Lantern and To Live). It's also very much a change-of-pace. However, in the hands of someone with Zhang's talent, even a minor motion picture can be fundamentally satisfying, warts and all. That is the case with The Road Home. It's certainly not a perfect motion picture, but it is a nicely realized love story and will find an audience in those who appreciate Chinese cinema and the poetry of a simple, well-developed romance.
© 2001 James Berardinelli