Yellow Earth is a rare film of exceptional caliber, a film that captures the brutal simplicity of traditional Chinese life in northern China. Directed by Chen Kaige with cinematography from Zhang Yimou, Yellow Earth tells the story of a village family visited by a communist soldier who has come to collect folk songs he hopes might motivate his fellow soldiers to fight the Japanese. You could definitely say this is an "art-house" movie, so if you are looking for high drama it's probably not your cup of tea. However, for the patient and attentive viewer, the emotional impact is powerful.
Chen Kaige manages to show us life in the village in a minimalist style, where the bare earth and mountains of north China provide a most unobtrusive background. A lone tree on the mountain is both an anomaly—there are no other trees in the landscape—and a symbol of the isolation of the individual in a society bound by tradition and codes which permit no variation. The young girl, Cuiqiao, hears the soldier's description of life in a modern, communist world, and dares to dream she might escape her fate in the village, where young women are given as brides to older men before they can fully know themselves, let alone aspire to a self-fulfilling life.
Dialogue and overt emotion are sparse in this film, while traditional folk music provides the chorus that foretells the fate of its characters. It is the contextual environment that provides us with the clues to the person's feelings. In this male-dominated society, the young girl sings a song that pleads for pity for the life of a woman. While the setting is north China circa 1937, the problem it depicts remained a vexing social concern in Chinese rural villages well into the 1990's.
Chen Kaige manages to show us life in the village in a minimalist style, where the bare earth and mountains of north China provide a most unobtrusive background. A lone tree on the mountain is both an anomaly—there are no other trees in the landscape—and a symbol of the isolation of the individual in a society bound by tradition and codes which permit no variation. The young girl, Cuiqiao, hears the soldier's description of life in a modern, communist world, and dares to dream she might escape her fate in the village, where young women are given as brides to older men before they can fully know themselves, let alone aspire to a self-fulfilling life.
Dialogue and overt emotion are sparse in this film, while traditional folk music provides the chorus that foretells the fate of its characters. It is the contextual environment that provides us with the clues to the person's feelings. In this male-dominated society, the young girl sings a song that pleads for pity for the life of a woman. While the setting is north China circa 1937, the problem it depicts remained a vexing social concern in Chinese rural villages well into the 1990's.