To live ♥ YStarring: Gong Li, Niu Ben
Director: Zhang Yimou
Entire Story: The story begins some time in the 1940s. Xu Fugui (Ge You) is a local rich man's son and compulsive gambler, who loses his family property to the scheming Long'er, driving his father to his grave in the process. His behaviour also causes his long-suffering wife Jiazhen (Gong Li) to leave him with their daughter, Fengxia and their unborn son, Youqing.
After he loses his entire family fortune, Fugui eventually reunites with his wife and children, but is forced to start a shadow puppet troupe with partner Chunsheng to support his family. The Chinese Civil War is in full swing at the time, and both Fugui and Chunsheng are forcibly enlisted into the Kuomintang forces during a performance. After a heavy battle, Fugui and Chunsheng are captured by the communist side, where they quickly become entertainers for the troops. Eventually Fugui is able to return home, and once there, finds out that Fengxia has become mute due to a fever.
After the communist victory, Fugui attends a local public trial where the new communist authority convicts and executes a local landlord accused of sabotaging the revolution. (Chunsheng becomes a driver in the war and stays behind.) Fugui finds out that the man being executed is Long'er, to whom he lost his entire family fortune in gambling. Long'er also recognizes Fugui, and tries to break free from his capturers, but he is brought away, and shot. The situation frightens Fugui so much that he wets himself. Afterwards he tells his wife that if he didn't squander away his fortune, he would be the one getting shot. It turned out that Long'er, a man who was known for being extremely miserly, did not want to donate any of his personal wealth to the "people's government" as the communists had hoped, and when they tried to pressure Long'er to do so in the name of "helping" him, they only enraged Long'er further and he decided that he would rather destroy all of his property instead of giving it away. Therefore Long'er started a fire to burn down his own mansion, which was formerly Fugui's, and the fire lasted three days. Everyone in the village was happy to see that Long'er burned down his own mansion due to his bad reputation, so nobody helped to put out the fire, but Long'er's action of burning down his own mansion was sufficient to make him a reactionary for sabotaging the revolution in the eyes of communists.
Luckily, Fugui is penniless, and is thus exalted as a "townsfolk in poverty" by the communists. A certificate affirming Fugui's status as a member of the People's Militia, the auxiliary of the People's Liberation Army becomes the family's most prized possession, and is framed and hung up. Still, the shock and the fear were deeply planted in the heart of Fugui: when the village cadre mentioned to Fugui that the fire lasted three days and carelessly said that "because the wood used in your family's mansion was very good wood", Fugui was quick to proclaim his innocence by telling the village chief "No! It was not the wood of my family, it was the wood of the counter revolutionary." The story moves forward a decade into the future, to the heyday of the Great Leap Forward. The local town chief enlists Fugui and Jiazhen to donate all scrap iron in their possession to the national drive to produce steel and make weaponry for invading Taiwan. As an entertainer, Fugui performs for the entire town, which has been devoted entirely over to producing steel. They enter this work with great passion, and the movie devotes some time to portraying the family's unity and happiness. For example, the young boy Youqing defends his sister from bullies picking on her for her muteness.
The happiness of the family is then cruelly dashed. Youqing falls asleep sitting against the walls of his school, after having lost several days of sleep working for the town's steel drive. The district head accidentally backs a truck into the wall. Fugui's son is crushed and killed. In the next scene, the crowd shows Fugui the mangled body of his son, then hides it from the hysterical Jiazhen. In a twist of irony, the district head turns out to be Chunsheng, Fugui's former shadow puppet performance colleague during the Chinese Civil War, who has since risen through the ranks of the Communist Party. At the gravesite of the boy, his mother leaves for him a lunchbox of 20 stale dumplings, which were intended as his lunch for school that day, plus 20 newly made dumplings. Chunsheng arrives at the grave, but his contrite attempts to apologize and compensate the family are rebuffed by the grieving family. Fengxia is also seen breaking the windows of Chunsheng's jeep. A man tries to stop her from doing even more damage, but Chunsheng shuts the man up. Instead of normally driving home in his jeep, Chungsheng walks home.
The story moves forward again another decade, to the Cultural Revolution. The village chief advises Fugui's family to burn their shadow puppet drama props, which have been deemed as counter-revolutionary as they are traditional cultural elements. Also, Fugui's daughter is now grown up. Her family arranges for her to meet Wan Erxi, who is a local leader of the Red Guards, a worker with a salary, and also a kind-hearted and caring man, but lame in one leg. They fall in love and marry.
We then learn that Chunsheng, the district chief, has been branded a reactionary. He arrives late at night to inform Fugui and Jiazhen that his wife has killed herself. He himself wants to do the same thing. Chunsheng wanted to give all of his money to Fugui's family as a form of his final apology and wished that they accept the money before his death. Jiazhen, who up to that point has refused to talk to the man who killed her son, breaks the ice and tells him to keep living, because "you still owe us a life!"
During Fengxia's childbirth, her parents and husband accompany her to the county hospital, where they find out that nurses are in charge as all doctors have been sent to do hard labor for being "reactionary academic authorities". The nurses assure the family that they have nothing to fear, but the family is skeptical, and manages to retrieve a doctor from confinement to oversee the birth, under the pretext of making the doctor "see his revolutionary mistakes". As the doctor has not eaten for several days, the family purchases for him seven steamed buns (mantou), and Fugui tried to calm his wife's nerves by naming the new baby. Jiazhen named the boy Mantou. However, the young woman begins to hemorrhage, and the nurses panic, admitting that they are only students and do not know what to do. The frantic family and nurses seek the advice of the doctor, but it is found out that he has overeaten and is semiconscious. The family is helpless, and Jiazhen can only hold the hand of her daughter as she slowly dies.
The movie ends several years later, with the family now consisting of Fugui, Jiazhen, their son-in-law Erxi, and grandson Mantou. The family visits the graves of Youqing and Fengxia, where Jiazhen, as per tradition, leaves dumplings for her son. Erxi buys for his son a box full of young chicks, which they decide to keep in the puppet drama prop chest, now empty of its contents. The family then sits down to eat, and the film ends.
Super summarized synopsis: Fugui and Jiazhen endure tumultuous events in China as their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry. Addicted to gambling, Fugui loses everything. In the years that follow he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist armies, while Jiazhen is forced into menial work. They raise a family and survive, managing "to live" from the 40's to the 70's in this epic, but personal, story of life through an amazing period.
Review:
This movie follows the life of one family in China, from the heady days of gambling dens in the 1940s to the severe hardships of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. “To Live” is a heart-warming yet heart-rending story that honours the resiliency of Fugui and his wife in the face of political change and personal tragedies. This extraordinary movie gives us a very realistic account of the kind of pain, torture and suffering the Chinese faced during the communist rule. A History student does not have to read the entire History textbook in order to know the series of events that took place during the 1940s to 1960s in communist China. All it takes is 125 minutes of your time to watch the movie! Enjoy!
