Return To Dust
I finally got around to watching this movie, hiding out at home while the wind and the cold howled outside.
Gobsmacked. Numb. Mindblown. Overwhelmed.
Cinema can sometimes do that to you and this raw, precious, salt-of-the-earth film did it to me.
Rarely do films rise to this level, a level where there is naked beauty and existence gleams in all its honesty - exposing the realities of our world and not the sparkling, false sensations she often seduces us with.
On the face of it, it is a simple story of two outcasts who find love and a life together. A kind of Grapes Of Wrath, hard times story. But it is a lot more. An allegory. Full of symbolism. An indictment of civilization and her climbing the ladder at all costs ways. Also, a story about kindness, that rare type of kindness only found in those who so easily could turn to violence and despair.
(Cao showing a dead wheat shoot) Ma - It can’t be helped. It can be fertilizer for the other shoots. Everyone has his own destination. The wheat is no different. It has its fate. When summer comes, it will be cut down too.
Censored by the CCP - Chinese Communist Party, it is a film that is direct and blunt and about so many things. I can see how the CCP, like all good totalitarians, Plato’s Republic among them - would ban, and exile this film. Art at this level hits deep. It can change people.
Those that govern by, through, and with lies are scared of people thinking about the themes this film paints for us, asks us to answer, and etches into our souls. They don’t want people running the soil through their fingers.
The film reminded me so much of a book. Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer. A love story but also a story about being true to thyself and not the chicanery of “progress” and shiny jewels and chicken-coup apartments in the sky. Must read.
Kindness I discovered, is everything in life. Isaac Bashevis Singer.
I’m reminded of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and “the earth abideth forever”. The film is very much in a biblical vein, naturalistic in the Chinese sensibility but universal in its themes of the land, simplicity, love, kindness, honesty, and not cheating. Perhaps that too is why it was censored - it challenges the modern ethos of “getting ahead” and survival at all costs.
The film also reminded me of this powerful short film, Land And Bread. Stellar and cinematography at its best. Life laid bare before our eyes - naked and alive. We need more films like this - and our young need to watch more films like this.