"road home", 1999

director: zhang yimou
girl, Di (zhang ziyi).
boy, teacher (?).

love story, which made @ get emotional...
most of the story's in a flashback. the son comes back to his hometown and his father died. his father was going to nearby towns to look for funds for a new school house. he exerts himself too much, gets diagnosed with a heart condition and dies. his mother wants his body to be carried into town so that he knows how to find his way home (road home).
flashback:
very rural town, some time last century.
teacher from the city comes in to teach. they all help to build a school house. Di is the prettiest maiden in town, and had been refusing suitors, until she saw him. Her mother is blind, but makes cloth, and she makes the red banner that hangs in the new schoolhouse. She watches him, goes to the old well to see him, makes her best dishes for him. She loves to listen to his voice. Eventually he notices, and seems interested when he comes to their house for lunch (he dines at various families as the teacher). He's to return for mushroom dumplings, but when he comes back he says he has to leave and gives her a barrette. she waits for him as he said he'd be back on the 27th. she gets sick from exposure waiting for him the cold. he comes back on the 28th, but without permission. and they're separated for 20 years. he comes back and never leaves.
flashcurrent:
mother can't be deterred, and son goes along with it. he asks the mayor how much it'll be - ~4000 yuan to hire 35-36 men, 2 shifts, wine, cigarettes, chairs. son gives him 5000 yuan (equivalent now to $730.695). and the procession goes on. previous students come, and there's a large procession, with no one accepting the money. mother takes savings, adds son's 5000 and give to the mayor for the building of the schoolhouse.
father is buried next to the old well, so that he can always look out on the schoolhouse. mother guilts son into teaching for one day, as that was his father's dream of him being a teacher (went to teachers' school but hadn't taught at all). he's also not married, and a little bit of guilt for that too.

fairly straightforward story. watching chinese girls run in quilted pants, look more like rag dolls with no real arms. very intent woman- wrapped up those mushrooms in the bowl she had used before, and was trying to chase him down in a horse-drawn cart. bowl broke, and the pottery repair guy fixed it with stitches of metal.

@'s pick on netflix. his zhang yimou fascination. we watched it in bits with dinner throughout the week.
- posted by B @ 12:03 PM