Always faithful to a grand style and beautiful cinematography, Zhang leaves the politically correct History of his first films to dedicate himself to a much darker chapter in China's recent History, the Cultural Revolution.
The odyssey of an escaped political prisoner, just to see a single second, on film, of his daughter, who he was forced to abandon at the age of eight, when imprisoned in a re-education camp.
Along the way he encounters the desert, which is the image of an apathetic China, hostage to revolutionary slogans, the cult of political heroes, but where destroyed families seek the strength to rebuild their lives, after the political storm finally calms down.
Zhang adds poetry to the denunciation of the enormous crime that was the Cultural Revolution. Some will feel that this constitutes a concession to the regime. I prefer to see the work as a contribution to national reconciliation, after the difficult times of authoritarian totalitarianism.
The odyssey of an escaped political prisoner, just to see a single second, on film, of his daughter, who he was forced to abandon at the age of eight, when imprisoned in a re-education camp.
Along the way he encounters the desert, which is the image of an apathetic China, hostage to revolutionary slogans, the cult of political heroes, but where destroyed families seek the strength to rebuild their lives, after the political storm finally calms down.
Zhang adds poetry to the denunciation of the enormous crime that was the Cultural Revolution. Some will feel that this constitutes a concession to the regime. I prefer to see the work as a contribution to national reconciliation, after the difficult times of authoritarian totalitarianism.