Movies - To Live

	Movies - To Live

To Live (Chinese: 活着), aka Lifetimes, is a Chinese movie directed by Zhang Yimou in 1994, with leading roles played by Ge You and Gong Li. It is based on the novel of the same name written by Yu Hua.

The movie was banned in Mainland China due to its satirical portrayal of various policies and campaigns of the communist government. It won the Special Jury Prize during the Cannes Film Festival as well as the Best Actor Award for Ge You.

Plot (movie)

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. 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 urinates 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 was known for being extremely cheap, 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 of being cheap, so nobody helped to put out the fire, but Long'er 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 chief 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! No! No! It was not my family, it was that of the reactionary's family, it was that of the reactionary's family!".

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 liberating 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 sisters 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 wall is hit by the car of the district head, who has also lost several days of sleep due to the steel drive. 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 full of 20 old 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.

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