Wri/Dir: Huo Meng | Cast: Wang Shang, Zhang Chuwen, Zhang Yanrong, Zhang Caixia, Cao Lingzhi | Drama China 122’
Deep in rural China a village called Bawangtai is lively with activity. Reliving memories of its vibrant past a family sift through the soil for traces of their ancestors in order to offer them a decent burial.
Epic in scope and yet intimate in its storytelling Living the Land is a gorgeous-looking sprawling saga spans four generations and gradually unfolds, navigating cycles of life through the changing of the seasons, celebrating all that’s good about the close relationship between man and beast and the vital connection they have with nature. Living the land is both beautiful and calming to watch.
Set in 1991, when China’s socio-economic transformation is profoundly affecting their lives right across the vast nation, peasant farmers are facing challenges and technological advances that are radically reshaping their rural way of life.
To make a better life for their family ten-year-old Chuang’s parents have opted to move away to find work in the burgeoning city, leaving their third child behind to be raised by extended family and neighbours in their countryside village community.
Xu Chuang has stayed with his grandmother, and has grown up with the cycle of spring planting and autumn harvest, as well as various village events like weddings and funerals. However, as the trend of embracing the modern world sees the younger generation eager to sample city life, subtly transforming the rural landscape.
As births and deaths, weddings and funerals take place, director/writer Huo Meng captures the resilience and resourcefulness of ordinary people grappling with the burden of familial responsibility in a modernising world that is increasingly in conflict with the beliefs, traditions and codes of honour and duty they have lived by for thousands of years.
The antics of the village idiot and the occasional dust-ups between the various characters add zest and amusement to this real life story that has a docudrama quality to it all brought to life by DoP Guo Daming’s immaculate camerawork that follows the action making us feel like we we’re really there. A simple masterpiece of Chinese filmmaking. @MeredithTaylor
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