CINEMA GRADE REVIEWS MOVIE

The film that remains is suffused with Yimou’s typically superlative command of craft. Movie” (Fan Wei), who has a cute little mug that says “World’s Best Projectionist” and prides himself on sending Mao’s messages to the people.

CINEMA GRADE REVIEWS MOVIE

They both end up at the town’s sole movie house, run by a passionate, party-loyal projectionist affectionately nicknamed “Mr. So he stumbles his way across the dunes, occasionally running into a rambunctious orphan (Liu Haocun) who wants the newsreel for her own modest purposes the whole first act follows this darkly funny cat and mouse game, almost wordlessly battling for the film canister across the desert sands like a Charlie Chaplin flick set on Arrakis. You see, he’s broken out because an old acquaintance has told him that his daughter, whom he hasn’t seen in six years, is featured in a newsreel set to play in Dunhuang that very night.

It’s a uniquely desolate setting for Yimou to drop his unnamed protagonist (Zhang Yi), a recent escapee from a labor camp on a quest both noble and bittersweetly modest. In small towns, like the desert-ringed burg of Dunhuang, that meant restricting all cultural consumption to government-approved films, along with newsreels that touted the supremacy and innate goodness of the CCCP. One Second is very much in the latter mode, a deeply personal story set during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, in which Mao Zedong’s Communist Party asserted control over nearly every aspect of culture, society, and community. Yimou is well-known as one of China’s most well-regarded filmmakers, especially around the world, for his wuxia epics like Raise the Red Lantern and Hero, as well as more dramatic fare like Coming Home. Two years later, and it’s finally here - but is it in the same form as Yimou intended? Originally planned to premiere in 2019 at the Berlinale, it was ( according to rumor) pulled from release last minute by the Chinese government for fear the film, set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, would win awards. Even before it reached Western shores for its premiere as the closing night film of the Toronto International Film Festival, Zhang Yimou’s One Second was already rife with controversy.

Cinema grade reviews