This film irritated me with its extreme slowness, and the dumbness and wimpyness of the lead character. Even for a drama, it was worth only about 30 minutes of film, but was extended to movie length for "artistic" effect, or whatever. Mostly whatever.
Long, long blank looks at each other, almost no dialogue and what was there was so basic and simple, very slow camera panning to kill time....everything in it was at "walking underwater speed" and it just dragged and dragged. Too many very similar scenes that went on and on told me the filmmaker was padding, and not expressing his "artistry". Mainland China is way behind the west in film-making...about 50 years behind, as this film appeared to be post-WWII, not the early 21st century. Won't get much western audience, that's for sure.
Really tested my patience but I stuck it out to the mostly unrewarding end that we knew was coming.(He got his bike. Duhhh.) Very simple type of story told much better many years ago in Italy's "Bicycle Thief". See that one instead.
Long, long blank looks at each other, almost no dialogue and what was there was so basic and simple, very slow camera panning to kill time....everything in it was at "walking underwater speed" and it just dragged and dragged. Too many very similar scenes that went on and on told me the filmmaker was padding, and not expressing his "artistry". Mainland China is way behind the west in film-making...about 50 years behind, as this film appeared to be post-WWII, not the early 21st century. Won't get much western audience, that's for sure.
Really tested my patience but I stuck it out to the mostly unrewarding end that we knew was coming.(He got his bike. Duhhh.) Very simple type of story told much better many years ago in Italy's "Bicycle Thief". See that one instead.