It seems that this movie has a low score due to being propaganda for the Communist Party of China. I choose however to judge the film as a film, not as a piece of propaganda.
The story, if you can even call it a story, is very disconnected, more like a series of events than an actual narrative. Almost all of the events, especially those early on, seem to be concerned with a bunch of Chinese men in thin mustaches speaking about different matters. At the start of each such episode, there i a brief text with a date and a short explanation. Since my Chinese is not good enough to read this, it is all a rather confusing mishmash of things happening. Since my knowledge of modern Cinese history is also somewhat limited I cant say if anything is historically accurate or just made up. What I do know is that an effort has been put into portraying a time of great conflict and political turmoil, and portraying a sort of general movement in the otherwise nonexistent story. I believe, that a person who understands Chinese would understand more of whats going on, I however found it rather tedious and boring at times.
There are scenes in the movie where the men in mustaches stop talking and start doing things instead, for instance there i a battle sequence (I have no idea who is fighting who) which is really good, all actions scenes manage to wake you up and capture the viewers imagination for a moment. Visually the movie is very nice, everything looks good, especially previously mentioned war scene. The music is fitting too and it all creates a lot of atmosphere, with such a fragmented plot, it almost becomes a case of style over substance, though i can sense that the substances is in there somewhere.
I think in the end tat, as a movie, "The Founding of a Party" is not bad at all. It has its boring moments and the disjoint storyline is a big problem but other than that, I think it kind of works, I would rate this at six out of ten but then there is that propaganda issue.
The film ends with an episode in 1921 (which I remember to be more or less historically correct from what little history i know) and then it fast forwards through World War II up to the modern day. This is all accompanied by a narrator (who wasn't translated in my version of the film) who seems to be telling about how china rose to power and everything was good. This whole ending really ruins it for me, especially the final shot of modern day Beijing with a portrait of Chairman Mao outside the forbidden city. The entire film is very one sided, buts that's just a matter of perspective, it is clear though, that this final part of the film is pure propaganda and I jut cant stand by that. Because of the propaganda part I have to lower my grade by two points.
The story, if you can even call it a story, is very disconnected, more like a series of events than an actual narrative. Almost all of the events, especially those early on, seem to be concerned with a bunch of Chinese men in thin mustaches speaking about different matters. At the start of each such episode, there i a brief text with a date and a short explanation. Since my Chinese is not good enough to read this, it is all a rather confusing mishmash of things happening. Since my knowledge of modern Cinese history is also somewhat limited I cant say if anything is historically accurate or just made up. What I do know is that an effort has been put into portraying a time of great conflict and political turmoil, and portraying a sort of general movement in the otherwise nonexistent story. I believe, that a person who understands Chinese would understand more of whats going on, I however found it rather tedious and boring at times.
There are scenes in the movie where the men in mustaches stop talking and start doing things instead, for instance there i a battle sequence (I have no idea who is fighting who) which is really good, all actions scenes manage to wake you up and capture the viewers imagination for a moment. Visually the movie is very nice, everything looks good, especially previously mentioned war scene. The music is fitting too and it all creates a lot of atmosphere, with such a fragmented plot, it almost becomes a case of style over substance, though i can sense that the substances is in there somewhere.
I think in the end tat, as a movie, "The Founding of a Party" is not bad at all. It has its boring moments and the disjoint storyline is a big problem but other than that, I think it kind of works, I would rate this at six out of ten but then there is that propaganda issue.
The film ends with an episode in 1921 (which I remember to be more or less historically correct from what little history i know) and then it fast forwards through World War II up to the modern day. This is all accompanied by a narrator (who wasn't translated in my version of the film) who seems to be telling about how china rose to power and everything was good. This whole ending really ruins it for me, especially the final shot of modern day Beijing with a portrait of Chairman Mao outside the forbidden city. The entire film is very one sided, buts that's just a matter of perspective, it is clear though, that this final part of the film is pure propaganda and I jut cant stand by that. Because of the propaganda part I have to lower my grade by two points.