Suna in Wonderland

My Chinese teacher recommended a movie called ‘The Road Home’. In Chinese 我的父亲母亲-wǒde fùqīn mǔqīn which it literally “My Father and Mother”. So Joop and I decided to watch it to have another Chinese culture lesson.

Before watching it, Joop found interesting review about this movie. Some guy said he watched one late night but got bored quickly since the film was in black and white. However the next rainy day, he decided to give it a try again and it became best movie ever for him. For me, I am not sure if I can say this movie as best ever, but I really loved it!

Interesting thing about this movie is its color effects. Movie has story line that show present time first and go back to past. In this movie, present is filmed as black and white and past with colors hen normally it would be the other way around. I liked it and thought it made sense. When we think of the past, especially happy memories, we usually remember such a picture with colors and sometimes even the smells.

Most I like about this movie is picturing pure love. This village girl fall in love with a teacher who came from city. The way she would wait for him on the road, knowing that he would pass by (but she never spoke to him), make special food hoping that he would eat her food, decorate the school and use different well so that she would hear his voice on the way, it was such a naïve and cute.

Through this movie, I realized how Zhang Ziyi is such a good actress. In this movie, she did not talk much but I could really feel that she was in love as well as naïve village girl.

As I mentioned above, there is not much conversation between two lovers. In fact there was only one time that they had proper conversation which had nothing about love talk. But it made me realize that, these days’ people really talk a lot, sometimes too much. Not that this is wrong or bad, but I feel that sometimes we are forgetting that we can also communicate without talking, perhaps though intentions and minds. Sadly I notice I, myself have no patient for that as well in this speedy era.

One ironic thing I also found was change of expressing love over times. There was a scene where girl would follow teacher from far away and always stay around him due to her curiosity. In old days, it would be accepted as love, but these days it could be considered as ‘stalker’. How sad world has become or am I just becoming old?

Movie shows how longing for someone can be such a beautiful and sincere. It makes me reflect how honest and sincere towards my love. I think this movie can be ‘The Notebook‘ Asian version.