To Live (Alive): The Peasants under Communism Rule

Movie Review: To Live
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Movie Review: To Live
China has gone through a series of changes, a majority of which have been painful to the citizens. Some of these events remain hidden until they are brought to the attention of the masses through the media, especially film. Zhang Yimou’s To Live demonstrates the tale of Xu Fugui’s peasant life that is chaotic amid major historical events like China’s Civil War, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Fugui is a serial gambler, an act that causes him to lose family fortunes. Tragedy soon follows Fugui when he loses every family member; his parents die due to an illness, his son Youqing dies while donating blood, and his daughter Fengxia, deaf and mute from a childhood sickness, dies from hemorrhaging while giving birth. Fungi eventually lost his wife, Jiazhen, to illness. The tragedies surrounding Fugui demonstrate the mainstream Chinese have to endure because of Communism.
The central theme of To Live is showing the frailty of life and bad human conditions for the peasants under Communism. The film displays the challenges facing the Chinese people through the lens of Fugui’s experiences. Fugui represents the extremely deprived Chinese peasants whose quality of life is wanting (Doll, 2014). The filmmaker does not shy away from displaying the horrors under Communism by injecting dark humor to show tragic occurrences. The medical system is wanting for the peasants. For instance, student nurses cannot attend to Fengxia when she hemorrhages because the hospital’s staff have been taken to a concentration camp. The doctor available is frail because of starvation and beatings; hence he is too sick to attend to the patients. Additionally, ordinary people are subjected to near-fatal starvation. The consumption of world plants or anything remotely edible indicates the extent to which the government has subjected its citizens to hunger. Finally, Fugui observes that desire can cause individuals to undertake all manner of wicked and immoral things (Yimou, 1994).
The film uses motifs to demonstrate the pain peasants are undergoing under Communism rule. Firstly, the shadow puppet is a recurring motif in the movie. When Fugui eventually reunites with his wife, they are forced to start a shadow puppet troupe. The shadow plays make Fugui’s performances commentary on issues affecting his life (Yimou, 1994). They ...