MOVIE REVIEWS
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
Nathan Lim
To most moviegoers in America, Yimou Zhang is best known for introducing Americans to his dazzling martial arts films, such as Hero and House of Flying Daggers. But Zhang also has a tender, down-to-earth side. In limited release, Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles is a beautifully haunting look at an elder Japanese man who tries to redeem his strained relationship with his cancer-stricken son by traveling to China’s Yunnan province to film a performance of a Chinese opera singer.
Early in the movie, Takada (Ken Takakura), an aging fisherman, stands helplessly at a distance from his son who lies on a hospital bed, dying of cancer. He is honoring his son’s request, for his son does not wish to see his own father.
Outside a hospital, Takada’s middle-aged daughter gives him a videotape of his son’s news reporting of a Chinese opera singer, whom his son politely asks to sing; the singer refuses his request. After watching the uncomfortable incident on a miniature TV, Takada becomes uneasy. So he sets on a temporarily covert trip to China, where he plans on finding the opera singer who refused his son’s request a year ago and films him singing.
The trek leads Takada to the heartland of China. He stumbles upon a remote village, where the villagers threw a feast to welcome the foreign visitor. There, Takada meets an unlikely friend, an eight-year-old named Yang Yang.
As expected, the cinematography is gorgeous. The aerial shots of the mountains are just breathtaking. That is a large reason why I decided to see this film in a theatre.
I went to see this film simply to escape from our hectic city life. I wanted to experience the exotic, Zen culture that exists in some Asia’s countryside. I thought the blending of modernity and old-fashioned customs was interesting. There is a scene in which Takada is alarmed that he does not have any signal on his cell phone, so a few villagers lead him to a rooftop of an archaic Chinese house. There is also another scene in which Takada connects a digital camera to a TV to show some pictures to men in a rundown prison.
China is an eastern country that would love to visit one day. Whether Americans or westerners like it or not, China is on the verge of becoming an economic powerhouse, but that does not necessarily mean that the Communist government will change how they choose to govern their people. I am hoping that a big, positive social change will happen soon; therefore Chinese filmmakers will be free to create their films in peace and freedom. Just yesterday (Sept.4) a Chinese director, Lou Ye, was banned from making films in the country after submitting a feature to Cannes without the government’s approval. Man, that is just fucked up!
