Although my confidence in him was shaken by the gorgeous-to-look-at but silly 2006 "Curse of the Golden Flower," I think that Zhang Yimou is one of the greatest living film-makers. Some of his recent movies (The Road Home, Happy Times, Not One Less) have a streak of sentimentality reminiscent of Steven Spielberg, especially in contrast to the bite of such early Zhang Yimou films as "Ju Dou: (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and To Live (1994), each of which were banned at least for a time in the People's Republic of China.

The autocrats of Beijing were pleased with "Hero" (Ying xiong, 2002), because, I think, it shows a rebel against centralization (the first emperor) changing his mind. (My own reading of the film is that one may submit to central authority, but will still be killed.) Official favor survived "The House of Flying Daggers" (Shi mian mai fu, 2004) even though that film provides a reminder that central power wanes and dynasties fall, not something the aged autocrats of Beijing want to see represented on the screens of the world.

Zhang's followup from those internationally acclaimed, visually opulent action films was a return to examining more-or-less ordinary folks in remote areas, this time an isolated part of the Japanese coast and the ethnically diverse southwestern province of Yunnan.

I have to say that the movie reminds me of Walt Disney fare of the 1950s (The Littlest Outlaw, for instance) more than Spielberg even at the latter's most sentimental. Determination works. Indeed, determination works unbelievably easily, even though the film mostly portrays obstacles to a father completing work of his dying son.

At the start, the son's wife (Terajima Shinobu) has summoned her husband's father (Ken Takakura) to a hospital where Ken-ichi is gravely ill. Ken-ichi (voiced by Nakai Kiichi, never seen) refuses to see his father. Rie (Terajima) gives the father a videotape that Ken-ichi shot in Yunnan. Ken-ichi was fascinated by the masked opera there.

The video shows a leading performer, Li Jiamin, telling Ken-ichi to return when Mr. Li did not have a cold. Then Li would perform "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles" to be filmed. Without telling anyone, Takata Gou-ichi arranges to go to Lijiang to film this.

Once there, Mr. Takata learns that Li Jiamin stabbed another performer onstage with a wooden sword and was sentenced to prison for three years. Mr. Takata is told to come back in three years, which is not going to get the film to the dying son.

Mr. Takata's pleasant translator, Jasmine (Wen Jiang) has been assigned someone else. The local guide (a real local guide named Lin Qiu) Lingo who takes over has very limited Japanese (when flustered, his reflex lingua franca is English, which Takata understands no better than he does Mandarin Chinese).

Everyone foresees and tells Mr. Takata that a foreigner getting permission to film a traditional opera performance in prison is inconceivable. In ways that I consider flattering and difficult to believe, the bureaucrats managing foreign visitors and those managing the prison system cooperate. The prison warden in particular is astoundingly eager to please and lines up musicians to accompany Li Jiamin, Lingo has brought along the character's mask and costume. Everything is ready... except for Li Jiamin.

Li Jiamin begs off performing for the camera again. Takata and Lingo set off for Stone Village to find the son Li has never seen or even acknowledged. Again, the local officials are very, very, very obliging (after insisting on making some points) and the performer's son who is being raised by the village, Yang Yang (Yang Zhenbo) is sent off with Takata and Lingo to meet his father.

More complications ensue en route, but Yang Yang and Takata bond in ways Takata and his own son never did.

There is also amazingly clear cellphone reception along the deserted road, though not inside what looks like the Yunnan analog of Bryce Canyon (, Utah). Even Jasmine is dispatched back to aid the visiting father in his project for his dying friend.

I think that my exposition has indicated that I had difficulties suspending disbelief in how helpful the PRC officials are portrayed as being. And especially to a Japanese patriarch! With a snort here and an eye-roll there, I fought back my sense of realities. I wanted Takata to succeed in his ill-conceived quest (understanding it as an attempt to do something for a son who felt he had not received fathering from), and I was as charmed as I was meant to be by the stubborn boy Yang Yang. The real star of the movie for me was the Yunnan countryside, aided by non-professional actors (all the Chinese characters in the film, as with the students and their child-teacher in "Not One Less").

Bittersweet and heartwarming, "Riding Alone" is not a great movie (as "House of Flying Dragons" and the early 1990s films were), but it was engaging and very scenic with more superb visuals (the cinematography is credited to Zhao Xiaoding, who also oversaw the visual opulence of "The House of Flying Daggers" and "Curse of the Golden Flower" and was a cameraman on "Hero" before that).

Similarly, the "making of" featurette is unremarkable -- except in providing glimpses of the reactions of nonactors to the rigors of movie-making. Yang Zhenbo did not find the experience fun, though he bonded with Takakura).


© 2008, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older