Product Details

• Released on: 2004-09-01
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Subtitled, NTSC, Import
• Original language: Cantonese Chinese
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 140 minutes

Review
An unusually forthright product of Chinese filmmaking -- so forthright, in fact, that it was banned in mainland China -- The Blue Kite is a disarming look at the illusions of Communism and the forceful repression of dissident thinkers in the first decades after World War II. That's a pretty big topic to take on in the abstract, so it's filtered through the eyes of a young boy, raised by a mother who's terminally exhausted, and a succession of incomplete father figures, whose residency is always temporary. The Blue Kite sneaks up on a viewer with how powerful it is. That is to say, many of the dreadful things that happen are presented matter-of-factly -- an indication of both the subtlety of director Tian Zhuangzhuang and the ingrained stoicism of the Chinese people. As young Tietou grows from an infant to a young teen, his greater family and social dynamic degenerates from jovial bliss to staring hopelessness. But this occurs in such imperceptible steps that it takes the viewer by surprise. Zhuangzhuang has little interest in large-scale emotional displays, preferring to let the deaths of major characters occur off-screen, noted only in the narration of the grown Tietou. What emerges from the director's choices is a China in which the speed people learned to keep their opinions to themselves bore a direct relationship to how they prospered. Sadly, even those who did fall in lock step with the regime didn't really prosper, either. The Blue Kite expertly balances its core political dramas with Tietou's everyday coming-of-age issues, making for a powerful case study. The film's imposing length means it's not for everybody, but viewers eager to peer inside a China the government would prefer to forget -- even as it still echoes in modern Chinese society -- won't be disappointed. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

On the DVD
With easy-view yellow subtitles

Synopsis
Tian Zhuangzhuang, a charter member of China's politically beleaguered, so-called Fifth Generation of Directors (along with Ju Dou's Zhang Yimou), made this film about the gradual disintegration of an entire family targeted by Mao's political reformation movements of the '50s and '60s. Told in a series of three stories, the audience sees the little boy Tietou and his mother try and try again to rebuild their lives from the ashes left them by the madness of the era. Director Tian works from a palette of primary colors on widescreen images that are often fixed in an icy-white Kubrickian glare of omnipresent paranoia. Yet much of The Blue Kite is resplendent with palpable signs of ordinary life: noisy kids, happy weddings, loud mealtimes. Tian amplifies the human element of these heady days, so that viewers may genuinely feel the humanity ripped from this story as events overtake and shatter all hope. ~ Tom Keogh, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

more than two long hours of bleakness
While respecting the moviemaker and the people who participated in making this movie for their courage, I find this movie unbearable:
- the characters are paper-thin: the protagonists' reason for existence in the movie is to suffer. The communists' reason for existence in the movie is to parrot the party line and to act arrogantly. There is really no fleshed out characters in the movie.
- the plot lacks subtlety: the movie begins with a wedding delayed by the death of Stalin, and ends with brutal violency by the Red Guard. There is a glimpse of happiness at the beginning of the movie, and it disappears completely under the bleakness of the plot, which is no more than a string of tragedies linked together. In contrast, To Live, My Favorite Concubine, Burnt by the Sun still manage to show the hope and the humanity shining through the desperation. That's why, for me, the endings of To Live and Burnt by the Sun are much more devastating than this movie's.

A glimpse of life under Mao
For me, this movie did not go far enough to show the great suffering under Mao's leadership, but that might be understandable if there was any hope that the Chinese government would not ban it. Also, this film might not make much sense without some prior knowledge of The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Otherwise, the acting is good and the story is poignant enough at times.

I DISAGREE
I strongly disagree with James J. J. Janis' review on The Blue Kyte. An effective film doesn't mean that it is a two hour movie that covers everything about the subject, but a two hour movie that opens your minds up to the subject. It'd leave you thinking and wondering. It'd make you want to find out more, asking why and how. Personally, I was very moved by the movie. I too came to the movie with some background knowledge of the topic, but I did not watch the movie thinking that I learned nothing from it. Even though it somewhat echoed a book that I recently read, Son of the Revolution, I still feel like I left the film understanding more and wanting to find out even more. However, I have to acknowledge the I do believe that people who can understand Mandarin would appreaciate the movie a bit more than those that don't. Because the subtitles sometimes skips or mistranslates some important phrases. Yes, he might be right that there are scenes that can be cut out to make the film at a reasonable length, but for what? To match Holleywood filmmaking standards? How can you cut any realistic scenes from a movie that is to tell the story. What and who is to determine that only certain details of the peasants' life tell the Chinese communist story and others are just simply unrelavent? Overall, I give this movie a 5 star rating. Because I cannot find another movie that shows more truth about the China under Mao's influence in the late 50's and 60's more than this one particular film.