Not One Less (Yi ge dou bu neg shao)
April 9th 2008 01:25
While "Lantern" is riveting with its use of colours and space, I don't think it captures the same human vitality as one of my favourite Zhang Yimou films, "Not One Less (Yi ge dou bu neng shao)".
"Not One Less" is a story that takes place in a tiny, rural village in China, where the village is so poor that they can only afford one piece of chalk for the school, per day. The elderly teacher has to leave on personal business, so the village mayor finds a 13-year-old girl to be the substitute. Is this unrealistic? I don't think so - earlier this week, I wrote about my friend, Tom Stader, who is running a charity that builds small libraries in rural China. The classrooms are identical to the one in the film.
Chinese people that I've met have had an uneasy reaction to "Not One Less" in general. Quite a few people said to me that they didn't like how Zhang likes to make movies that take place in the countryside, showing Chinese people to be poor and backwards; instead, they preferred their Oscar-nominated epics, with beautiful actresses, glorious scenery and thousands of years of history.
Well, that's unrealistic. The new generation of Chinese directors - Jia Zhangke, Li Yang - have firmly stepped away from fantasy, preferring to following the ideals of Italian neorealism, focusing on the poor, the working class, and using untrained actors, playing their lives on film.
"Not One Less" is a fine example of this style. All the actors in the film are actually the people they are in real life. The village mayor is actually a village mayor, and when he goes to get a 13-year-old substitute teacher, Wei Minzhi, the actress is actually a 13-year-old girl named Wei Minzhi.
Zhang's movie, then, is an accurate representation of the countryside. It would be easy for him to preach to us, to preach to them. A cliched route would involve the teacher coming through to save the day, but, luckily, this doesn't happen. From an excellent review on loveHKFilm:
"Thankfully, Not One Less doesn't stoop to tell a clichéd story of an idealistic young teacher who comes to "enlighten" a mischievous group of poor rural kids. As a protagonist, Minzhi is refreshingly flawed, stubborn, and ill-equipped to deal with her present situation... The initial scenes between the substitute and her class play out with a palpable sense of realism; the emotions that register in Minzhi's face ring true as she begins to lose the power struggle with the children almost from the very beginning. "
I expected the movie to never rise above merely being a 'slice of life' in the countryside, but, halfway through, the movie picks up into narrative spirit. One of the students runs away from the village, looking for work in the nearest city.
The young teacher, comes up with a plan to get the student back, not because she cares for the boy, but because she gets a bonus if all the students are in the class when the original teacher comes back.
It's a wonderful story, and though the character of Wei is abhorrent and selfish, she climbs into your field of respect by being tough, unwavering and fearless. It's a remarkable story of courage, magnified by the feeling of peering into a part of China that you'd never see anywhere else - except with your own eyes, on your own two feet.
I say: An excellent film, one of Zhang Yimou's best. As Roger Ebert mentions, this is a great film for children, with easy-to-read subtitles and a quickly understandable story.
See it for: It's a sobering look at education in poorer parts of the world. We should all be thankful for pages of homework now.
*this image is from the loveHKFilm site
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I haven't seen this one but I do love Zhang's work so it goes on the list.
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Cibbuano
20/20 Filmsight
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Fat Cult
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Anon, Raise the Red Lantern is not a happy movie, for sure. The tragedy is what elevates it, I feel... go ahead and watch Not One Less, it's quite heartwarming!
If I had to pick my favourite Zhang Yimou movies, it'd be "Shanghai Triad", "Not One Less", "The Road Home" and "Raise the Red Lantern".
Comment by Kay
...still new to this whole blogging thing...getting the hang of it though!