Customer Reviews

Huang tu di (Yellow Earth) [Import]

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I don't need a happy ending, and I don't even need a final ending. Sometimes it's nice to wonder what happens to the characters. But this movie carried me along a river of poetry and music, only to suddenly dry up at the end. One reviewer mentioned that there is a version of this movie with an edited ending, and maybe that is what I saw. Even without a proper ending, this movie is worth watching.

A soldier visits an impoverished community in Northern China hoping to collect folk songs for the army. While he is there, he stays with a very poor farm family; a widowed father, an adolescent daughter, and a young son who seldom speaks. The home of the farm family is silent and somber; perhaps the death of the mother many years ago created an atmosphere of unmitigated grief. The idealistic soldier brings hope, laughter and new ideas into their home; that men can sew, that young people can choose their own marriage partners, that women can cut their hair, join the army and fight the Japanese, that poor people don't have to be hungry, etc. I don't want to give away the ending so I won't talk about the plot anymore. However, the film is remarkable for it's use of sound; the sound of the wind on the barren hills, the sound of the water rushing in the Yellow River, the sound of a lonely song echoing across the landscape. Warning: this film is a tear-jerker. It also has an oddly abrupt ending. See it if you get the chance!