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Movie Review
To Live (Huo zhe) (1994)
Directed by Yimou Zhang. Based on the novel To Live by Yu Hua

Summary
The movie starts off by showing the protagonist, Xu Fugui, played by actor You Ge, gambling.
He is portrayed as a gambling addict, to which he loses his family property and also his wife and
daughter. His wife, Xu Jiazhen, played by Li Gong leaves him as she does not want him to
destroy their lives further and also does not want him to be an influence to their unborn child. He
becomes a street entertainer, where he showcases puppet shows, from where he is swept off into
the Nationalist army. Fugui soon finds himself with the Red Army, where he becomes their local
entertainer. Two years in, he returns home where the Communist party had already taken control.
Jiazhen earns a living by selling water, and their two kids help her. Life is rough but they try to
live fearing any wrong move that could earn them the title of a capitalist, which directly
translates to execution. In the meanwhile, the man who won his property is sentenced to death
for being a counter revolutionary landowner. Their first born, a girl, goes mute due to a
childhood illness. Their second born, a boy, dies in a car accident driven by the Town Chief.
They could not do anything against him, as he was the chief. The daughter is married to a factory
worker who is also the factorys Red Guards leader. The movie goes on to show how the
daughter dies during childbirth as all the doctors were overthrown for being counter
revolutionaries. The whole story line is filled with temporary achievements and major setbacks.
Analysis
The movie portrays how the Mao Zedong reign in China affected the lives of the local people.
People are shown to be living in fear, not knowing what reactions are acceptable to the
Communist regime. The movie has done great justice to the commoners and their portrayal, as
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Movie Review
the protagonist was shown to be one with little to no interest in the political arena, far removed
from the centers of the critical sociopolitical action of the day. Even as the believers of Mao and
the Red Guards worshiped him, common people just wanted to live a peaceful quite life. This
was proving to be more and more difficult, as people who did not show much enthusiasm for the
Party were automatically branded counter revolutionaries. Any wrong step could cost them their
face, or at times their lives too. The movie does not show any of the sufferings of the people in
China during the time explicitly, but the tension and difficulties the common people faced can be
seen all over the place. On the contrary, it showed how people tried their best to get on the good
side of the government, striving to reach the expectations that they were expected to achieve.
The particular event during the Great Leap Forward, the building of backyard furnaces to meet
the steel production targets shows how even though they did not want to give away their steel
utensils, they did not question the governments decision of melting them away for the greater
good. Almost 600 thousand furnaces were put up during this period, and all the effort put in
turned out fruitless, as the steel produced was practically unusable
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. This overall hidden portrayal
of the dark side of the Partys policies led to the film being banned in China. Director Yimou
Zhang was banned from film making too in China for a time.
The movie has been clearly divided into 5 different eras: the protagonists life before the cultural
revolution, during his time in the military, during great leap forward, during the cultural
revolution and after the revolution. The beauty of To Live is that, unlike most stories, there is no
antagonist, nor is there any goal that the protagonist seeks to achieve but to live a normal life.
The director does not show the danger that they are facing, rather the fear of it, which in a way
has a stronger impact on the audience. The story, although only focuses on the Maoist era in

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China Since 1644, Page 244
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Movie Review
China, shows something that has been ongoing in China for centuries. Confucius ideologies have
always tried to micromanage the behavior of man, instructing like an authority. The Maoist era
merely amplifies this ideology.