User reviews

This is a slowly-woven story about outsiders in a small Chinese village. People there, as everywhere, are all trying to live their lives. Without giving too much away, the main focus of this story is a young boy who is somewhat an outcast; he's the target of bullying, both because he's an easy scapegoat and because he tries to take shortcuts in life to avoid trouble and to fulfill his desire to watch movies. His unlikely friend is a middle-age man who acts as a body-collector or mortician for the small village, a lonely man who spends much of his days with dead bodies. The boy's careless exploitation of his neighbor ends tragically and meaninglessly.

The actors are believable, and the story solid. The pacing is a bit slower than I'm used to, but despite my thought to fast-forward through some of the slower moments, I didn't, because there was meaning in the characters' contemplation. The slow moments, too, are fairly infrequent.

The signs of Mao's Cultural Revolution are everywhere, as well as a sense of traditional honor strong enough to brook no violation, intentional or unintentional, as violator or victim. The mindset of the villagers, the way they treat those who don't fit in, is novel to my way of thinking. It was educational, and disheartening.