Arts & Entertainment
Film provides an aching portrait of modern China
"Last Train Home is the best kind of documentary filmmaking: transportive cinema that takes viewers to a place they never much considered, immersing them in experiences they never knew existed." Mike Scott, Times-Picayune
A documentary that looks at China's economic juggernaut from a perspective any parent can appreciate. The Chinese industrial revolution is fueled by the labor of hundreds of millions of Chinese workers who leave home and family to take jobs in the factories that circle the big cities. Most of these workers get a single vacation each year - during the week-long celebration of Chinese new years. The result is the world's largest human migration, a week when an unfathomable 130 million human souls cram into every available mode of transport to grab a week of family time. The shots of this mad migration at the beginning of the Last Train Home are majestic and overwhelming.
Having established the scope of the problem, Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan humanizes the film by focusing the bulk of the screen time to the story of a single Chinese couple. Fifteen years ago Changhua Zhan and Sugin Chen left young children in the care of grandma to take low-paying jobs in a textile factory a thousand miles away. They live in a dorm with no privacy, bent over sewing machines from dawn to dusk to earn enough money to pay for a good education for their kids.
Very noble, but the kids are now estranged teenagers who have ideas of their own. Director Lan follows the family for three years as the kids gradually detach from the dreams of their parents.
"Last Train Home will tug at your heartstrings as it opens your eyes, but it also will make you feel incredibly lucky and more than a little spoiled." Mike Scott, Times-Picayune
Professor Jenny Lau, a Chinese film scholar at San Francisco State, introduced the Film Society to this masterpiece and will lead the post screening discussion.
