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90-Second Cinema: Last Train Home
Last Train Home, an excerpt

In Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home, Chinese migrant workers Suqin and Changhua Zhang have left behind their two children to work in a textile mill in the faraway industrial city of Guangzhou.  They hope that through hard work and sacrifice, they can ensure better prospects for their daughter Qin and son Yang. Seventeen-year-old Qin, however, feels abandoned and is openly defiant of her parents.

After a physical confrontation with her father during a New Year’s visit, Qin drops out of school and heads to Guangzhou to work at a factory. Her parents are devastated and cut off communication with her.

In this clip, Changhua’s health has deteriorated and he has spent the whole day in bed. Suqin takes a break from their work (she has to work for both of them today) and hovers about him helplessly, worried that this time he won’t recover.

Changhua’s agony is such that he can barely speak.  His wife makes him drink water before she goes back to work. The dingy atmosphere and dull colors of their sleeping area add to the bleakness of their situation.

Fan switches to a club scene in which young people dance furiously to a driving techno beat.  He pans slowly over the crowd until we notice Qin dancing by herself.  For once her child-like face is not contorted into a pensive scowl. The viewer almost doesn’t recognize her this way.

While the contrasting scenes might make Qin’s defiance of her parents seem unforgivably selfish, by showing her letting loose among her peers, Fan suggests she might know what’s best for herself. Despite her parents’ years of toil and sacrifice, only she can decide her path.

—Ariana Costakes

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this is good

Posted on Jan 18, 2011 by ruzica