Reviews

Tony Kaye shows that he is prepared to encounter the debate on abortion by covering an incredibly wide range of point of views and doesn't leave out even the most difficult parts. I will start with "harcore" reality details of the abortive presager before I entail my global feelings on how I received this workpiece. I had to stop viewing for a couple of minutes after they showed the fetuses, my heart was pounding, I felt dizzy, sad and mentally assaulted by those images because they just wouldn't get out of my head once I saw them. Nonetheless I still am pro-choice having being hit by that, It forced me to consider the painful reality that go with my own position. This, of course balanced with so many other things that are also thoroughly explored and exposed in the documentary.

Calling Tony Kaye a "biaest" on that matter doesn't do him justice at all. Simply because neutrality in this just has no existence, the relevant material that piles up in the concerned matter as you go further into it, is bound to lead you somewhere. If their is something going on around you and choose not to implicate yourself, you are in fact indirectly making a choice, the choice of leaving it in the hands of those who are ready to carry out decision. I'm not a Christian but I was raised in that manner so I can refer to a story which most of us know and that is the story of Pilate who also took a step back but nonetheless is a part of the picture, that nails down the point that "not to do" is to "let others do" for the best and for worst parts.

This documentary also shows the mind blowing contradictions that inhabits the fundamentalists stirring up on the pro-life side. The fact that they are ready to take on destructive action on the behalf of their posture, stretching a huge focus on that subject while seemingly indifferent to other subjects that involves human choices and it's caused suffering that are by close or by far correlative to abortion. I'll finish by saying that having claims towards even the most wonderful values doesn't suffice at all, being unable to reflect on your own self and the actions you undertake and paying no attention to the conditions of others and more importantly the ones that should justify some of your moral standards is one of the roots of a hypocrisy, denial and egocentric behaviors.

As much as I have been transported by some of Zhang's epics in the way he manages to play with that kind of feeling and develops an interesting sense in the beauty of the images through colorful surroundings, graceful gestures and the the sometimes tragic intensity of themes of the ancient mystified past of the Chinese culture.

As much as I cherish those attempts, I must say the book, from which this story is profiled, is entirely prominent on a variety of aspects. For a start, the main character shows a completely different behavior throughout the original story. At the beginning, for example of demonstration to the comparison I am making, he shows himself much more arrogant and unconscious. That attitude is an important factor that leads him more naturally to be an easy prey for this gambling that has become a fierce influence. And it heats up his mind in a rhythm almost like a trance of forgetfulness. Also it is said that the head of the gambling house is playing with him in a more subtle way, that the dices were loaded and that the game is set much more viciously against him, that he is on longer run of being manipulated thats it shows on the screen. Hence When he realizes that he's at the end of the road, that he has lost everything, he doesn't start crying like a little boy going "oh no what have I done and so on", no, the realization comes on to him like a heavy burden of unspeakable knowledge of the consequences he mindlessly ignored until it fell on him in single overpowering blow, and that is mostly how it happens with a lot human mistakes and which gives a sense reality to it, if you mind my experience on many materials related to this given fact. Even with the necessity to squeeze out the script many events thus making it possible to turn the initial story into a 2 hour film (at least for a challenge such as this one), a lot misjudging was avoidable on that part.

I could go on and on about the important details that have been so mindlessly ignored and that washed the essential core of this heart ripping story, and yet it is full of fleeting joy through what seems to be an endless downfall of bitter events that strikes this man and his family.

This film is like a bad Walt Disney version of it's original form, it's too much of a sentimentalist view to hook onto the historical veracity to which junctions the credibility of the tale, also the conditions the characters go through by what they confront should show noticeable side effects which a bit light on the screen. Thus the initial dimension of the characters has been sterilized by these severe lacks. If all those components had been more seriously followed then there is no doubt this adaptation could have reached a totally different result on its quality scale and it really is just a shame.