alsoRun：I watched 《芳华》

Movie 《芳华》tells the life story of several members of a PLA performing arts troupe. The movie opens in 1974 or 75, when a male dancer, 刘峰, brought to the troupe a new recruit, female dancer 何小萍. As it turns out, 何小萍's father was prosecuted in the Cultural Revolution and she had to cut ties with her biological father and adopt her step-father's surname in order to join the PLA. 何小萍 was bullied by her roommates partially due to her lowly family background and partially for her excessive perspiration. 刘峰, meanwhile, was praised by everybody as a living 雷锋 with many awards and certificates. After a while, people stopped thinking of 刘峰 as a young soldier with potent need for love and treated his good deeds as “natural things”for him. 

In 1978, after the death of Mao , people in the arts troupe were finally exposed to 邓丽君's songs. One night, emboldened by 邓's《浓情万缕》, 刘峰 finally got the courage to tell the female singer 林丁丁 his long-held love for her. At a moment of passion and confusion, 刘峰 情不自禁地 拥抱了林丁丁. At that time in the army, this 拥抱 was treated as a severe case of sexual harassment. 刘峰 lost all his past glory and was sent to  a boarder army unit thousands of miles away. 何小萍, who had been quietly  admiring  刘峰, became totally disheartened and disillusioned by how 刘峰 was treated and was  later transferred to a PLA medical unit.

Then the Sino-Vietnamese War broke out.  A 连 of soldiers led by 刘峰 were ambushed. Here the movie really shines for its brutally honest portrait of the brutality of war.  In one scene, a truck carrying wounded soldiers arrived in the medical center with only one still breathing: the rest were simply body parts. In another scene, a severely burned 16-year old  soldier, before his death, asked the nurse to tell his three sisters to visit his tomb from time to time so that other people would know that he had a family. After seeing how these young men were butchered in such realism, the performance of 英雄赞歌 by the arts troupe later sounded so unfitting and so fake. You can simply call that total crap indeed. 

The arts troupe was disbanded after the war and people went their different ways. The last episode of the film tracked the fate of the several main characters until this year. 刘峰 lost his right arm in the war and makes a living by doing low end jobs. He and  何小萍 formed a non-traditional family. In contrast, several well-connected ex-troupe members became super-rich real estate developers. 

This movie forces you to think. In addition to the brutality of way, the good guy in the movie, 刘峰, ended as a loser in today's society. The music in the movie is super strong as an integral part of the story and will linger in your mind for weeks. But the performance of the actors and actresses does not reach the level of TV drama 《In the name of the people》. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this movie. Yes, watch it in a movie theater for the full experience.  

You can enjoy high quality music from the movie at

 http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/kwyBi-ZlYUeiW720ocEtjA