To Live Movie Analysis

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To Live The movie “To Live” explains the life of an average Chinese family through the feudalist Warlord Era, the labor-intensive Great Leap Forward, and the communist Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. “To Live” shows how China moved from a feudal system to a communist system during the twentieth century. This family consists of Fugui (the husband), Jiazhen (the wife), Fengxia (the daughter), and Youquing (the son). At the time, China was struggling to unite. This struggle first lead to the Warlord Era which lasted from 1916 to 1928. In the movie, Fugui starts out as a gambler. He gets addicted to it and ends up bidding everything he owned. The guy he was gambling with, Long’er, now owns everything that …show more content…
They have chants along the streets of China saying “Long Live Mao” and “Build a New China”. Under Mao’s rule, they have public execution. Long’er, the man who Fugui lost everything to, gets executed because he had a lot of wealth. Fugui tells Jiazhen that if he ended up not gambling and losing everything, it would have been him who was executed. To add to The Great Leap Forward, communal kitchens were established, which meant that everyone in town would have to eat all together. Also, pots and pans and almost everything metal were taken away from the people and were made for bullets for the army. But during this time, with Fengxia not being able to talk and defend herself, kids would start to bully her. But her younger brother Youquing had her back and understood her. He ended up pouring soup on a kid who was bullying Fengxia and the kids father and Fugui got really upset with him. Fugui starting punishing Youquing by hitting him, but Jiazhen defended him and told him not to hit their son. Kids were now being sent to school and Fugui forced Youquing to go and smelt steel. But when it was dark outside, the District Chief ended up hitting a wall which collapsed on top of Youquing while he was sleeping, and sadly did not make it. Fugui soon learns that the District Chief, is actually his long lost friend Chunsheng. Jiazhen warns Chunsheng that he now owes them a life, since he took away a life. A few years pass by and they are now in The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that lasted from 1966 to

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