Coming Home (2014) [Blu-ray]
Drama | History | Romance

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Lu (Chen Daoming) and Feng (Gong Li) are a devoted couple to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner during the Cultural Revolution. When Lu is released years later, he returns home to find his beloved wife his amnesia and remembers little of her past. Unable to recognize him, she still patiently awaits her husbands return. A stranger within his own family, Lu is determined to awaken his wife's memory through gentle displays of unconditional and eternal love.

Storyline: Lu Yanshi (Chen Daoming) and Feng Wanyu (Gong Li) are a devoted couple forced to separate when Lu is arrested and sent to a labor camp as a political prisoner, just as his wife is injured in an accident. Released during the last days of the Cultural Revolution, he finally returns home only to find that his beloved wife has amnesia and remembers little of her past. Unable to recognize Lu, she patiently waits for her husband's return. A stranger alone in the heart of his broken family, Lu Yanshi determines to resurrect their past together and reawaken his wife's memory. Written by Anonymous

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, March 15, 2016 There's no denying that cinema has a love affair with flash. The biggest tentpole blockbusters are often the loudest and the gaudiest the medium has to offer. There's nothing wrong with that, and many that embrace that style are entertaining time killers at worst and rightly revered classics at best. Sometimes, however, one gets the feeling that cinema is so obsessed with fake that it forgets real, that there's a glaring absence of legitimate, sincere, heartfelt, and emotionally tangible moviemaking out there. Some of cinema's most timeless gems leave behind the prototypical eye candy and instead embrace the soulful ebbs and flows of life. They explore the human condition with the utmost tenderness but, at the same time, tangible authenticity. They find a purpose greater than themselves and strive to move the heart, not get it pounding. Coming Home, based on the novel The Criminal Lu Yanshi by Geling Yan, is one such film that favors low key stylings blended with overwhelming sincerity. It's a story that examines the undying power of love that neither time nor crisis can wipe away, no matter how stacked the odds may be against it.

Lu Yanshi (Chen Daoming) is a political prisoner who has recently escaped and made a dangerous and clandestine effort to return home to see his wife Feng Wanyu (Gong Li) and his daughter Dandan (Zhang Huiwen). Both Feng and Dandan are ordered to report any contact with him to the state authorities immediately. Dandan is an aspiring stage performer with her eye on the lead role in a play called The Red Detachment of Women. Another girl is chosen in her place, but she decides to turn her father in, hoping that her loyalty will be rewarded with an on-stage promotion. Lu Yanshi is taken back into custody before he's able to see his wife. Years pass, and he's finally freed. However, he returns home to a wife who does not know him; her long term memory has long left her. In an effort to remain close with her, Lu poses as a piano tuner and finds comfort with her in reading old letters.

While the film's story drivers center on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the imprisonment of a political dissident, that serves only as a backdrop for a much larger, and much more intimately meaningful, story of undying love and, in a rather unique way, unrequited love. The movie further explores themes of forgiveness, but it's the story of Lu Yanshi's undying devotion to his wife that's the centerpiece. A tender and remarkable story of perseverance, sacrifice, and unending faithfulness, Lu Yanshi's post-prison life underscores the uniqueness of the human condition and not simply the power of love, as it were, but rather, and more importantly, the depth of the soul. This is hardly the first film to deal with the subject of love lost to the fading of the mind, one way or another, whether through the comic lens of amnesia (50 First Dates) or the somewhat more broad consequences of memory loss (Still Alice), but Coming Home finds a more intimate appeal in its story, a feeling of legitimately soulful passion and undying commitment to both another person and commitment to one's own heart, even under the most challenging conditions.

The movie's soulful theme and moving story of love's perseverance are accentuated by terrifically underscored direction from Zhang Yimou, who manages to find an intimacy of story through his photography, capturing both the physical and internal character nuances with a delicate approach that accentuates actor performances, that compliments them, without overwhelming them. The movie's gray-dominant color scheme and muted primaries at once accentuate the outer struggles but also contrast with the inner drive, giving the film a somber mood but, in its own way, an accentuating spirit underneath. Performances are stellar. Lu Yanshi is remarkable as the devoted husband whose return isn't the reunification of which he dreamed. He beautifully captures the character's dichotomy of intimacy and distance and the role reversal that defines his arc through the movie as both an escaped political prisoner and, later, a free man whose only common thread is his devotion to reuniting with his wife, one way or another. Gong Li is likewise fantastic in a more underscored but nuanced performance. Her character necessarily demands less tangible emotion, but it is in some ways the more complex part, finding that sense of distance even when so much love is so close by.

Coming Home is a powerful Drama that captures a very tangible human essence. Love and devotion, even under the most unimaginably trying circumstances, are the dominant themes, accentuated by remarkably complex performances and terrific technical craftsmanship. Sony's Blu-ray release of Coming Home features good video, standout audio, and a couple of extras. Highly recommended.

[CSW] -3.8- It's not often you see a film about an ideal. In this case it was about being steadfast and true under unideal circumstances. Very touching and beautifully acted. Even leaving out China's Cultural Revolution as the initial cause of the problem, this is still a quiet but powerful story of love, faith, commitment, dedication, endurance, and forgiveness all on a very personal level. Well worth seeing.

The rest of this is only to explain the historical significance of China's Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong's "Cultural Revolution". Starting in 1966, and only really ending with Mao's death in 1976, this was a nationwide effort to purge remnants of capitalism and even Chinese culture which ran contrary to Chairman Mao's personal interpretation of communism. Party officials and local police publicly humiliated and harassed people, seized property, relocated many Chinese citizens, tortured some and arbitrarily imprisoned others. It is said that if you had a pencil in your shirt pocket you were subject to immediate arrest and interment in labor camps as an intellectual. Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labor, sustained harassment, seizure of property and sometimes execution. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the "Down to the Countryside Movement ". Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Cultural and religious sites were ransacked. The movement paralyzed China politically and negatively affected the country's economy and society to a significant degree.
[V4.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box



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