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RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES Send This Review to a Friend
Chinese director Zhang Yimou, who has demonstrated his great artistry with such films as “Red Sorghum,” “Raise the Red Lantern” and “Not One Less,” is once again in top form with his captivating “Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles.” It is an unusual work-- its protagonist is Japanese and played by renowned actor Ken Takakura, but the action is primarily in China. That gives Yimou an opportunity to deal with an interplay of characters from different worlds as well as to observe the behavior of his own rural countrymen. Within this dramatic framework, Yimou and screenwriter Zou Jingzhi spin a poignant story of two very different father-son relationships.
The drama could so easily have sunk into clichés, but the approach is original and obvious paths are shunned in favor of seeking truthfulness rather than audience manipulation. The film becomes extremely moving on its own uncompromised terms and draws us in with Yimou’s methods of understatement and understanding of people and the lives the film touches.
Takakura plays Gou-ichi Takata, a man of very few words, who is troubled by the estranged relations between him and his son, who is a filmmaker. His daughter-in-law Rie (Shinobu Terajima) telephones one day from Tokyo to say that her husband is seriously ill and undergoing tests and that Takata should hurry to visit him. But after he travels a substantial distance from his fishing village to get there, his son, bitter for reasons that are later partially explained, is so angry at his father that he refuses to see him, and Takata returns home.
But he is disturbed by the unhappy encounter. He would like to find some way to show love for his son, and when he is informed that the diagnosis is terminal cancer, he decides to act. His son had been in the midst of making a film about a form of Chinese folk drama and was about to shoot a performance in Yunnan Province of southern China by a renowned Chinese classical theater actor Li Jiamin (Li Jiamin). After viewing a tape of his son’s work given him by Rie, the father decides to go to China to film the performer as a gift to his son. The scene then shifts to China, with the attendant problems of language difficulties, ways of doing things and various complications. For one thing, the actor he wants to film is in prison for having assaulted someone. How does one get prison authorities to give permission for such a shoot?
Takata learns that the prisoner has a son, Yang Yang (Yang Zhembo), who is being cared for communally in a village. The youngster never met his father, who is deeply saddened at the situation. When Takata takes the trouble of meeting the boy and arranges a visit between him and his dad, Takata becomes smitten with Yang Yang. What he encounters is not what he expects.
The parallel father-son stories are interesting and moving, and there is also fascination in the tour that the film takes through an area in China observing the way in which the locales make decisions and are swayed. Yimou is masterly blending all of the ingredients, all the while moving the story forward without succumbing to clichés the way a Hollywood film with a similar story probably would.
“Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles” is an exquisitely made film that is rich in detail and emotion and packs considerable power by treading delicately. Takakura’s low-key but revealing performance gives the film a strong center, and the supporting cast has been extremely well chosen. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
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