Yellow Earth Review

A communist soldier Gu Qing, also known as Brother Gu, is sent to a rural village in Shanxi to collect peasant’s folk songs back for the CCP party in order to use the songs to understand the situations going on in peasant life. The setting is China in 1939, when the CCP and the KMT have already stopped fighting and have joined forces to fight the invading Japanese. In order to complete his task, he stays with a small family of three; a peasant, Da Shu, and his two children, Cuiqiao and Hanhan. Unexpectedly, the family and Brother Gu form a special bond while they learn about each other’s differences.

“Yellow Earth” is a movie that uses a secondary medium to describe the harsh living conditions of the South which is through the singing of folk music. Folk songs are passed on generations after generations and can often reflect the stories and life of the people living in the area. It tells others of where they have come from and also their experiences of sufferings and joy. Mr. Chen uses the folk songs to develop a second narrative besides the movie dialogue as another way to speak to viewers about the main conflict of the movie. The conflict being the clash of the ‘new’ life under the Communist regime represented by Brother Gu versus the ‘old’ traditional life indicated by the poor family.
At first, the children of the family were the most reluctant to open up and sing for Brother Gu, like the boy Hanhan who is almost mute in the beginning of the movie towards Gu Qing. However after spending more time with him and seeing him help with family chores made them believe that they had many thing in common; they are all people who want freedom and joy. Brother Gu had convinced them that there may be a better life under the CCP where arranged marriages were banned, and children were taught how to read and write. The movie clearly depicts Cuiqiao’s reluctance of going through an arranged marriage, but when Gu Qing tried to come back and stop this from happening- it was already too late. Mr. Chen reveals that people must act fast and keep up in this rapidly progressing China, before it is too late, like Cuiqia getting married off and live a life that she regrets.

I think that Mr. Chen directed this film to indicate to viewers that although ‘new’ changes may be hard to accept at times due to the difficult political history China has once endured, but during this era where change is happening so quickly, trying to understand the ‘new’ and what the communists have to offer may be the best thing to do.