Review of Coming Home (2014) by Richard M — 18 Jun 2016

A nice film that had different affects on me. One was the disgusting nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy in China, a society where friends and family were used to inform on each other, act as agents of the state and the stifling bureaucracy that had its heel on the neck of society. What a perversion of socialism.

But it is also a beautiful story about the consequences of this system. The tragedy of a woman whose husband, an academic, is in exile or prison, the film doesn't specify which, and the daughter, the new revolutionary youth whose duty it is to serve the state and does so with revolutionary vigor to the point that she disowns her own father.

The father eventually returns but the woman he loves no longer recognizes him. This is the tragedy that dominates the film. Gong Li, gives a great performance of the mother, she is one of China's great actors. I couldn't help being reminded of Julie Christie and that excellent film, Away From Her.