OK everyone here did a great job emphasizing the pluses of this movie and they are a lot, and I agree with them. What I didn’t like about this movie is that the main characters (especially the male one) don’t distinguish themselves by anything but stupidity. He was a gambler and did absolutely nothing to stop the consequences that his habit led to. While he was rich, he treated his pregnant wife like trash. She came to the nightclub imploring him to stop gambling but he ignored her and suggested the owner to get her out, and went on gambling until he lost his house. Later, when he was broke, she, for reasons that I cannot for the life of me understand, returned to him. From what I saw he did absolutely nothing to redeem himself. It was somehow suggested that he stopped gambling, but for God’s sake, he had nothing left to gamble, he couldn’t gamble no matter how hard he would have wanted to. Later he learnt to sing in order to earn this living, and this may be counted as a slight achievement, although if you ask me, his performance could have easily earned him an award as the worst singer ever, his alternate whining and squealing, can hardly be qualified as singing, even by Chinese standards. Later he was drafted to war, then willingly became a prisoner, then incorporated in the big communist family. So, apart from gambling his way to poverty, treating his wife like garbage, learning to squeal like a goat in distress, beating his children, and later on stuffing the doctor that might have saved his daughter’s life with buns and hot water to his collapse, he did absolutely nothing with his life. His wife seemed to have a bit of common sense, the only lack of common sense she showed when she decided to sheepishly follow this caricature of a man. So, sorry if I seem to wipe my feet on your favorite film, I am not, as I said, it’s great in many aspects, but this is what I don’t like about it.
Review of To Live
