Zhang Yimou has been making masterpiece films for decades. His films can be visually sumptuous and epic or poignantly realistic and intimate. His films span different eras, but are consistently filled with tremendous relatable emotions that will resonate with any audience. Unfortunately, because he is a Chinese film director based primarily in Hong Kong, some Western viewers were more enthusiastic about his work before China resumed control over Hong Kong and wrote off his later work as having to kowtow to the Communist regime. Those fair-weather fans missed some remarkable work, which includes Coming Home. Coming Home provides some subtle socio-political critiques without sacrificing a strong storyline.
Coming Home is about a family torn apart during China’s Cultural Revolution, which branded intellectuals as enemies of the state corrupted by foreign influences in need of reeducation in forced labor camps. The family consists of a mother and daughter. Local government officials warn them that any contact with the father, a former professor and political prisoner, is outlawed. The iconic Gong Li plays the mother and projects every emotion wordlessly across her face as she is torn between her loyalty to the state in order to protect her daughter and her love and adoration of her husband. The teenage daughter does not remember her father, believes that he is an outlaw and is ruled by ruthless ambition to become the lead in a propaganda dance production, but is aware that talent is not enough.
When the government changes its policy and encourages the family to reunite, the mother’s mysterious illness threatens the possibility of any reunion. Coming Home cleverly uses this illness as a metaphor for what the state actually did to the family-create an unnatural environment that demands the erasure of family bonds. In another filmmaker’s hands, the plot twist would have been contrived and reminiscent of a soap opera, but in Zhang’s hands, it is reminiscent of classic Hollywood emotional epics. The father tirelessly struggles to reconcile the mother and daughter and to stand by his wife and to master his rage over his family’s pain and recognizing that unfortunately his story is only one emblematic tale of loss. Coming Home is clearly not intended as a Christian movie, but as a Christian viewing this movie, I was struck by the father’s limitless self-sacrifice, forgiveness and devotion, particularly to his daughter.
There are also beautiful passing moments between the father and others such as when an individual is amazed by French, which the father clearly knows. His face communicates that this knowledge was one of the many reasons that the government punished him. Zhang gracefully depicts the careless destruction of beauty, art and love by the state. Don’t let the subtitles stop you from viewing Coming Home, a must see masterpiece.