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The Butterfly
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Director Zhang Yi Mou left Gong Li and Zhang Zi Yi behind along with his penchant for saturated colors and rousing scores. He settled into the dust of a poverty stricken rural community far removed from the upwardly mobile citizens of the nearest city. The focus of the film was a crumbling schoolhouse and a 13-year-old substitute teacher tasked more with keeping the kids in school than teaching them.
The majority of the characters were played by local people using their real names. When the film's older teacher has to leave to care for his dying mother, the mayor of the village hires the only person he could find, Wei Min Zhi, a teenager from another village who is barely older and more educated than the children she will be instructing. The school has been hemorrhaging children due to their parent's poverty and she is offered a bonus of 10 yuan (aprox $1.50 USD) if she still has the same number of kids when the teacher returns. In the dilapidated schoolhouse, chalk is like gold and the teacher parses out exactly how much she will need over 26 days.
At first the kids are running the show with Zhang Hui Ke, an energetic 11-year-old leading the insurrections. Wei is in over her head and somedays closes the door to keep the kids in while she sits on the outdoor step. One day Hui Ke doesn't report for class and Wei finds out that he has gone to the city to earn money for his debt ridden family. Refusing to accept his loss she seeks help so that she can travel by bus to the city to return him but is turned down. The kids come up with the idea to move bricks at the local brick factory to earn money for her bus ticket learning math along the way. Even with their work they can't come up with enough cash. Eventually, Wei does make it to the city where the little boy is lost as it turns out. She relentlessly searches for him and runs into more bricks in the form of bureaucratic brick walls, unable to get anyone to help her. This little pink cheeked substitute is not so easily deterred though and begins to wear people down. That she is near penniless and forced to scavenge food and sleep in the streets much like Hui Ke never seems to occur to her.
Zhang Yi Mou's look at the class differences and the detriments of growing up in poverty was interesting. Wei has no identification, no cell phone, no pager, a complete alien in the city. Unlike the village where everyone knows everyone else, the city is filled with mostly hostile strangers, even those with cell phones who sleep in the bus station. At the end of the movie it mentions 1 million children drop out of school due to poverty even as China moves financially forward and this film highlights how 3 yuan (42cents USD) for a Coke is completely out of reach for the children, most who have never tasted it even though it's sold in the local store. And the 20 yuan (less than $3) needed for bus fare might as well be a million.
Most of the children gave bright, emotional performances, especially Wei Min Zhi and Zhang Hui Ke. While I enjoyed the film and Wei's persistence, some scenes ran a little too realistically close to time. The city scenes went on too long for me. Yi Mou might have been trying to show Wei's dogged patience, but it also tried mine until the skies finally opened up for her. Fortunately, Yi Mou glossed over the danger penniless young people can face in the city.
Not One Less made me think of a shepherd searching for a lost sheep in a flock of indifferent sheep. The natural performances and stripped down story came across as authentic and heartwarming even when veering into the realm of a fairytale. The children may have lingered too long in the city but the gratifying culmination of the story was worth the wait and the trip.
9/22/22
The majority of the characters were played by local people using their real names. When the film's older teacher has to leave to care for his dying mother, the mayor of the village hires the only person he could find, Wei Min Zhi, a teenager from another village who is barely older and more educated than the children she will be instructing. The school has been hemorrhaging children due to their parent's poverty and she is offered a bonus of 10 yuan (aprox $1.50 USD) if she still has the same number of kids when the teacher returns. In the dilapidated schoolhouse, chalk is like gold and the teacher parses out exactly how much she will need over 26 days.
At first the kids are running the show with Zhang Hui Ke, an energetic 11-year-old leading the insurrections. Wei is in over her head and somedays closes the door to keep the kids in while she sits on the outdoor step. One day Hui Ke doesn't report for class and Wei finds out that he has gone to the city to earn money for his debt ridden family. Refusing to accept his loss she seeks help so that she can travel by bus to the city to return him but is turned down. The kids come up with the idea to move bricks at the local brick factory to earn money for her bus ticket learning math along the way. Even with their work they can't come up with enough cash. Eventually, Wei does make it to the city where the little boy is lost as it turns out. She relentlessly searches for him and runs into more bricks in the form of bureaucratic brick walls, unable to get anyone to help her. This little pink cheeked substitute is not so easily deterred though and begins to wear people down. That she is near penniless and forced to scavenge food and sleep in the streets much like Hui Ke never seems to occur to her.
Zhang Yi Mou's look at the class differences and the detriments of growing up in poverty was interesting. Wei has no identification, no cell phone, no pager, a complete alien in the city. Unlike the village where everyone knows everyone else, the city is filled with mostly hostile strangers, even those with cell phones who sleep in the bus station. At the end of the movie it mentions 1 million children drop out of school due to poverty even as China moves financially forward and this film highlights how 3 yuan (42cents USD) for a Coke is completely out of reach for the children, most who have never tasted it even though it's sold in the local store. And the 20 yuan (less than $3) needed for bus fare might as well be a million.
Most of the children gave bright, emotional performances, especially Wei Min Zhi and Zhang Hui Ke. While I enjoyed the film and Wei's persistence, some scenes ran a little too realistically close to time. The city scenes went on too long for me. Yi Mou might have been trying to show Wei's dogged patience, but it also tried mine until the skies finally opened up for her. Fortunately, Yi Mou glossed over the danger penniless young people can face in the city.
Not One Less made me think of a shepherd searching for a lost sheep in a flock of indifferent sheep. The natural performances and stripped down story came across as authentic and heartwarming even when veering into the realm of a fairytale. The children may have lingered too long in the city but the gratifying culmination of the story was worth the wait and the trip.
9/22/22
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