‘Return To Dust: Love And Poverty In Rural China Review
The phrase "buy products" leads to endless poverty and misery. In the year Ruiyun Li's Return to Dust, which opened in theaters across Israel on April 27, aims to combine a touching love story with the tragedy of rural poverty in China to show what this line means.
This movie is a slow movie that demands patience from the audience and is very intense for many viewers.
In the opening scene, the relatives of both families arrange a meeting with their burdened relatives, who accept their proposal and get married. Ma (Renlin Wu) lives alone in a hut with his donkey and doesn't talk to anyone. Cao (Hai-King) suffers from a debilitating and embarrassing disease and walks on his feet, and is rarely tolerated by his family. Each is so lonely that finding another soul to share their life with is a gift they don't take for granted. Renlin Wu and Hai-Qing stand out with minimal acting, each showing their joy with small facial movements and changes in body language.
They live in a remote town that seems to have been forgotten by the government. This is not China with its big cities and factories, but where people live as they have for thousands of years.
Ma and Cao have neither the energy nor the character to go out into the city and experience farm life on their own. Even with their combined efforts at first it seems impossible to survive on the small amount of land they have to farm, but they work tirelessly to grow crops and take care of animals with the help of an incredible donkey. The film describes in loving detail how they farm, tend their animals and build mud huts. The picture is so beautiful and their faces look like a Rembrandt portrait of them sitting in their cabin, lit only by the fire.
In the film's most touching scene, Cao tells Mai that when he first saw her, he shared his meal with the donkey and treated the animal with affection.
"I've seen a donkey have a better life than me," he says, and except for the scene where he gets upset when the cart is loaded with grain because it's too weak, he instead treats it with great love and respect. Biological family.
A bad story of insurmountable poverty
While the film celebrates their love, it tells a very ugly story, but in a balanced way. They couldn't afford doctors, but medical science had advanced enough in their area to let a sick and rich stranger know that he and Ma shared an unusual blood type. He pays Ma to give him blood, but Ma certainly doesn't give up on other drugs, making sure it's completely out of his system. These systems are presented as natural phenomena that prove that no matter how hard they work, they will not go forward. They did not criticize the government or anger officials for not doing anything to help people like Ma and Cao.
At one point, they are shown an apartment in a new building, and Mai's brother asks them to enter as the camera crew records the incident. When Maa asks where their donkey, pig and chicken live, her most serious question is taken as a joke and no one answers, but the truth is that they cannot live without animals.
When it comes to animals, the best thing about them is their sweet, cute hat, and these animals seem to have a cinematic moment in recent films like The Banshees of Inishrein and EO , where donkeys are front and center.
The film was initially a huge success in China, but was pulled from theaters and streaming platforms even though the film was not directly critical of the government. In the Chinese version, a dialogue was added at the end to give the film a happy ending.
While the acting and cinematography are good, sometimes I'm disappointed by how great the two main characters are. In fact, no one wants to see a movie where the characters struggle to live in extreme poverty or struggle with alcohol. So their love story has to be great for the audience to go through all this.
Even if you love their relationship story, it's a tough movie and you need the patience of a farmer to really understand.
