Return to Dust

A couple are matched together for their families' convenience - abused and sickly woman, and put upon, hard-working man. Together they find a measure of happiness and belonging that was missing in their lives.

The movie is beautifully shot, with picturesque landscapes and the images of the shifting seasons. It is a slow film - really a slice of life. The actors played their characters very well.

Beyond the story, the movie left me with a sense of the difficulties of life in rural areas.

Ruijun Li's touching Chinese drama about two lonely souls raised the ire of the government which has subsequently banned it. A political tract it is not.

Ma (Renlin Wu) is dismissed even by his own family as 'fourth brother'. Cao (Hai-Qing) is similarly the dark sheep of her family, challenged by health issues and quiet almost to the point of being a mute. Their families arrange a marriage - not necessarily for the benefit of the man and woman - as much as taking them off their hands. They are peasants. Subsistence farmers eeking out not so much a living, as survival.

Good fortune seems to strike the newlyweds when the rich land baron who owns their tracts calls upon Ma for a vital personal favor. Ma is so humble and honorable that he never demands any true reward for helping out the landlord, indeed he extracts nothing at all. He is the type of man who doesn't even ride his farm labor donkey - afraid his weight will burden the beast.

Ruijun Li (who also wrote) provides a gentle guiding hand. The small miracle that evolves with Ma and Cao truly becoming a married couple is accomplished with the smallest of touches. There is minimal music and few major incidents. Li adopts a neo-realist tone. It's et in the present day - which probably is what triggered the government's reaction to the appallingly poor and exploited condition of the farm workers. Other than the use of cell phones and modern vehicles, it could take place at any time.

RETURN TO DUST is simple, but not simplistic. Renlin Wu and Hai-Qing's unadorned but accomplished performances carry the movie over some occasionally slow patches. It's a lovely work that should be seen -- especially, in it's homeland.

Everything the other reviewers have said. I would like to add that out of the many thousands of other films I have seen this is my second most admired (My favorite film is Matewan). Such a sad but profound story of the human condition. I cried heavily at the end. I can't understand why the Chinese government would ban such a masterful film because it's not going to prompt any meaningful actions by us peasants. The film only creates a human connection between the citizens from different parts of the world by showing us as essentially people, going about our lives as best we can. I would love this film to be promoted heavily in the west.

For most Chinese people living in big cities, we don't know much about what it's like to be liviing in rural China. On all social media platforms available in China mainland, we are infused with the knowledge that all the people are living happy lives. But this movie gives us a perfect glimpse into a kind of life that's totally different than ours.

When I was watching the movie, I saw many people leaving comments below. Many of them said they have similar experiences when they lived in rurual when they were young. I know many Chinese people are still struggling with basic needs, but I didn't know they need to struggle so hard. Seeing the couple in the movie living a humble life but still keeping their kind hearts makes me cherish my comfortable life more and even makes me want to be a kinder people

Many say the scene is somewhat exaggerating the real situation, but what makes it curious is that the movie is banned by the Chinese government. This made me believe more that maybe it is actually like in rural China. I have to say I believe the government is trying to make people's lives easier, but it doesn't mean depictions of the other side of a propserous China can't be shown to people.

It's National Day Holiday here in China right now. When I was searching for a movie available in movie theaters, I didn't have much options other than movies paying homage to the government.

The government of China killed this movie in September 2022. It removed Return to Dust from all streaming platforms, deleted comments on the Weibo social media platform, and outlawed a hashtag for the movie. Possible reasons:

* The protagonist is pretty much compelled to give his blood of a rare type in order to save a local exploiting businessman. The protagonist does not resist, but his wife tells him don't do it.

* The protagonist couple are hounded out of one home after another so that housing developers can make money on land cleared by demolishing the home.

* In a supposedly socialist country, nearly all relatives and villagers treat the protagonist - a man content to be a farmer - and his wife - a woman with medical problems leaving her unable to have a child - with contempt. This is socialist morality and culture? However, we foreign viewers do not know whether this depiction is accurate for rural China as a whole.

In short, Return to Dust shows how much capitalist scramble for riches there is in China today, despite the mouthings of the "Communist" Party of China. The protagonist couple are collateral damage as far as the government is concerned.

Return to Dust is a humanist movie. Its strength is that it puts the fate of the oppressed couple in the viewer's heart. In part this happens when the movie immerses you in the rhythm of their farm labor. The tools are primitive, the toil is backbreaking, and the cycle of seasons is immortal.

The weakness is that the only social change depicted is an onslaught of capitalist exploitation. In reality, the peasants backed the Communist Party when it fought for liberation from landlord exploitation and foreign, especially Japanese, oppression. The peasants heartily backed Communist initiatives to improve their agriculture by cooperative, egalitarian, modernizing methods from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. If you keep this real history in mind while you watch Return to Dust, it deepens the tragedy.