Well, I just chucked $18.00 at a PRC approved film, and to be honest I'm not sure how I feel about that.
But, to the film. Dogs, or any animal, are a huge responsibility. You have to train them, get them socialized and acclimated to humans, groom them, feed them, take them to the vet, and keep them happy. But, for al that they are loyal and loving to a fault.
I did not see the American version with Richard Gere, instead I just heard of this remake tonight. Intimately shot with a lot of care, and exceptionally well directed, this film hits all of the technical marks as well as dramatic and artistic ones. It does pull at the heart strings between two-thirds to three quarters of the way through, and is in actuality a four act or perhaps even a five act play with different emphasis in different acts.
Dare I say it, but the dog hits all of his marks, as does the all Chinese cast. No moments are overstated here, as one often expects in a lot of Asian productions. This is pure dramatic film making at some of its finest, and I say that with a bit of a grudge since the PRC's film makers copied yet another western (American) intellectual property, but this time to good effect. No one tries to out play Richard Gere as an actor here.
The film got somewhat sappy towards the end, and just went a bit overboard for me at the very end. But in the end everything worked well. There are some practical questions of how the dog survives some of this time towards the end of the film, but the film's emphasis isn't on his survival but how animals see the world and how it explains their devotion, or just ignorance about life and death.
The image was a touch out of focus at the Meteron in San Francisco tonight, so it was hard to keep up with the subtitles, and the image was slightly fuzzy, but otherwise I could follow the film.
A pretty endearing movie. Check it out.
