Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Angus T. Cat I came to In the Heat of the Sun through an adaptation of the original novel by Shuo Wang, a graphic novel in two volumes called Wild Animals by Chinese artist Song Yang. I was fascinated especially as I haven't come across any other comics or manga from China. The first volume intrigued me so much I sought out the second volume, and I wanted to see the movie as well. I was glad to find a release with English subtitles. I was startled by the story of a group of teenage hooligans free to run around Peking beating up rival gangs because all the adults are either working or have been sent to the country to reeducate others, and the schools are lax. As the cover of the graphic novel indicates, it's a tale of love and violence. I knew little about the Cultural Revolution but I didn't expect that the main characters' experience of daily life during this era, notorious for political terror and the upheaval of the lives of millions, to be a story also reflecting coming of age and first love. It's like West Side Story told by one of the most violent kids in the gang, but the love story goes sour, the narrator's attempts to be heroic also turn dark, and none of the kids seek to escape the brutality around them. It's a shame that the original novel hasn't been translated into English as of yet. An keynote of Wild Animals and the In the Heat of the Sun is the unreliability of memory, and whether the narrator's accounts of his youth have taken on his embellished presentation of himself to his adored older Mi Lan or his wish to remember his younger self as a brave warrior like his revolutionary idols. The conclusion of the graphic novel shows the narrator admitting to himself that the ending scene of him attacking Mi Lan never happened: he was never intimate with her. His first kiss comes from a night with Yu Beipei, when he enters her bed as she sleeps at his friend's house. It's unclear exactly what happens after she berates him for being too young to truly want sex, and lectures him that someday he'll want to be married and he needs to be worthy for his future wife. He remembers "It was truly the most important living political ideology lesson of my entire life". The graphic novel begins with a glimpse of the older narrator and his friends, now grown up, in modern China, but while the older narrator's voice is heard, the other characters are never shown again as adults. I noted from the reviews of the film that the director of the movie altered some of the events and details to reflect his own childhood, and it feels authentic as an universal looking back at teenage years and the first stirrings for grown up life, independence, and love. The ending of the film is very telling, as it shows the boys now grown up riding in a open top limo in the new 1990s China. It indicated to me how much China has changed: that the drive the boys felt to be heroes for their country is now directed towards success by Western standards. I appreciated reading the comments here and sensing how the film is regarded by people who grew up in China and during the same time; In the Heat of the Sun is revealing as well for viewers from other countries and other generations, as it has much to say about the young learn how to regard their contemporaries and learn how to love.

ems97 This film is an excellent depiction of how people construct narratives of their own past. They take what they like, exaggerate those aspects, try to fit it into a coherent story. They try to construct stories that depict them as who they want to be. People may tell these constructed stories to others, but they also try to convince themselves of the veracity of their constructed stories. This movie explores these ideas in a very powerful way, through the viewpoint of a boy growing up. I found it especially meaningful because I can personally relate to it. I'm not going to spoil the best scenes for you by telling you the way in which the ideas are presented.

Ge Wang This is, by all means, one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. In spite of the generational gap between us who were born in the 80s and the director who went through their puberty in the 60s, it's a portrait and poem of memory and childhood, regardless of age matters. It is physically impossible to be absolutely honest and draw back memories in the exact realistic way. So we all start telling our own stories mixed with both facts and imaginations. This film actually reminds me of Giuseppe Tornatore's masterpiece Malèna. The beginning of puberty desire for females, become the fundamental essence of both movies. Both boys had their final releases, with endings filled with both bitterness and sweetness. I believe that every single male audience who watched these two films can recall their dim but lively memory of the curiosity for girls at that age. Amazing...as a Chinese myself, I did find myself more involved with Jiang Wen's piece though. The cinematography, from Gu Changwei, who's also known for his Berlin Silver Bear winning direction of Peacock, simply stands in the realm of perfection. The yellowish and blurring photographic construction of scenarios generates the nostalgic theme of the movie, and helps the story become more beautiful as it has already been. The black&white ending, FANTASTIC. A truly imaginative and creative conclusion. Apart from the ironic contrast of the hierarchical statuses among the 'gang' members comparing to their old days, the final line shot by the retarded guy actually made me think. We are becoming materially and intellectually richer and cleverer as we grows, but should those childishness and innocently pure emotions from our childhood be cherished? Days 'in the heat of the sun' has not only symbolize memory, but also speak for the pureness and simple innocence. We are all 'fools', as we enter the kingdom of adulthood, we will inevitably lose our naive characteristics. Life is always about gaining and losing at the same time, isn't it? Politically and culturally speaking, Jian Wen did not focus much of his storytelling on the miseries and depressions resulted from Mao's Cultural Revolution. Again, this is not a realistic representation of the concrete historical notion, it's a artistic craft tributing to memories. My parents, who shared the similar historical experience with Jiang Wen, did not acknowledge this film as a proper description of their childhood when they saw it. "It's too romantic to be true." as they said to me. However, they both admitted that the film did reflect their own fantasies of an ideal past. Every time I ask them about what happened with their childhood, they can only give me a vague framework. A lot of the times, the recalling always come with a particular item, like shoes, football, soy sauce, Mao's red book... "Sometimes, maybe a kind of sound and a stream of smell, can bring you back to the truth." as Jiang Wen said in the voice-over in the film. It's not only for people grew up in the 60s, but also for everybody. Funny as it is, memories can cheat on you and rationalize you in the same filed.A Time to Live in Dream, this Beach Boy classic accidentally pops into my head. "The child's joyous tear, with innocence he has no fear, now I know what love really is..." Days with brightly shining and heating sun conspire to create a time to live in dream, what a marvel!

jkchang The "5th Generation" of Chinese cinema produced films about the Cultural Revolution and its tragic impact on the lives of all Chinese. The most famous of these films, "To Live" (Huozhe), "Blue Kite" (Lan feng zheng), and "Farewell My Concubine" (Ba wang bie ji) all relentlessly emphasized the terror, hopelessness, and death of the Chinese people living during Cultural Revolution. However, "In the Heat of the Sun" does something entirely different."In the Heat of the Sun" (alternatively translated as "The Day the Sun Shone Brightly") is among the first "6th generation" mainland Chinese films. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of Mao Ze Dong's drastic cultural changes, Jiang Wen looks at these years through the eyes of the children growing up through the turmoil. Instead of watching adults face their worlds collapsing, we watch a gang of boys struggle to survive mature, and goof-off without any supervision whatsoever.The narrator/main character reflects on these years as the high time of his life, when he and his friends lived for each other and would die for each other. As a boy, the main character is simply searching for fun, for love, for anything to entertain himself. Such frivolous pursuits amidst the eerie emptiness of Beijing can come across as unseemly to those who will never forget the grief and sorrow caused by the Cultural Revolution.Cinematically, the film is shot very well, and the story is more complex than it might at first seem. Though, in my opinion, it is not on par with the aforementioned 5th Gen films, it is certainly unique and brings a fresh approach to coping with a sensitive subject material.Semi-SPOILER The director takes the plot and turns it in a manner that I have never seen in Western films. Perhaps the final irony of the film requires a Chinese mindset to fully appreciate, but I at least found the ending of the film to be frustratingly brilliant.