Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Spoonixel Amateur movie with Big budget

Nessieldwi Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

dongwangfu I just finished reading an excellent comment comparing this documentary to "Sanxia haoren" by Jia Zhangke, saying that this film has "a hard act to follow." This was a very insightful comment by someone who knows Jia's films very well, but something about it struck me as unfair, and I wanted to offer an alternative point of view.Both "Up the Yangtze" and "Sanxia haoren" are terrific films, but they are fundamentally different kinds of film. I actually think the relatively unheralded "Up the Yangtze" is just as good as "Sanxia Haoren" on its own terms. The director filmed a number of people's stories over the time that the Three Gorges dam was raising the water level of the river, documenting the ensuing social dislocations. Using this "Spellbound" method, he singled out one and half narratives that turned out to be the most interesting, and the result succeeded both as social science and as an engaging and moving narrative.Jia's project was to take two couples' stories and dramatize them against the same backdrop. The two movies share similar scenery and locations, but "Sanxia haoren" works off a screenplay, and while the look strives for verité, the drama builds on precedents that are non-documentary in nature. An example of what I mean is when Cindy (in "Up the Yangtze") reacts to a decision by her parents by being a drama queen, the viewer reads it as a real person borrowing from a script from the realm of fiction. By contrast, the Shen Hong character (in "Sanxia haoren") is a dramatic one and she never leaves the realm of fiction -- the viewer accepts her as a "real person" only in the sense that we know that she is being presented to us as one by Jia, who likely imagined her as a variation on actress Tao Zhao's personality. It is not social science at all but fiction -- which is worthy in its own right, but something different from watching Cindy grow up.Of course, documentaries are not entirely non-fiction, and documentarians influence their subjects in some of the ways that dramatists do, and in other ways that are entirely their own. But I think that to compare these two films as if they were both trying to do the same thing is not to do justice to "Up the Yangtze" -- a gem that deserves to be appreciated on its own terms.

david-1843 Everybody thinks that, armed with a camera, they can make a film. I thought that the subject matter contained in this particular effort was enough for a 10 minute news special; yet the themes were much more profound. Where was the focus of this film? Was it the dam? Was it the loss of the beautiful gorges of the Yangtze? Was it the seedy exploitation of the Westerners wanting to see the real China? Hard to say. Many shots were condescending and insulting to the protagonists involved, and smacked of immaturity and amateurism. I would have to say that these moments made me hate this film. Audience manipulation par excellence. They could have made a wonderful film with all the material they had but seemed to lack the necessary sensibility. Strange, as I gather the filmmaker has Chinese roots. You would have thought that a greater love of the director's homeland would be in evidence! The audience of my art-house cinema left unmoved. It wasn't just me.

rgcustomer Perhaps I am the dam, as I was unmoved by this film. The promotional material I received prior to the showing of the film had prepared me to see a story about a huge dam project, with serious environmental and human consequences. So I was disappointed that the dam itself was not a major feature of the film, and no environmental issues were raised. But I can't really fault the film itself for the people who promote it, so I'll try to leave that aside. I was impressed with the access that the filmmakers had to get frank comments from a variety of people in the film, and for me that was something new that I enjoyed for a film from China. But still I found it to be a slow film of two kids who are sent by their families to work serving foreign tourists on a river tour boat, and the difficulties that first-time jobs, especially away from home, can bring to anyone. It was also about a very poor family having to move from their shack to a more densely-populated place where they will need to learn a different way of living. In both cases, I found that I was admiring people's ability to find ways to move forward, but I felt that the movie wanted me to believe that this was bad. Some scenes appeared to be included randomly, as they did not fit in with the rest of the film, such as the creepy stop-motion dancing kid, or the praying woman. On the flip side, the story of the two kids working on the boat seems to just stop without explanation after something significant happens to one. I wanted to know more about what happened to each of them. That it was in China, or on the Yangtze, seemed insignificant to the story itself. I don't feel that I know much more about life on the Yangtze, or the Three Gorges Dam, than before I saw the film. Seeing that a documentary of this type can be made in China, I feel this subject is therefore still ripe for someone else to make a more informative documentary about the Yangtze and/or the Dam.

wangyimin999 This cinema masterpiece is experience of Chinese not westerner story. I hope you will go to take in this experience and learn more about middle kingdom. This movie is fair and shows piece of Chinese life. Do not miss this masterpiece. It made me laugh it made me cry. It made me think about my homeland.this is from variety Asia online: "If the title "Up the Yangtze!" suggests "up a creek!," it's no coincidence. China's Three Gorges Dam is considered by many experts to be a full-steam-ahead eco-disaster, but helmer Yung Chang's gorgeous meditation is more concerned with the project's collateral human damage: old farmers evicted, young people in servitude to Western tourists, all brought about by an endeavor whose collective weight may ultimately tilt the Earth's axis. A gloriously cinematic doc of epic, poetic sadness, "Yangtze" should be a hit on the specialized circuit and could break out, thanks to its embrace of irony rather than righteous indignation."i think this review is right. i'm very happy for this film and i think, as a Chinese, it is important to see all of the sides of our story. that way we can grow to learn to be better.