A pleasant low budget road movie featuring a trip to a dying old friend with a slow three-wheel motorcycle by a grandpa and his grandson.
Made beautiful to watch with heartwarming views of nature and the wise teachings from Confucius advising the meaningfulness of being a good person without prejudice but with good will, perseverance and patience.
Highlighting the differences between the generations split by the harsh requirements of today's modern hectic world forcing people to work hard leaving insufficient time for their family and parents, and the old generations for whom to stay alive during difficult times of the past with solidarity, patience and hope for a better future for future generations was more important, a successful piece of work leaving its mark on one's mind. Recommended...
7.3Plot summary
An old man who barely survived from the Cultural Revolution is told that his friend is currently suffering from hemiplegia. Having survived the Cultural Revolution together, the old man set off on a journey to see his friend. By tricycle, he takes his seven-year-old grandson on the back seat. With the form of a Road Movie, he meets a wide range of people on the road while sharing warm words as he travels. This film is based on the memory of the director's grandfather. Whenever the little grandson is terrified by something strange while slowly following the country road in China, the grandfather teaches the kid the benefits of familiarity. The wisdom he shares gives us the strength of mind to melt emotional barriers.
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Confucius teachings from a wise grandpa...
Life is like crossing the Border - Zhao Guan
A docu-drama at the first sight, "Crossing the Border - Zhao Guan" is like a stream of river gently and relentlessly flowing towards your heart and mind, via a motor tri-cycle road trip through the countryside of Henan with Grandpa and his little boy Ning Ning. A tiny budget of 400 thousand RMB (which equals about 58 thousand US dollars) didn't reduce the film's production value, but it does add up some expectations with simple yet authentic details and a joint force of directing, performance and scriptwriting. "Do people all die in the end?" , Ning Ning asks. Grandpa usually responds to a question like this with a yes or no followed with a series of stories and flashbacks, then taking us back not only to the aftermath of some "natural disasters" in the late 1950s (when China was already under the Communists' reign),but further more, to more than 2500 years back, when a wise statesman of ancient China got his hair all turned grey over a night's run while he strived to cross the Border - Zhao Guan to escape from a besiege from his rivals. As the lyrics of that famed piece of Chinese opera (sang by Grandpa) go, life is like Wu Tzi-Hsu crossing the Border- Zhao Guan, face the challenges and one will see the way up ahead, easy or hard, sooner or later. In the end, Grandpa seems to have become everyone's grandpa --an ideal type that kids don't feel like saying goodbye to after a trip together and can't wait to make a phone call and share their little secrets to. 7.5/10