Zhou Yu's Train | Gong Li, Tony Leung Ka Fai | I Saw It Enouh Times To Love It

Zhou Yu's Train | Gong Li, Tony Leung Ka Fai | Journey without end

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Zhou Yu's Train

	Zhou Yu's Train Gong Li, Tony Leung Ka Fai Sony Pictures, 2004 average customer review:based on 25 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Every so often, the convoluted love story Zhou Yu's Train seems to stop in its tracks and succumb to rapture, gazing on the disarmingly beautiful face of actress Gong Li. A young painter named Zhou Yu (Gong Li, Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad) falls headlong in love with a painfully shy poet, Chen Ching (Tony Leung Ka-Fai, The Lover). Twice a week she takes the train to his town to be with him, even though he's bewildered by her near-obsessive passion. On the train, a wise-cracking veterinarian (Sun Honglei) pursues Zhou Yu, but she resists his emotional directness. Zhou Yu's Train bounces back and forth, not only between these two romances but also in time, to confusing effect. But there's something compelling about Zhou Yu's need to love the version of her lover that she holds in her mind, and that sustains the movie through its muddled moments. --Bret Fetzer

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I Saw It Enouh Times To Love It

Zhou Yu's Train is certainly one of those films that some may not like the first time around. If you read up on it on some websites, they'll even tell you that you might miss a few things. I believe in this also but this movie for me gradually turned into one of my favorite movies.

The story is set in China and based on Zhou Yu who is played by the beautiful Gong Li and her travels to and from her boyfriends home. Of course, she travels by train and this allows everything from her conversations to her thinking to herself to be slowed down. This is where the film reminds me a little of a Wong Kar Wai film. The dialogue is very good but still not Kar Wai good. Zhou Yu's boyfriend Chen Ching is a poet who writes for himself but finds the courage to write a poem for Zhou Yu and give it to her.

The very first poem he writes for her is the one that makes her fall in love with him. Zhou Yu is an artist herself and maybe more artistic than Chen Ching, she makes beautiful vases. She runs into a man named Chen Qing during her travels on the train. Chen notices a vase she is carrying with her but he really just likes Zhou Yu. Although Chen and Zhou Yu have noting in the beginning, they entertain each other with good conversations during their travels. They start to gradually develop a close relationship. The story then starts to deal with Zhou Yu having trouble because she has two men that love her but she loves one more than the other.

I had a hard time watching this movie the first time. It was interesting, wasn't really boring but it gives you the feeling that you have to be in a certain mood to enjoy it. The continuous talking leads to good but light conflict between Zhou Yu and other characters but there is a surrounding mystery that gives it a bit of depth. Gong Li also plays another character who is that mystery but it comes to make sense by the end of the film. The acting was exceptional; I loved the playfulness of Zhou Yu's conversations with Qing and the seriousness of her conversations with Chen Ching.

I came to ask myself if she was really in love with Ching, or if she was just in love with his poetry. I loved the camera views, picture quality, and definitely the settings. Having two of the characters on a train makes them have talk to each other but it also shows that they come to need to be on the train with each other. It actually makes a surprisingly sort of serene setting. The writing was great and does not let you down at all. If anything, I would warn a future viewer to give this movie more than one chance. If you can't make it through the first time, watch it again and I recommend watching it on a nice night. To me it is just a 5 star movie, it had perfect acting, a great story, and an ending I did not quite favor but it was still acceptable.

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Journey without end

Zhou Yu's Train (2002) is the follow up by director Zhou Sun to his successful 2000 film Breaking the Silence. Both star Li Gong, who is both a charismatic beautiful presence in so many films and surely one of the world's great actors.

A young woman, Zhou Yu (Li Gong), meets a poet called Chen Qing (Tony Leung) and falls in love with the man and his poetry. His passionate poetry reveals that he is in love with poetry, she with love itself. While visiting him in a distant city she meets a doctor who is able to reach parts of her nature she had not been aware of: his dour, cynical, pragmatic nature is in strong contrast to the introverted, shy poet she loves. How can Zhou Yu respond to both men while being true to herself? This is her journey, her train. The synopsis however can only trivialise the film.

Viewers who are used to narrative structure or frenetic action sequences controlling their viewing experience need to approach this film with caution. Zhou Sun seems to agree with Picasso that asking the right questions is far more important than finding the right answers. The film asks many questions, and is tactful enough to let the viewers find the answers for themselves. The director uses a structure whereby what events mean to the characters who experience them is far more important than the events themselves. The film tries to depict states of mind: films I am reminded of are Julio Medem's "Lovers of the Arctic Circle" and Ingmar Bergman's "Persona". While "Zhou Yu's Train" is not as good a film as these, the fact that the comparison can be made is high praise.

At several points in the film we are shown Zhou Yu holding a book of poems written by her lover Chen Qing. The book is called Zhou Yu's Train: the director clearly comparing his film with a collection of poems. The poems are full of emotion, very romantic and saturated with landscape (as so much Chinese poetry seems to be). The poems, the cinematography by Yu Wang and the music by Shigeru Umebayashi are all just as important in achieving the effect Zhou Sun is seeking as anything that happens on screen. The music is outstanding, able to stand on its own as Zbigniew Preisner's score for Kierlowski's Dekalog did. Yu Wang's work shows that exquisite landscape is still abundant in China. The film would not work with less outstanding actors in the principal parts.

An influence on Zhou Sun is surely Yasujiro Ozu, who used trains frequently to explore the situations his characters were in. Ozu was a master who could tell a whole story within just one frame and Zhou Sun is not yet as adept as this. But the shots of a train passing another going in the opposite direction is meant to tell us that here the characters who seem to interact are each going their own journey, with little chance of communicating. At times scenes are used metaphorically: we see the car Zhou Yu is travelling in to Tibet to visit Chen Qing spiralling into a river, and hear that a bus she is travelling on has met with an accident. These tell of wasted journeys, not literal events.

Is romance an ideal or an illusion? How far should we follow an ideal or an illusion? How real are the events that take place in our hearts compared to the events we experience everyday? Could love be the only experience we have that doesn't derive from our senses? Is compromise ever worthwhile? If you've ever thought of questions like these this film will move you deeply.

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Love is art

This is not for those who do not appreciate art. This entire film was like watching a very very beautiful painting come to life.
The story line traces a woman's passion for a poet as well as another man's passion for the woman, who doesn't really acknowledge his love.
She is so full of the poet, that there is no room left for this man, a veterinarian. But his passion for her meets or exceeds that which she holds for the poet. As you watch, you develope understanding for each player. It's a great addition to an artistic film library.
Favourite shots - her walking away from the camera, skirts swinging.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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