The Road Home

A man who lives in the city comes back to his village for his father's funeral. His mother wants one thing: the coffin carried home on foot. When he starts explaining where her insistence comes from, the film moves into the past. Its formal decision is inverted: the present is black and white and the past is in colour. Memory is more vivid than the moment being lived. Zhang Yimou directed. The screenplay is by Bao Shi, adapted from his own novel Remembrance. It was shot straight after Zhang's previous film Not One Less and released on 16 October 1999. It was Zhang Ziyi's first film. Hou Yong shot it. It won the Silver Bear Jury Grand Prix at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival and the World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 89 percent. It took 6.8 million dollars internationally, with Sony Pictures Classics distributing in the US. Who it is for: viewers who like plain love stories and Zhang's visual craft. Who it is not for: anyone looking for complexity. The film is deliberately small, single-threaded and emotionally direct.