Nov 17, 2006 08:30 AM
2325 Views
Do you remember what its like to be a child of 10 and get the greatest pleasure out of a box full of colored chalk? Do you remember listening with utmost seriousness to your parents when they promised you a huge treat in return for doing something well? If you recall simple pleasures of childhood with nostalgia, and want to see them captured on celluloid, then this movie is for you
NOT ONE LESS (1999, Sony Pictures Classic release, Chinese movie)
DIRECTOR- Zhang Yimou (of “House of Flying Daggers”, “Hero”, “Raise the Red Lantern” fame)
PLOT- The story is set in present day China, in an impoverished school set in a remote village up north. The school barely has 30 children, one broken down classroom, one old teacher, and a few pieces of chalk rationed for every month. Apart from financial difficulties, the school also struggles to keep its students. The children keep running away to the city in order to find jobs and support their family.
When the local teacher has to go away to his village to attend to a family emergency, the Mayor of the village finds Teacher Wei to substitute. Teacher Wei is all of 13 yrs old, is a girl, and has no experience being a teacher. No, she doesn’t turn out to be a precociously gifted teacher…that’s not how the story goes! Wei is a serious, somewhat dour girl, and she’s not a good teacher, being no more than a child herself. She has only taken the job because of the money she’s promised at the end of two weeks.
Before the teacher leaves, he gives Wei the following instructions:
“Use the box of chalk sparingly. Just one for a day.”
“ Keep count of the children everyday. Not a single one must run away, or go missing when I get back, or you wont be paid.”
Wei has to face a number of challenges in the first week: no lesson plan to speak of; unruly children fighting, breaking the precious few pieces of chalk; one of the children being poached by a city school for her athletic abilities…and then the final challenge….the naughtiest child in class, Zhang, running away to the city. Wei determines that she wont get paid unless she brings Zhang back. So she decides to go to the city herself to find him.
The rest of the movie is about the adventures of Zhang in the big city, and about how his 13 yr old teacher Wei, using all the resources that a child her age has, puts an end to those adventures and brings back him back!
MY TAKE:
I’ve always been a big fan of the sensitive Chinese director Zhang Yimou. NOT of his recent martial arts movies, but his earlier classics like “Raise the Red Lantern”, and “The Road Home”. “Not one Less” is my favorite by far, in terms of the beautiful story and the emotional appeal of the movie. The actors he takes in this movie, are not really “Actors”. They are children he’s picked up from the village his movie is set in (sort of like the cast of “Salaam Bombay”). As such, the children are absolutely natural and adorable.
Although this story is set in China, it could really be set in India as well…the sorry state of the school, the frustration of the teacher at not having the essential infrastructure, children having to grow up before their time and having to work instead of going to school….sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Apart from the familiarity of the setting, what really appealed to me is that the movie is filmed entirely from the point of view of a child. When you tell a child something, more often than not, she takes it far more seriously than an adult would. Thus, you have a child setting out on a possibly perilous journey, only sure of her goal, with no clue as to how to get there, and no fear of the unknown whatsoever. Children have an odd sort of persistence and courage that is peculiar to them…perhaps it comes from innocence, from not having encountered failure as often as an adult does.
When you watch this movie, you long to return to your childhood, to have the innocence that gives you an unblemished view of the world….a world that is full of possibilities, a world that isn’t corrupted by the fear of failure.
