ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the film Huozhe directed by Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou, with some goals in mind. Zhang Yiwu points out that the nature of time in the films is unclear, and that they combine ideas of observation with experience, and commonness with a sense of the avant-garde. The commercial value to which Zhang Yimou refers exists not in the domestic market, which cannot fund his productions, but among international film viewers. Zhang’s earlier ‘red’ films are all about ordinary people, but they revolve around extraordinary events and pressures, and concern people with access to resources and wealth. Like several other films, Zhang’s film To Live rewrites the modern past in terms of major political and cultural events: the civil war between the Communists and Nationalists, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. In many ways, To Live fits nicely into Zhang’s definition of the allegorical Fifth Generation film.
