Seventeen Years

Simply, Excellent!
This is an excellent film. I loved the ending. Somehow, I love prison films. The protagonist being a heroine made the film more versatile and more emotional. Arguably, the film breaks-off from the moment Tao Lan hits her sister with the stick, thereby confirming a murder and hence sentencing her self to imprisonment for 17 years. The expression of guilt and anxiety that Tao Lan experiences affects till the end of the movie. The scene where Tao Lan returns home to see her family for the new years day (with the help of the officer) was absolutely stunning. The feeling of regret, depression, forgiveness and this sense of "Can't I still be a human? Cant I still live?" is profoundly what attracted me. Further, the tension and the contradiction, and above all, the indicisiveness between forgiveness and hate is played out by her father. The visual effects were also brilliant in that it assisted the film to give this very effect (the father getting old, moving slowly, incapable of speaking,...

engrossing and moving
An innocent teengage act turned into unexpected tragedy for Tao Yuan and she was imprisoned. Seventeen years later she was granted an unexpected furlough on the Chinese New Year eve to visit her parents. The world outside prison had changed so much in the passage of time, and so had her parents. What would it be like for her to go home?

The story-telling was direct and movie production was straight forward, there were neither widely known actors/actresses nor millions of dollar budget thrown into it, yet the result provides 85 minutes of unforgettable movie viewing experience. The movie is engrossing and wonderfully charged with moving emotions.

amazing film
This is an amazing film. It reminds us that China is/was a very different place from USA. Slow and understated, I was profoundly moved by the film. Not too much happens, was does happen takes its own slow time, and you can read a plot summary in 5 lines, but seeing the film was an immersion that left me speechless. Then again, there was no one else in the room to talk to.

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