Starring: Wei Minzhi, Zhang Huike
Country of origin: China
Directed by: Zhang Yimou
Not One Less is a very subtle and simplistic film in its context and its approach. Yimou, a renowned filmmaker known for his stylized wuxia films and his post-war envisions of women, does seem to stride away from his typical ways. But his strategy and the film's message run along the identical road which has becomes Zhang Yimou's mission, of sorts. It's no secret that Yimou is a director of the people, and for the people of mainland China. His films, whether in underlying terms or not, all tell stories of hardships or the oppression of the Chinese people. Constantly utilizing strong female leads, Yimou's films really tend to touch home as the young women find themselves in dire straights and are forced to grow, to come-of-age, in order to overcome the ordeal. In a narrative sense, Not One Less runs constant with this. Young substitute teacher Wei Laoshi is forced to leave her small, poor village and find her missing student in the big city. The story is so simple, as is the approach.
The strength here lies in the performances of the young actors, who did add a gripping sense of tone to an otherwise plain movie. But when stepping back, the word plain does most appropriately describe the film. It moves very slowly in the beginning, and even once Wei makes it to the city, the banal sense of stylization is very present, perhaps too present. Yimou makes it a point to communicate the isolation that Wei faces once among the throngs in the city. But realistically, the messages of the shallow symbolism and silent insinuations is just too obvious for me. This is very unlike Yimou, a director who loves to dwell on emotional, borderline melodramatic slow motion shots accompanied by a periodic music and a stoic tone. Stuff like that. And the answer becomes obvious once you read into the film's production. Funded by the Chinese government, one of the most censoring, controlling regimes in the world, the film was overseen by their officials. So whether or not Zhnag was trying to critique or support the Chinese government, he was forced to make a very tame film, and in my opinion, Not One Less suffered because of it. Not that it isn't a good film; on the contrary, various situations and visuals are quite touching and really communicate the hardships of a very underprivileged sector of the Chinese population. But when compared to other Yimou films, Not One Less just seems to slow, too silent, and I wasn't nearly as engrossed.
*** / *****
