Who Is Fugui's Life Reflected In The Film? To Live?

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The beginning of To Live also demonstrates a different lifestyle than the strict operatic performing path in Farewell My Concubine. The film fades into the 1940’s with a man named Xu Fugui, who was the son of a rich man. Gambling was his daily activity, and he would often put his risky intuitions above his wife and daughter. He was seen as arrogant through his self-satisfied facial expressions, up until the moment when his gambling opponent Long’er rigged the game of dice. After losing the game, Fugui’s quickly changed his egotistic gestures, which resembled shock and desperation, and he became homeless for a while. Soon after, he became an entertainer for local folks by using simple backlighting and puppets as shadows. It was part of the Chinese …show more content…

Fugui’s family was responsible for piling scrap iron in order for the government to produce steel weaponry against Taiwan. Fugui’s children, who were Fengxia and Youqing, worked hard during the day. They were extremely diligent and hardly got any sleep. During an instance where the son Youqing was called to report to the District Chief, he reported there only to be sleeping. Coincidentally, the District Chief crashed his Jeep into a wall, which killed Youqing. This was a moment in the movie where death was made an apparent and common theme. Through the past killings portrayed from the Civil War, the fellow gambler, and now Youqing, it showed how society was chaotic at that time. Frantically confused, Fugui order to hide the son’s body from the mother. This part of the movie had a depressing tone, and the emotions of the mother exemplified that through her shout and …show more content…

Chunsheng, who turned out to be the District Chief, apologizes to Fugui and his family for their loss at the gravesite. Traumatized, the family did not want his sympathy. It places heavy emphasis on Fugui, who is now poor. His son had just died. Fengxia’s sorrow was shown through her natural tears that ran down her face as the family was grieving for Youqing’s passing. In essence, life seemed to not be able to get any worse because of what had happened so far. However, hardships would continue to pour on him throughout the rest of the film. Moving on a decade to the Cultural Revolution, Fugui was forced to burn his prize possessions: his puppets. It was a way to express himself as well as earn a living. The puppets were seen as counter-revolutionary and all items of that sort had to be burned. Otherwise, one would face prosecution. The strict policies enacted by the Communist government caused Fugui and his family to live in a state of isolation. It is past the middle of the film now, where the daughter Fengxia is now grown up. Fugui, who was once a Nationalist soldier, meets with a local leader of the Red Guards named Wan Erxi. Fugui could never exclaim his participation in the Guomintang army during the Civil War because the Communists took over. Any opposition in the past or present can lead to resentment or even worse. The

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