The opening of Sun Yu’s Leftist silent Da Lu—literally, The Great Way—is superb. A group of construction workers, building a Chinese road, sing as if carefree, led by an almost giddily cheerful boy, (we later learn) Jing Ge. Flashback: long-shot; a couple, twenty years earlier, trudge across an inhospitable, dusty landscape. Cut to close camera, which is focused on the couple’s feet. The woman falls down; the man is carrying their infant. The woman addresses her spouse as “Father Jing” and, expiring, points to the spot where she wishes to be buried. Long-shot; mound; the job is done. Three years later: Jing works on a construction job, holding his toddler in one arm. Ten years later: the man collapses as his son, right beside him, orphaned again and completely, responds. Twenty years later: Jing Ge totes the sad family history we have watched summarized; he has labored hard his whole life long.
Alas, Sun’s film does not live up to this bravura first movement. (Not that much could.) The Japanese invaded Manchuria—collectively, northeast China—in 1931, setting up its own puppet-rule in 1932. (Bertoluccians, think: the history will come back to you.) The construction of the highway is for the benefit of the Chinese army. The film follows six of these young construction workers. At the end of the film, despite an effort of sabotage by a collaborationist landlord, the road will be complete. Reaching for an all-stops-out tearjerking finale, a Japanese bomber wipes out all six men, along with one of the two girls who had become attached to them socially and romantically. The surviving girl, insisting they live on in spirit, conjures a vision of the resurrection of the unlucky seven’s smiling phantom forms. China will persevere and prevail.
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Dennis Grunes 