Postmen in the Mountains
(Nashan
naren nagou)
(China, 1998)
Postmen in the Mountains
(Nashan
naren nagou)
(China, 1998)
Story:
The film is about a village postman and his delicate relations
with his son.
Set in the south-central Hunan province of
China, ''Postmen in the Mountains'' is the sentimental tale of a rural mailman
(Teng Runjun) whose route takes him on a three-day, 75-mile trek through some
of the most beautiful scenery known to man...
Other Reviews:
If you want to make a grown man cry at the movies, give him a story about an estranged father and son who reconcile and come to love and respect each other before it's too late. Postmen in the Mountains is such a tale, told amidst the stunning mountain scenery of China's remote Hunan province. It's a simple and moving story, a walk in the woods that leads to a beautiful and uplifting conclusion.
In
the mountains of Southern China, an aging postman is ready to relinquish his
arduous round and hand over the duties to his son. Intially the son is determined
to travel on his own, but the father insists on joining him for one last delivery
and show him the proper route to take. The draining three day journey begins
with the father and son barely speaking and their strained relations over the
years are very obvious. With the father insisting that his son listens to him
and not try to cut corners on the job, the pair seem ill-suited for the long
days ahead.
Dreamy and deliberate, "Postmen in the Mountains" doesn't sound like much of a premise. A father who has delivered the mail in the rugged Hunan province of China all his life passes his route on to his son. He accompanies him for one last journey through the mountains and towns. That's it. No avalanches, floods or marauding mail bandits.
Advertised as "from the makers of Chen Kaige's 'Together'," the new film "Postmen in the Mountains" looked as if it would be one of those sweet, brain-dead foreign films that Miramax loves to scoop up, filled to bursting with swelling violin-and-angel-choir music and tear-filled hellos and goodbyes.
That,
at least, was the translation of the Chinese title of this movie, showing
up in English on the screen beneath three ideograms which I took to be symbols
for these three things. The movie is advertised here as "Postmen in the
Mountains" which has its own surreal quality but lacks something in poetry.
In this on-demand age of e-mail and FedEx, ''Postmen in the Mountains'' runs the risk of being viewed as quaint ancient history.
In a critical scene in Huo Jianqi's "Postmen
in the Mountains," a young man hoists his father onto his back. The son
is sparing his father the discomfort of having to wade through a mountain
stream, a cold, slippery walk that would aggravate the arthritis in the older
man's knee.
The moment is small and probably ordinary in the context of the culture of
rural China, but it signals a seismic shift in the relationship between a
father and his son.
Living in a time of cell phones, instant messaging and e-mail, communication is immediate andseemingly easy. It hasn't always been so, nor do all people enjoy such luxury. Sometimes communication is slow, spare and more deliberate. In the Chinese film Postmen in the Mountains, communication is everywhere, and while we may live in the Information Age, the film reveals that communication has always been important, and that sometimes it takes a while.