Film review(Last train home) - Essay Example

Last Train Home of Last Train Home Competing with some of China’s best documentaries like West of the Tracks, Disorder, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, the amateur Chinese-Canadian filmmaker, Lixin Fan begins his documentary, Last Train Home, with a scene where a huge crowd clogs the screen with which the viewers are informed in subtitles that in China every lunar new year more than one million workers return home from work to their families to spend the spring festival. The huge chaotic horde of people is explained to be the one of the world’s largest annual human migrations.

Soon after that Fan camera shows how the underclass Chinese spend their days. There are repeated views of the piles of garments in a Guangzhou Factory where the two characters of Fan’s documentary toil to earn enough funds to give their children acceptable life. Last Train Home is the story of parents who make painful sacrifices to ensure their kids have a better future and the children who do not care for their parent’s dreams (Fan, 2009).Mr. Fan depicts the story of the struggles of poor parents who moves to the city from the rural village to work in an urban factory just like many other millions of people in China.

In this film, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin are introduced as hard working factory workers who saves every penny to send home, leave their children, daughter Qin and her kid brother Yang, under the protection of grandmother. Just be able to see their kids once a year is very painful for both the parents but is the only way for them to ensure the better education for their kids. They dream that in 15 years the fruit of their toil will be paid off when their kids would complete their education, and they would be able to live peacefully.

Their daughter Qin, a high school student, sees her parents as naggers who abandoned her and were very sick of them. She doubt but what she does next is rather heartbreaking for her parents. She moves to Guangzhou to get a job in a factory so she can spend her earning on herself (Fan, 2009).The filmmaker has done most of the cinematography himself who has a great eye for tiny details picturing the landscapes beautifully. He also shows the over populated, suffocating population of China where the life of a single human being hardly matters.

Fan shows the control of a professional. In the documentary, Fan follows the Zhang’s family for three years. He does not leave his viewer in false optimism and manages to follow the punishing lives of the family smoothly.Some of the scenes are very interesting to watch where the workers talk about the Olympics or laughing at the waistlines of American jeans. There are quiet moments like when Qin cries in the woods talking to the spirit of her dearest grandfather about how she doesn’t like her parents or when Qin takes off with her friends to the mall where she sees the jeans and wonders if those are made in their factories.

Fan explains that how the younger generation want those things but without the hard work of years of bending over the machines.ReferenceFan, L. (Director). (2009). Last Train Home [Motion Picture].