Last Train Home (Canada, 2009)

Direction: Lixin Fan
Language: Mandarin
Year: 2009

Most of us would have experienced it, while travelling on festival season like Deepavali or Pongal. I’m referring to the rush which happens in the Koyambedu Bus Stand and at Central Railway Station in Chennai. Thousands of people flock the terminus to go to their native. A similar incident happens in China, but in a larger scale. 

China is known for its human migration, millions of people migrate from the mainland to the cities. The cheap labor is exploited to give ‘Made in China’ brand. Every year, during Chinese New Year, about 130 million of people migrate\travel to their native place. There is a mad rush in every railway station.

Last Train Home is a documentary film, which follows a husband (Changhua) and wife (Suquin) who are working in a factory at Guangzhou, the third largest city in China. Their teen daughter Qin and son Yang lives some 2000 Kms in mainland. They are taken care by their granny in a village. We see the train journey thrice. The parents meet their kids once in a year. The relationship gets sour between them. Qin, discontinues her studies from the village school and take up a job in a garment factory in Guangzhou. Did her parents succeed in taking her back to school is the rest of the plot.

The film can pose some serious questions about labor, especially cheap labor. I fail to understand or find it odd in terms of humanistic values on why labor in countries like China is cheap, but whereas in US, UK,.. it is high. I can understand, it is economics, but that doesn’t mean two people doing the same job can be paid differently. Moreover the person who is less paid has to suffer more.

This is a documentary, not documentary-style, but it looked like a feature film. A must see film, if you like to watch documentaries.

The Quarrel (1991)

Canadian film which debates on an age-old topic.  God versus Man.

This film came in the Amazon Series of Intellectual films, doesn’t need a super brain to assume why its intellectual, cause it speaks about the age-old issue, god vs man, faith vs reason. This Canadian film directed by Eli Cohen reminds me of a Tamil (Regional language in India) film Anbe Sivam.  The confrontation between the believer and the agnostic, this film also brings me the memories of my college days when similar kind of interaction and quarrel between friends.

The movie starts in 1940’s, were an agnostic writer Chaime meets his long time lost  friend now a Rabbi Hersh. They were sometime wilfully separated by the Holocaust. So what will happen when they meet, it’s a "quarrel". It’s beautifully set in a Montreal park, vivid pictures and sounds. Also credit has to be given to the screenplay for making the viewers to passively get hooked to the seat with just two characters in the screen for most of the time.

This 80 min movies does have its share of fun and the wierd moments of song and dance by the long met friends. The movie is full of quotable moments, touches the nerve of someone who has been in similar situations. The philosophical pointers touched by the film is never ending as the quarrel goes on and on with the two. Most of the issues discussed in the film are left open, doesn’t give any final statement or both the character stands inside their own boundary, which leaves the viewer to choose a path of their wish.