Ambiguity In Yellow Earth

What does this mean? Every shot in a film has meaning, if the director did not see any use for it, he would not use it in his film. The ambiguity of film language often times leads the viewer to ponder of the real meaning of a scene, rather than the superficial meaning of it. In the movie Yellow Earth, directed by Chen Kaige, is set in 1939 and focuses on the development of the relationship of a communist soldier and a peasant family. The goal of the soldier, Gu Qing, is to collect upbeat songs from the village to use for propaganda in his respective army. Gu develops a strong relationship with the children of the family he was staying with, and had a great impact on the girl, Cuiqao. Throughout the movie, we see a limited use of dialogue as a mode of communication. Rather, the filmmakers depended mostly on the scenes to speak for themselves. The dependency on the language of the film caused the film to have a lot of ambiguity, and thus leaving it up to the viewer

Yellow Earth depicts how futile the efforts of the politicians were at the time. For example, the ambiguity of the scene in which Cuiqao is crossing the river can mean many different things. Cuiqao crosses the river to escape from her marriage, after Gu had promised to return for her. In terms of politics in China, it means that their efforts to help were not reaching those who really needed it. Furthermore, it can mean that the political groups, such as the CPC, were not fulfilling the promises which they had told to the public. All of this can only be said because it is not known whether Cuiqao made it to the other side of the river or not. In addition, because Cuiqao was headed to a different army camp that was stationed across the river, it can be said that the people of China did not know which party to support. This all stems from the ambiguity of such a