Yellow Earth Film Analysis

Yellow Earth is a Chinese movie directed by Chen Kai-ge in 1984. The movie’s cinematography is by Zhang Yimou. The movie was filmed when the Guomingdang and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had temporarily joined forces to fight against Japanese invaders. The protagonist, Gu Qing, is a CCP soldier who travels to a poor, rural village in Shanbei. His task is to collect local folk songs so that they can be rewritten with communist lyrics. Gu Qing stays with a peasant widower, Da Shu, and his two children, Cui Qiao and Hanhan.

The movie is set in Northern China on the Loess Plateau of Shanbei in the Shanxi province. In Shanxi, winters are long, dry, and cold, while summer is warm and humid. The deep gorges landscape is being sculpted by wind and water erosion. Not only is the earth yellow but the

During his short visit, Brother Gu and Da Shu’s family discuss culture and tradition. At the same time, Brother Gu passes on the teachings of Maoist communism, focusing mainly on gender equality. Brother Gu informs Da Shu that in the more modernized southern China, such as Yan’an, women pick their own husband based on love and affection. There is no dowry, betrothal, or matchmaker at all. Furthermore, women are becoming literate. Da Shu finds this very strange and doesn’t indicate any preference to adopt the ways of those in southern China. He is depicted as being a traditional old man. In the movie, he can be seen as a bad character, an example of peasant society’s backward feudalism. Although he doesn’t want his daughter Cui Qiao to have her own life, he is, in another sense, doing what he feels is best for her. Because of Dashu’s stubbornness to change, Cui Qiao runs away from the village and drowns in the river. Cui Qiao decides she would rather choose her own fate than listen to her father. She represents a modern woman who trusts her own feelings and does what she