Summer Palace: The Movie

Summer Palace: The Movie.
***note: This is NOT a movie to show to your kids. Though it has a NR or not rated rating I would rate it somewhere between R and X because of multiple lovers for Yu and other ladies in college and beyond. Very graphic sex scenes even though the movie is very enlightening of what it was like to be a student who demonstrated at Tianamin square in 1989 at the Summer Palace.

This is a Chinese movie with english subtitles. I found it very informative. The lack of dialogue I found both intriging and horrifying. Having been to Japan in 1985 and then seeing this depiction of 1988 China to the early 2000s and also Berlin during those similar years I found this depiction believable. It mostly follows a female Chinese college student named Yu and her various loves and friends through the Tianamin pro democracy demonstration and massacre in 1989.

I was impressed the way they depicted her experiences, the confusion of not really knowing what was going on that much in regard to Tienamin demonstrations as a college student and singing in groups for the pro democracy movement and then having to run from the soldiers to stay alive. I found it disorienting but believable the way Yu was. Each of the college students was trying in their own way to believe in something. One of Yu's best friends eventually kills herself in Berlin years later because she can't find anyone to believe in or to believe in her long term.

There is a feeling of the deep trauma of the people in the movie as if they were born traumatized by all the poverty and lack and suffering. And so even when they go to Berlin they take this poverty of beliefs and emotions with them. One can sense the intelligence of all these people but they all appear so emotionally bereft of any satisfaction at all if I were like them I would have a very difficult time not killing myself from the oppression of their lives. However, I have lived through difficult times and when actually living through them it is a lot different than anyone else could understand without experiencing the same thing with you.

Yu has many lovers but finally settles down with one man at random. I found this very believable as I have met many people who have lived this way and were just tired of being single.

Many of us have this dream of meeting the perfect mate. Many times we meet them and maybe are even lovers with them. But do we get to live happily ever after with our "perfect mate"? No. Usually not. However, no man and no woman is an island. At some point if we want to have a family we have to choose a partner and settle down and that partner usually isn't someone we are deeply in love with. More likely it is someone who is a good friend and lover. For this last person is actually someone that makes a good mate. It's not that the "perfect partner" isn't perfect. It's just we don't live in a perfect world and if you are with your "perfect partner" likely your partner isn't because that is just how crazy life really is!