«Earth and Dust», a tender love story in rural China (score 8½)- Corriere.it

Another China. Poor, silent, submittedlinked to rhythms and ai times
of agriculture as they understood it before machines and industrialization. But she capable of respect, loyalty and love: one Surprising China the one that is at the center of
“Earth and dust» by Li Ruijun («Yin ru chen yan» is the original title of the film, but also known by the international “Return to Dust”), portrait of a real but hidden country, unusable by the nationalistic propaganda and perhaps for this reason it was suddenly “cancelled” from the Chinese streaming platform in view of the party Congress that re-elected Xi Jinping a few weeks ago. A film that did not tell the wonderful fortunes and progressive and dared to remember that poverty still exists.

At that time better make it go away such a film, even if it had become a surprise hit in the nine weeks it was shown in theaters and on streaming she ringed visions. Even if the reasons for Chinese censorship are always difficult to decipher and faced with Li’s film, forgotten last year by the Berlinale awards but meritoriously recovered by the Far East Film Festival which now distributes it in Italy through its Tucker Film, another doubt arises as to why it could not be liked to Power: because it showed a country that had no desire to set out towards that material progress of which the Chinese government boasts so much, telling of a population that knew how to be satisfied with little and whose behavior was the opposite ofselfishness and ofgreed reigning.

All this — the portrait of a peasant world who lives on the edge of the “economic miracle” and who knows how to resist the temptations of consumerism — the film tells it following the hard daily life of «brother iron» and of the poor and crippled woman (mistreated by family members and offended physically, she even has problems controlling her bladder) that the three older brothers – whose nicknames are significantly « brother gold» «brother silver» and «brother leather» – they decide to saddle him. His name is Ma (Wu Renlin, a true farmerthe director’s uncle), she Guiying (Hai-Qing, a Chinese film star) and with the poor donkey they own, they begin to face together the life.

There isn’t much dialogue in the film, just the daily effort of a very poor life, yet filmed with a sweetness And an empathy contagious, capable of transforming silences into declarations of love. Just see the way he helps Guiying wash her hands in the stream where she struggles to kneel or ties her to him to keep her from falling out of bed in her sleep or the concern with which the woman meets him with hot water to refresh him after a tiring day, to understand that what might seem only solidarity among the last it is instead devotion and love. A feeling to which Wang Weihua’s photography gives warm colors and softly melancholy which seem to quote Rembrandt, as opposed to the cold tones of the brothers’ modern houses.

Every now and again the modernization of the country wants to assert its reasons without understanding that in that way it ends only for distort the soul of the people (in front of the house in the city that the Party wants to give him, Ma seriously explains that he doesn’t see it room for his donkey eliciting only sarcastic giggles). The two of them know how to build their own house – the mud brick making scenes are unforgettable, poignant and heartbreaking together —, together they know how to get what they need for their lives from the fields e the pique with which they pay their minimum debts (ten eggs) are proof of a morality which does not need laws or guardians to be respected, even if these qualities seem to have no place in today’s China, where «having» has ousted «being».

Pasolini comes to mind and his regret for a people dispossessed of its soul, a people that however Li Ruijun tells us with less ideological clarity and more instinctive sharing, looking for one Lost China made of effort and suffering but also of love and emotion.