Blue Kite
Lan feng zheng (1993)

This movie about the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural 
Revolution in China was meant to be reactionary and in that 
context, it's a pretty good film. It's a good film not 
because it portrays the important advances made in the 
Cultural Revolution in a way that makes clear to the 
uneducated audience why the revolution was such an advance 
(it doesn't even try to do this). It is a good film because 
it basically tells the truth.

The movie focuses on a family that faces a lot of hard 
times through the Cultural Revolution. Out of context, to 
an Amerikan audience, these hard times could seem like the 
fault of a failed revolution. This is a big problem with 
the movie. When one man dies of liver trouble, if the 
audience does not know how much medicine has advanced 
during the revolution they would think this is the fault of 
backward medical care that came from a failed revolution. 
When another man is going blind due to eye problems, the 
audience is again left thinking it is just the failure of 
medicine under Mao that left the doctor with only the 
option of suggesting that he not put too much stress on his 
eyes. 

On the positive side, the movie lets all of it's characters 
survive the Great Leap Forward with collective kitchens and 
enough (though scarce) food. One of the brothers in the 
family is clearly a Rightist by all that he says and does, 
and he is sent off to a rectification camp where he seems 
to learn some things. The main character admits that he was 
a Rightist all along. The husband of the main character is 
also sent off to rectification camp and the movie does not 
try to lie and make these camps out to be evil. The husband 
is about to return when he is killed in an accident by a 
falling tree. Again, some audiences will take this to mean 
that the revolution killed him, but we later learn that the 
husband did not view the rectification bitterly and was not 
angry that people had denounced his liberal political 
views.

Later in the movie the main character marries an older 
party member: she says she is doing it to provide some 
structure for her son. As soon as they move in with him the 
audience is struck with the size of his house and the 
amount of his wealth. Compared to the situation of the 
average Chinese, this man is really well off. After a while 
he tells his wife and son that he is being criticized and 
that he will be arrested soon. As he tells them this we see 
him burning papers. The thinking viewer of this movie 
should take this as an example of correct criticism during 
the Cultural Revolution. This man had used his position in 
the party to gain wealth and a bourgeois life. He even used 
his wife as a servant, contrary to the situation she had 
enjoyed in her previous marriages to poorer men.

There are examples in this movie of the Cultural Revolution 
going too far. In fact, Mao criticized the ultraleftists in 
the Cultural Revolution for their line of "criticize all, 
overthrow all." He said that they went too far and were too 
violent when struggle should have been carried out without 
violence and when people should have been rectified rather 
than punished. There were clearly people who were wrongly 
criticized, but there was only one example of serious 
punishment for a non- existent crime.

One revolutionary young woman quits her job in the army 
because of what is hinted at as gender discrimination. She 
is later put in prison during the Hundred Flowers campaign 
of 1957. This is probably a realistic example of one of the 
errors of the revolution. Some people who were not 
politically enemies were punished because of appearances of 
their actions or because of overzealous cadre. She is 
released during the Cultural Revolution. And the prisons 
were not portrayed as evil institutions of torture. Again a 
mark in favor of the movie.

The movie also tries to portray an atmosphere of fear in 
which people had to watch every word they spoke for fear 
that they would be punished. The reality of this is that 
incorrect ideas should be criticized whenever and wherever 
they are found. It is a good example of liberalism that the 
main characters of the movie let friends and relatives slip 
by saying reactionary things without struggling with them 
over these things. Of course the movie did not try to 
explain why it is that people would want to struggle 
against incorrect ideas because that was not it's purpose. 
Wait until MIM produces some films.

This movie is good for Maoists to see. It is important that 
people realize that the Cultural Revolution was not 
perfect, but that it did a lot to advance the struggle 
against liberalism. In the context of study about Chinese 
history and what really happened, this film could be 
informative. But if you have not studied up on the Cultural 
Revolution and do not yet know why the people were 
encouraged to criticize their leaders, you would be better 
off sending $8 to MIM for a copy of Jean Daubier's book, 
*The History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution*, rather 
than seeing this misleading movie.

-- MC17 and MC206