Zhang Yimou-Qiu Ju da guan si (’The Story of Qiu Ju’) (1992)

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A humorous fable of justice that traverses shot in the north of China. Gong Li plays Qiu Ju, a tenacious farmer determined to right a wrong done to her husband. Defying all stereotypes of the passive Chinese woman, she remains unbowed by the frustrations of bureaucracy in her quixotic search for dignity. SONY







With The Story of Qiu Ju, internationally acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou shifts his attention from powerful historical dramas to contemporary life. Gong Li plays the titular heroine, an average woman in a rural village whose life is unexceptional until her husband is physically attacked by the village elder. When the elder refuses to apologize, Qiu Ju decides to seek legal action with the help of a local magistrate. (~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide)







Soon, her quest for simple justice balloons into a series of frustrating battles with a complicated and unproductive bureaucracy. In contrast to the rich, painterly look of his previous films, Zhang adopts an unadorned, realistic style that allows the film’s increasingly absurd situations to speak for themselves. Indeed, while the look at government gone wrong has serious underpinnings, the overall tone remains one of understated satire. As might be expected, The Story of Qiu Ju was received with greater appreciation by international critics than in its home country. (~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide)







A pregnant peasant woman seeks redress from the Chinese bureaucracy after the village chief kicks her husband in the groin in this comedy of justice. As she is frustrated by each level of the hierarchy and travels farther and farther away from the countryside the viewer is also provided with a look at the changing Chinese society through the verite camera used in most scenes. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0105197/plotsummary)







Don’t let the simplicity of the storyline or the documentary-like realism of the depiction of peasant life in rural China either put you off The Story of Qiu Ju or underestimate its achievement. Zhang Yimou’s film uses a simple story about simple ordinary people and gives it a treatment as powerful and dramatic as any courtroom drama. In the process, it depicts a whole range of human emotions in a variety of circumstances, realistically, but not without a sense of humour and absurdity - delving deeply into the darker side of human nature and making a strong political statement about the lives of simple people caught up in the machinery of justice and politics. With a magnificently restrained, yet competely appropriate sense of direction, and a world-class acting performance from Gong Li, The Story of Qiu Ju is nothing less than a masterpiece. DVD Times