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‘Living the Land’ Review: Progress Takes Time In a Stirring, Season-Cycling Chinese Family Saga
Huo Meng's 'Living the Land' observes four generations of farmers as they weather age-old obstacles, new advancements and the shadow of mortality.
There’s a patient, plainspoken poetry, neither overly earthy nor flowery, to “ Living the Land,” a rolling rural drama that may be a work of pure fiction — but often feels wholly, organically observed, as if its storytelling were dictated by the rigors and challenges of seasons and soil. An unassuming but impressive second feature from Chinese writer-director Huo Meng, the film deftly captures the pace of life in a modest farming village on the brink of industrialization in 1991: a steady meander, at once languid and arduous, that is felt differently across four generations of the hard-up Li family. They’re treated with due care and compassionate scrutiny by Huo and DP Guo Daming — whose camera finds great compositional depth and intricacy in cramped, dimly lit interiors, illuminating faces like sparks of humanity in the drear.
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