活著 (To Live)... ...Likewise, the whole film was beautiful, even when depicting awfulness that should've been unbearable. I'm not sure what I really got from it besides "Sucks to live in China", something that I kinda knew already.... ...But I felt that the melodrama was overdetermined in spots. (C'mon losing both children, respectively to the excesses of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution?)
I agree with all your points - I really enjoyed it when I saw it, despite the melodrama and owing largely to the epic beauty. Given the impressively strong and not at all hidden anti-Communist message, how did the director manage to stay out of jail long enough to do the movie he did with Jet Li?