{"id":8405,"date":"2010-02-22T22:51:25","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T06:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=8405"},"modified":"2010-02-23T07:07:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T15:07:00","slug":"last-train-home-lixin-fan-2009-canada-china-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=8405","title":{"rendered":"Last Train Home (Lixin Fan, 2009): Canada, China, UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Lea Encarnacion<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last Train Home<\/a> is a documentary about the life of factory workers and migrant workers in China. \u00a0As a first directorial film by Lixin Fan<\/a>, \u00a0it showed the chaos and the struggle that the Chinese people have to live and deal with everyday. \u00a0I felt it was a dirty and depressing story, but I liked the way the film was shot, edit, directed and laid out. \u00a0There were shots in the film that filled the screen with the mass of people all crowded and packed together, inhumanely like sardines or sheep. \u00a0It was mostly darkly lit, either indoors in low light or outdoors at nighttime.<\/p>\n

It follows a young girl who works in a factory, who left her schooling and gave up her education in order to work instead. \u00a0For her, it gives her freedom and independence, but to her family it is an unwise decision. \u00a0They want her to be in school but they are also poor and need money to pay the bills. \u00a0They are shown trying to get home for Christmas which is only a few days away. \u00a0The trains are all sold out and they are in despair to get home – as they are stranded with thousands of other people waiting for a chance to get on the train as they are.<\/p>\n

After waiting in the crowd in the cold night, they finally are able to board the very unsafe and jam packed train. \u00a0There is little space for everyone’s luggage, much less breathing room and space for air. \u00a0They get home to a \u00a0tiny, unfurnished, plain single story one bedroom home where their grandmother lives. \u00a0The family is all together, but things turn sour as the father and daughter get into a fight about independence issues.<\/p>\n

The film ends with a mural depiction of a sea of umbrellas as they head back home in the rain. \u00a0The impact this film has forces you, as a member of the audience, to look at your own life and compare it, and see all the little things that we take for granted when living our daily lives. The audience members were mostly elderly people – some who commented that after seeing the film – one cannot be but thankful for what we have for a life in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Lea Encarnacion. \u00a0Viewed as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Last Train Home is a documentary about the life of factory workers and migrant workers in China. \u00a0As a first directorial film by Lixin Fan, \u00a0it showed the chaos and the struggle that the Chinese people have to live and deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":618,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/618"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8405\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}