Thinking about "Last Train Home"

I saw a great movie last night with my Mom and my Sister. We went to The Broadway Theatre and saw a Chinese/Canadian co- production "Last Train Home". The film was beautifully shot and edited. You could physically feel the difference between rural and urban China. Urban China was crowded, grey, smoggy, harsh, tiresome, and you got the very real sense that the smells were probably not too pleasant either. Contrast that to rural China where the landscape was green, fertile and not too crowded. Even though the labour being done on the farms was physical and continuous, it felt so much calmer and almost refreshing compared to the work the migrant workers were doing bent over the sewing machines in the massive factories in the over crowded cities.

SPOILER ALERT!

The film centered around one family. Grandmother was looking after a 16 year old girl and a 13 year old boy. Mom and Dad had moved 2100 miles away to find work in a clothing factory. They left rural China when the girl was 1 year old. They only come back once a year during the Chinese New Year to see their children. 1,300,000 other migrant workers in China do the same. The mass of travel at that time of year cripples the transportation systems. Mom and Dad had to stand in lines every day for a week to try to get tickets, then when it was announced that there were no tickets and no more trains being added, they were forced to go to the "resale" ticket window where they were able to find tickets. Although it was never said in the film that the price was more than it would be regularly, you got a very distinct impression that the price was inflated by the look on the fathers face. Mom and Dad spend 2 days traveling back to their remote village by train, boat, bus and foot.

The reunion appears happy, presents are given and warm hugs are exchanged. It is clear though that this really is as deep as the relationship between the parents and the kids is. The parents lecture the kids about studying harder and getting good grades so they can be successful, the children clearly look to grandma for their parenting needs. A great deal of pressure is placed on the young 13 year old son, he is "the hope for the whole family". It is clear that the children feel abandoned.

The film has left me with questions, and that is good. I question whether the daughter feels an extra sense of abandonment because of the way her younger brother is placed on a pedestal? Is this a remnant of the one child policy that was officially in place in China for years, and that unofficially still is, or is it because she is not doing as well in school and her parents simply favour the son? The girl does drop out of school and heads for factory life in the city. After a huge confrontation back at home during the next New Years holiday she does not go back to the city to work in a factory with her parents, she heads of to another province and finds work in a bar. The mother decides to return to the village to parent her son, so he will stay in school and not make the same mistakes as his sister. The family is further fractured. The biggest question I am left with is what has happened to the girl? I doubt that she makes the yearly migrant return during the New Years holiday anymore.