Review of "The Return Train"

The definition of documentary is to truly and objectively record the facts that are happening or will disappear in the future. "The Return Train" tells the story of parents who go out to work and their children who stay at home. It truly records the crowded scenes at the train station during the Spring Festival travel rush. There is no narration in the entire film. Except for subtitles for some content that must be explained, simultaneous sound is used throughout to record the facts of what happened to the greatest extent possible.

The most impressive scene was when the father and daughter quarreled and even fought on the day they returned home during the Spring Festival. This was also the climax of the film. During this process, neither the director nor the photographer intervened to break up the fight, but recorded it truthfully, because we know that such quarrels will still happen even if the reporters are not at the scene, and the reporters are only recorders. I still remember the girl saying to the camera: "You want to record the real me, this is the real me." The scene that embarrassed both the father and daughter was the most authentic record, and it was also an unexpected "gain" for the film crew. (That’s why everyone will say that reporters are just afraid of chaos in the world.) After the quarrel, the girl went to work in a nightclub in Shenzhen. In the editing, the three scenes of the girl, grandma, and parents were alternately switched to create a contrasting effect.

I still remember a sentence in the documentary "Kindergarten": "Maybe it's the children, maybe it's us." Yes, in "The Return Train", it's not just Zhang Changhua's family that is recorded, maybe it's us, It reflects the contradiction between parents' expectations and children's dreams. This problem exists in most families and is also a common phenomenon in Chinese society. Parents want us to study hard and impose their own wishes on their children. They have never thought about what their children want.

One of the highlights of the film is that there is no pretense or whitewashing. Many scenes are shot as real as surveillance videos. I live in Guangdong, and some scenes are still very familiar to me. You say that China's economy has taken off and people are living a well-off life, but is this really the case? As you can see from the documentary, many of us are still living in dire straits. What it actually reflects is such a problem.

Searching for terms on Baidu Encyclopedia, the awards column is full of international awards. It can be seen that this film’s achievements and international evaluations are strange. It is strange that it did not win domestic awards. Maybe it’s because It's a bit embarrassing to show such a realistic China, and foreigners seem to prefer to see a backward China.