Cheap Life on a String (DVD) (Kaige Chen) Price

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Customer Reviews of Life on a String

beautiful film/flawed transfer
Kaige's work with symbolism and emotion is superb.I initially saw this movie on VHS after reading Hoberman's review in the Village Voice. The pacing is fairly fast, given the length of the story, the activity moves right along. Those folks not use to movies outside the mainstream might feel ackward but give it a chance. At the same time Kino Video has done an atrocious job with the video transfer. The initial 10 minutes the frame shakes and jerks and I guarantee that's not from the original. The resolution is overly grainy, someone else needs to redo the remaster, because this awesome screen parable deserves it.

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Eyes of the soul always pull the strings of life
Chen Kaige's Life on a String is an interesting drama about a blind musician and his young student in past times of China. Master and student travels through the countryside depending only each other in harsh conditions. Master however is hailed as a saint in villages and highly respected. He dreams of being able to see after breaking the 1000th string on his instrument which is told him by his master when he was very very young.
His student however is different than him, more focused on life itself, and a villager girl who has an eye on him makes issues even more complex and thus causing trouble between 2 man.
Life on string is an early work of Chen Kaige and many people will find it long, heavy and basicly very boring. Film demands your attention fully focused on it and requires your patience.
You need to sit back and watch it peacefully without disruption. It is nearly 2 hours long and you wont see much action here apart from some sad twists of life. But such experience is difficult to comeby these days. Kaige's way of telling the story is nothing less than amazing with great takes of Chinese landscape; the wastelands, furious rivers, small towns and temples. Camera work and cinephotography is amazing and acting is good.Zhong yuan Liu's portrayal of the old blind master who can even ends fighting between clans with his instrument. Of course there is traditional Chinese music and songs which creates a great atmosphere by simply elevating the masters "saint" status while he wa singing.
Story questions life itself, asking what is actually seeing and do we see everything by our eyes only? Although master and the student are both blind they actually are aware of every situation around them and use the eyes of their hearts and souls to see. "2 princes fell to earth from heaven" as master says to his student. God of heaven sent his soldiers to shut their eyes so they could not see the evil and dirt of the earth. Both musicians are pure in one sense having none of earthly desires but one : to be able to see which they already know but unaware.
We see it through may examples like in the scenes where master watches a waterfall blindly while a small rainbow graces this beautiful view. Film also has many philosophic underlines and religious background like God of death appearing in man's form
keeping an eye on the old master, refusing to take any money from him, gracing his food with a burning sauce, preparing freshest noodles for the brave traveller only.When master asks about him an answer comes without hesitation: He is the boss, one and only.
Overall it is a difficult long film by Kaige and should not be mixed by his later work. But although it is demanding, it is also very very promising in terms of beauty of cinema as an art. You need to watch life on a string not only with your eyes but with your heart and soul as well. A beautiful example of cinema as a visual art that always touch the senses like nothing else.

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Buddha's Teaching On Emptiness
A young blind musician is promised by his master that he will
be able to see once he has broken one thousand strings while playing his chinese banjo. Now an old man, he wanders through Chinese village with a young apprentice (who is also blind), playing for villagers who treat him as a saint.

When he breaks the 1000th string, there is no miracle for his eyes; however, he does "see" that each one is led through life by an illusion that suffering will miraculously disappear one day. His young apprentice also has been disillusioned by the death of his lover. Faced with the emptiness of life, the two have different reactions. The old man first becomes angry but then goes back to singing the same old songs about how one day we will not sing from sadness but from joy. It would seem that he has gathered that in the same way as he needed the myth of the 1000 broken strings to get through life with hope, so too do most people need
a myth to carry them through life.

The young apprentice, on the other hand, chooses death and jumps from the same cliff that brought death to his beloved.

This movie is about as happy as reading Schopenhauer. However, there is something liberating about confronting our mortality. When we do so, we can finally begin living instead of devoting so much energy to "covering up" death. This idea was not really explored in the movie though.

As in all Chinese cinema there is wonderful camerawork and scenery; the songs are beautiful and haunting. I would have given 5 stars, except the director attempted to add some minimalist touches to this movie which seemed forced and, in any case, did not completely work.