Last Train Home

One of the first sequences in Last Train Home is a wide shot of a massive crowd. I can’t compare what all of those people looked like, huddled together. The thousands in this shot aren’t having a good time. They are waiting in line, a fraction of the 130 million Chinese factory workers trying to find a way home to the countryside for the holidays.

The documentary follows two out of millions, the married couple Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin. The cameras have intimate access to the couple and follow them throughout the course of several years. We see them at their jobs at the sewing machines (where they work side by side,) in their bedroom, inside the train cars they take and at family reunions back home.

This film is amazing. I don’t remember ever before watching footage of the daily lives of Chinese factory workers. China is becoming a super power rivaling the United States, and they are doing so on the backs of these peasant workers.

The amazing thing is how similar the human experience is regardless of country. We all have marriage in common, children, work and old age. In China there is protein deficiency and babies crawling around factory floors, but life is sh---y for the working class everywhere.

The natural sound in the film sounds beautiful through the Living Room speakers, from rain falling from a roof and chirping insects at night in the countryside to the sounds of the factory and the crowds on the train. The sound is rich and adds another layer to the story.

Another sound captured is the constant drone of the mother lecturing her daughter. Parents are the same everywhere.

The climax includes my personal pick for fight of the year for 2011. The two putting dukes up are 110 lb Zhang Changhua and his 110 lb daughter Zhang Qin. I really relate to this Qin girl she was just standing up for herself. She knows that you can’t trust shifty a—people talking that “do as I say, not as I do” mess.

This girl is so gangster, that after she is done throwing down with her dad she breaks the fourth wall of cinema, looks at the camera and screams, “You wanted to film the real me? This is the real me!”

There are many other priceless sequences. One is a funny rave scene involving electronic music, go-go dancers, and a club full of sweaty kids. Qin’s grandma gets a lot of camera time too and effectively steals the show. She is tiny and wrinkled and raises the children and works the farm and prescribes bitter melons for pimples and mosquitoes don’t bite her because according to her, “she is a hard-working woman.” She is my pick for grandma of the year.

This movie is getting a lot of early nods from me. It’s that good. I give it an A+.