Back To 1942
Feng Xiaogang
The story: In 1942, Henan province was devastated by a famine which exacted a toll of three million lives. The different aspects of the tragedy are revealed through the stories of various characters. Landlord Fan (Zhang Guoli) and his family are part of the mass human exodus making the painful journey to Shaanxi province on foot. The Kuomintang government under Chiang Kai-shek (Chen Daoming) would rather keep the issue under wraps but American journalist Theodore White (Adrien Brody) writes an expose for Time magazine. Meanwhile, the Japanese aggressors go from dropping bombs on the refugees to feeding the famished multitudes. Based on the 1993 memoir Back To 1942 by China author Liu Zhenyun.

Back To 1942 is an epic movie about a disaster.
But it is a totally different animal from bombastic Hollywood fare such as 2012 (2009) or The Day After Tomorrow (2004), where the spectacle of the safely fictional disaster – towering waves, massive destruction – is presented for entertainment.
Director Feng Xiaogang’s latest work is more about bearing witness to a tragic episode of utter human misery.
His previous film Aftershock (2010), about the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, seems at first to be something of a template for 1942.
In both dramas, he offers up scenes which give a sense of the scale of disaster. Here, for example, you get wide shots of the heartbreakingly long line of refugees who are driven by hunger and desperation to take to the road.
At the same time, he finds the human heart of the story by delving into the lives of various characters.
In this regard, Aftershock is more successful as it follows one family’s travails and after an outpouring of emotions and tears, audiences get a sense of catharsis.
Back To 1942 does not have as strong a narrative arc and as such, one does not feel for the characters as much even with strong actors such as Zhang Guoli (The Founding Of A Republic, 2009) and Xu Fan (so good as a mother in Aftershock) playing some of the key refugees.
Also, the unremitting bleakness of what is unfolding on screen begins to numb the viewer after a while.
Landlord Fan (Zhang) pretends at first that he and his family are not refugees but are merely avoiding a temporary rough patch. Gradually, and relentlessly, he starts to lose his material possessions and then the people around him.
What hunger does not claim, the bitter cold does. Human life is like so much chaff.
In the midst of all this suffering, there are unscrupulous people who seek to profit from tumultuous times: Women are bought and sold for a measly few pounds of millet grain and officials squabble when relief supplies are, at long last, offered.
But Feng is too ambitious in trying to offer a comprehensive sweep of the famine.
He adds in a menacingly mercurial Chiang Kai-shek (an authoritative Chen Daoming) and an earnest American journalist (Adrien Brody) and even a late, brief shift in point-of-view to that of the Japanese.
The end result is a film that feels too sprawling and scattered when it is not being unwaveringly grim.
Back To 1942 might be a well-meaning drama but it is not one that is easy to watch.
(ST)