Intimate Last Train Home a Family Journey
Last Train Home is a sad, poignant document showing the high cost of China’s economic worldwide ascendance. A chronicle of the Zhang family, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan’s stunning debut is as visually beautiful as it is emotionally intimate. It is a sometimes shocking, oftentimes heartbreaking look at what it takes to raise children in a culture where grueling factory work can take parents away from their young for months at a time.
Zhang Qin in Last Train Home © Zeitgeist Films
The part of the film that affected me the most revolved around Zhang Qin. Raised by her maternal grandmother, she is not allowed to accompany her parents on their trek to the factories. She is lucky to see them once a year during the New Year holiday, and has time has gone by the 17-year-old has become convinced they care more about making money than they do about her.
This leads her to devastating choices that ripped me apart. She makes decisions that have almost been bred into her thanks to a country that almost seems like it doesn’t want anything to do with her, only seeing the young woman as a potential cog in their internationally-driven factory system. It’s almost as if China wants her to be disillusioned by her parents, wants her to think making $5-a-day is something to be proud of and lusted after, and watching her potentially fall victim to that trap nearly broke my heart.
But it is the annual migrant exodus itself which took my breath away completely. Fan shows this 130-million person journey in all its majesty and with all its human tragedy intact. At once a beautiful showcase of the landscape and of the people who ostensibly live within it, it is also a devastating indictment of the cost of China’s furious global quest for dominance, the price the people are paying nowhere near worth the profits the government and the corporations they’ve brought to their shores are making off their labors.
Last Train Home is another example of how corporations and the governments they’ve been able to win over to their way of thinking have begun dominating our lives. It is a saga of perseverance and love that can be easily misunderstood by those it is most meant for, showing how meaning and intent can be destroyed when distance and unfamiliarity is all that is known. A strong documentary, Fan offers up stunning insights her film crackling in emotional resonance, and even though it showcases a family struggle on the opposite side of the globe the story it’s telling is so intimate and familiar it might as well be our very own.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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