PLOT SUMMARY
At a remote Chinese primary school, a thirteen-year girl, Wei Minzhi, was employed as a substitute teacher for the regular teacher, Gao, who had to leave for a month to look after his ailing mother. For her work she was promised fifty Yuan and Gao agreed to give her a bonus of ten Yuan if she managed to retain all his twenty-eight students, hence the title, Not One Less. As she was barely older than her students and her limited education she encountered difficulty in running the forty-five year-old school. She had to face a particularly disruptive boy, Zhang Huike. One day he failed to turn up to school as he was compelled to look for work in the city to cater for his ailing, debt-ridden mother. Determined as ever, Wei tried to raise the necessary funds with the help of the other students to go to the city and bring him back. To Wei and Zhang city life was alien and harsh as they struggled to feed themselves and sought shelter in the railway station. It was through the local television station's contact that they were finally reunited. Not only was her goal achieved but she managed to get other resources for the students and to rebuild the school, later renamed Shuiquan School of Hope.
ANALYSIS
Zhang Yimou, the producer of such colourful, mythified, melodramatic movies like "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Red Sorghum" had come full circle to produce this semi-documentary, realistic film. However, given his experience as a rural worker (1968 to 1878) during the Cultural Revolution, it is not too surprising that he had come up with this emphasis on real rural life in contemporary China, the prevailing poverty, children deprived of education and hardships faced by the inhabitants. This "realistic" film is underlined by the use of amateurs instead of professionals. Most played their real-life roles, for example, the mayor is actually Tian Zhenda, the teacher is Gao and two children Wei Minzhi and Zhang Huike played characters of the same name. Settings such as the school, the local television station and the city (Zhangjiakou) are real. The only connection with the Zhang Yimou of old is his preference for red which is depicted by the large red flower in front of the truck carrying the goods to the village. There are four major themes in this film. The first focused on courage and determination. Once Wei made up her mind to go to the city to bring Zhang back nothing could stop her. She was not concerned about her own safety in an alien environment and her limited resources. We first saw her determination when she tried to stop one of the girls from being taken away to the Sports academy. Although she was lost in the city and made to wait for one and a half days to meet the station manager she did not give up. It was her sheer courage and determination that won the day. These two qualities plus persistence and endurance are reminiscence of human qualities that we see in many of Zhang's films.
The next theme is the prevailing poverty in the rural areas. We see the decrepit school condition, the broken school furniture and children migrating to the city to work to support the family. The third is the importance of money, including the lack of it. Money permeates this film from beginning to end. Early in the film Wei asked Gao about her pay and later we saw how she tried to raise funds for the bus trips and at the same time the students learned how to count. The lack of money meant Wei and Zhang had to sleep in the railway station and rely on leftovers to fill their stomachs. On the positive side money was donated to rebuild the school and settle Zhang's mother's debts. The final theme is the urban-rural dichotomy. On one hand, we saw beautiful natural landscape relatively untouched by man, on the other we saw the busy, crowded and man-made city landscape with high-rise buildings. This dichotomy is also the rich and poor divide. Coming from the countryside where everybody knows and helps each other, Wei and Zhang were misfits in this new uncompromising environment. Not only were their clothing different, they encountered unfriendly and unhelpful people like the receptionist at the television station. Zhang Yimou raised these themes of rural poverty and rural-urban dichotomy to highlight the prevailing social inequality that exist in China and hopefully generate some support to alleviate poverty. His final message stated that one million children had dropped out of school annually because of poverty. Financial help from various sources had enabled fifteen percent to return to school. This is powerful message that he had sent out in this film.
At a remote Chinese primary school, a thirteen-year girl, Wei Minzhi, was employed as a substitute teacher for the regular teacher, Gao, who had to leave for a month to look after his ailing mother. For her work she was promised fifty Yuan and Gao agreed to give her a bonus of ten Yuan if she managed to retain all his twenty-eight students, hence the title, Not One Less. As she was barely older than her students and her limited education she encountered difficulty in running the forty-five year-old school. She had to face a particularly disruptive boy, Zhang Huike. One day he failed to turn up to school as he was compelled to look for work in the city to cater for his ailing, debt-ridden mother. Determined as ever, Wei tried to raise the necessary funds with the help of the other students to go to the city and bring him back. To Wei and Zhang city life was alien and harsh as they struggled to feed themselves and sought shelter in the railway station. It was through the local television station's contact that they were finally reunited. Not only was her goal achieved but she managed to get other resources for the students and to rebuild the school, later renamed Shuiquan School of Hope.
ANALYSIS
Zhang Yimou, the producer of such colourful, mythified, melodramatic movies like "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Red Sorghum" had come full circle to produce this semi-documentary, realistic film. However, given his experience as a rural worker (1968 to 1878) during the Cultural Revolution, it is not too surprising that he had come up with this emphasis on real rural life in contemporary China, the prevailing poverty, children deprived of education and hardships faced by the inhabitants. This "realistic" film is underlined by the use of amateurs instead of professionals. Most played their real-life roles, for example, the mayor is actually Tian Zhenda, the teacher is Gao and two children Wei Minzhi and Zhang Huike played characters of the same name. Settings such as the school, the local television station and the city (Zhangjiakou) are real. The only connection with the Zhang Yimou of old is his preference for red which is depicted by the large red flower in front of the truck carrying the goods to the village. There are four major themes in this film. The first focused on courage and determination. Once Wei made up her mind to go to the city to bring Zhang back nothing could stop her. She was not concerned about her own safety in an alien environment and her limited resources. We first saw her determination when she tried to stop one of the girls from being taken away to the Sports academy. Although she was lost in the city and made to wait for one and a half days to meet the station manager she did not give up. It was her sheer courage and determination that won the day. These two qualities plus persistence and endurance are reminiscence of human qualities that we see in many of Zhang's films.
The next theme is the prevailing poverty in the rural areas. We see the decrepit school condition, the broken school furniture and children migrating to the city to work to support the family. The third is the importance of money, including the lack of it. Money permeates this film from beginning to end. Early in the film Wei asked Gao about her pay and later we saw how she tried to raise funds for the bus trips and at the same time the students learned how to count. The lack of money meant Wei and Zhang had to sleep in the railway station and rely on leftovers to fill their stomachs. On the positive side money was donated to rebuild the school and settle Zhang's mother's debts. The final theme is the urban-rural dichotomy. On one hand, we saw beautiful natural landscape relatively untouched by man, on the other we saw the busy, crowded and man-made city landscape with high-rise buildings. This dichotomy is also the rich and poor divide. Coming from the countryside where everybody knows and helps each other, Wei and Zhang were misfits in this new uncompromising environment. Not only were their clothing different, they encountered unfriendly and unhelpful people like the receptionist at the television station. Zhang Yimou raised these themes of rural poverty and rural-urban dichotomy to highlight the prevailing social inequality that exist in China and hopefully generate some support to alleviate poverty. His final message stated that one million children had dropped out of school annually because of poverty. Financial help from various sources had enabled fifteen percent to return to school. This is powerful message that he had sent out in this film.