Taking 'Last Train Home'

Back in the 1980s, the culture critic（n.评论家） Marshall Berman wrote a brilliant book called All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. He argued that the great drama of modernity（n.现代性） is the way that people go from being passive objects of modernization — mere tools of history — to subjects who struggle to define（v.定义） their own relationship to a world in which everything is changing.

Never has such change happened on a greater scale（n.范围） than in modern China.The different ways individuals deal with this is the subject of Last Train Home, a gorgeous new documentary by Lixin Fan, a Chinese filmmaker based in Montreal.Shot over three years, Last Train Home deals with an amazing social fact — every single Chinese New Year, 130 million migrant workers leave the cities and return home to their rural（adj.农村的） villages.The movie puts a human face on this migration（n.移民） by showing its affects on a single family.

Suqin and her husband, Chunghua, originally come from a remote（adj.偏远的） village in Sichuan province, but for the past 17 years they've been living in the megacity（n.大城市） of Guangzhou where they sleep in barracks（n.简陋房舍，临时棚屋）, slave away in a garment （n.衣服）factory, and give their savings to their family back home.When we first meet them, they're about to make the two-day train trip home to their village to see their two children, their sullen（adj.闷闷不乐的） 17-year-old daughter, Qin, and her younger brother, Yang.Suqin and Chungua are stoked, and we anticipate a happy reunion.

Structured around three annual（adj.一年一次的） journeys home, the movie tells a story at once epic and intimate.The epic side comes out in the second year, when Suqin and Chunghua spend days caught in a train-station queue so vast（adj.巨大的，辽阔的） and devouring that you long for the calm of a soccer mob.These crowds（n.人群） remind us that the family we're watching is just one of tens of millions like it. Modernity is roaring along like a runaway train in China; things are happening so fast that, from one generation to next, people devise（v.想办法） wildly different ways of being modern.

Eager to escape the millennial（adj.一千年的） drudgery(n.苦差事) of subsistence farming, Suqin and Chunghua embraced the new economic freedoms.They moved to the city to give themselves, and their family, a better life — and they feel that they have.

Fan realizes that he's chronicling a transformation so vast that there are no easy conclusions about how people should live.He knows that once the genie of modernity has been let out of the bottle, individuals are left to ride the whirlwind of history.They have to make it all up as they go along.

《归途列车》

上世纪八十年代，文化评论家马歇尔伯曼（Marshall Berman）写了著作《一切坚固的东西都烟消云散了》（《All That Is Solid Melts Into Air》），他在书中提出，现代性的最大特点在于人们在现代化中角色的改变，从仅仅是历史工具的被动角色，变为努力定义自己与万变世界关系的主动角色。

　　

　　没有哪个国家能比得上现代中国经历的巨大变化，来自蒙特利尔的华裔导演范立欣带来了最新纪录片《归途列车》，此片主题便是每个人对待这样巨大变化的不同方式。《归》拍摄历经三年多，讲述一种惊人的社会现象——每年春节，有1亿3000万民工离开城市回到农村的老家过年。本片通过展现春运对单个家庭的影响，体现了导演对春运的人性思考。

　　

　　张昌华和陈素琴夫妇原本来自四川农村，十七年来他们一直在大城市广州打工，白天在服装厂埋头干活，晚上睡在临时棚屋，将赚来的收入给老家的亲人。片中第一次出现时，他们正准备坐两天的火车回老家看17岁的女儿张琴和和儿子张洋。夫妇二人心情愉悦，我们也期待他们将迎来团圆。

　

　　这部电影通过三次归途构建了整个宏大却又细腻的故事，宏大的一面体现在第二次归途上，夫妇俩在火车站排了几天的队，冗长的队伍看上去像要把他们俩吞噬，恨不得把这些人全部轰走。这样的人群提醒我们夫妇俩仅仅是千千万万像这样家庭中的其中一个而已。现代性就像呼啸而去的火车一般席卷整个中国，一切都发生得太快了，一代代人都在用各自不同的方式适应这个现代化社会。

夫妇俩受益于经济自由的政策来到大城市打工，急于摆脱世世代代辛苦耕地的生活，为的是给自己和家人更好的生活。

　　

导演记录下中国的城市中的变化，这种变化太巨大以至于对于人们的生活方式并不能做出简单总结，他明白一旦现代性肆虐城市，我们将沦落为历史旋风中的个体，在前进的过程中只能自学如何生存。