Up the Yangtze

Sad and revealing. It felt a bit short at just over 2 hours long - I would have loved to have seen more of life on the boat, and I am interested in how these people are coping with their lives now. A couple scenes a little scripted - maybe it was the editing? "America is driving down a freeway. There is a fork in the road - left is socialism, right is capitalism. America turns right. China arrives at the same intersection, signals left, and turns right."

For some reason i was expecting activistic documentary, but soon after the begining of this documentary i realised, that it is a bit different. It shows how Three Gorges Dam effects life of common people, without pointing out who is guilty. Filmmaker successfully chose peotic sadness instead of aggressive righteousness.

"Chang gracefully juxtaposes the country and the metropolitan to express the knotted-up mixture of anguish, anger, hope, and trepidation of those in the dammed river's wake." - Nick Schager

Excellent. A documentary about the assimilation of the Yangtze reiver into the Three Gorges dam, seen through the perspective of a poor farming family displaced by the dam and their teenage daughter forced to leave her studies to work in a luxury cruise liner working the same dam. This is documentary at its best. Highly recommended.

Unfortunately we get off the river rather quickly. What could have been a really interesting study of how the PRC is changing socially, politically, and economically turns into endless scenes of peasants bleating about money and singing karaoke. This movie is so boring that I'm surprised I didn't have a cardiac arrest

i'm sure its good but not my film.