Up the Yangtze is a reminder that every little family matters and that economic miracles are zero-sum games.
Comment
07/18/08
Up The Yangtze (2008)
95 %
Reviews Counted: 43 Fresh: 41 Rotten:2 Average Rating: 7.6/10
Consensus:
Up the Yangtze is a visually stunning meditation about the changes confronting modern China.
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins
Box Office: $605,037
Synopsis: Upon completion, China’s mammoth Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River will be the largest hydroelectric power station in the world. Progress, though, comes at a price: the dam will displace more than a million residents and destroy numerous cultural and archaeological sites, upending a... [More]
Reviews
Chang's fluid camera captures the river's vanishing beauty, as well as the dichotomy between Yu Shui's rural poverty and Chen Bo Yu's urban lifestyle.
07/18/08
Though it is a bit slow-moving, this documentary feature is visually stunning.
07/17/08
A searing lament for China and the eradication of its historic farming culture, Yangtze is a stunning documentary that details every gut-churning step of inevitability.
07/17/08
floats across the screen, leaving indelible metaphoric imagery of China's rapidly changing way of life
07/16/08
If Up the Yangtze makes you think, 'How can a film so lovely be about something so horrible?' then it has done its job.
07/11/08
Like all the best documentaries, Up the Yangtze shows us something we've never seen before, with insight and meaning. Up the Ynagtze goes down in movie history as a work of lasting value
07/10/08
The movie never editorializes; it simply presents. It is tragedy, not statistics.
07/10/08
Top Critic
This, the film argues, is the way of the future: One form of poverty-stricken squalor replaced by a tackier, more plasticized life of similarly deadend subservience, all in the guise of economic progress.
07/06/08
Myth and reality, past and present, tradition and progress go head to head in Yung Chang's remarkable documentary about China's longest river, Up the Yangtze.
07/03/08
Top Critic
Up the Yangtze provides a devastating view of top-down, broad-stroke social programs.
06/27/08
There's plenty for the director to focus on. Examining the dam's environmental impact alone would take another whole movie. Instead, [director] Yung trains his lens mainly on the cultural impact.
06/26/08
Top Critic
Visually stunning, this documentary by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang is part travelogue, part social critique of China's economic miracle and the sweeping cultural changes it is forcing in its wake.
06/26/08
Top Critic
China is on the world's mind. The once-mysterious communist "enemy" is now the economic friend of all the essential profiteers. Up the Yangtze is a new documentary that expounds upon China in transition.
06/22/08
Up the Yangtze is a beautifully crafted documentary. Chang displays artistry in the way he assembles his material. He captures China at a crossroads where he finds both guarded hope and epic sadness.
06/20/08
Up The Yangtze goes from sleepily hypnotic to riveting over the course of 90 minutes.
06/19/08
What Chinese Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang achieves in his documentary Up the Yangtze is remarkable.
06/13/08
Top Critic
This is a sad film to be sure, but highly accomplished and very effective.
06/12/08
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