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Zhang Changua, Suqin Chen, Qin Zhang, Yang Zhang, Tang Tingsui

Every spring, China's cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year's holiday. This mass exodus is the world's largest human migration-an... read more read more... epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. Working over several years in classic verité style Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China's rural poor, Changhua and Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin-now a restless and rebellious teenager-both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home's intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China's ascendance as an economic superpower.-- (C) Zeitgeist Films

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85% liked it

3,664 ratings

Critics

100% liked it

49 critics

PG, 1 hr. 25 min.

Directed by: Lixin Fan

Release Date: September 3, 2010

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DVD Release Date: February 22, 2011

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Flixster Reviews (234)

  • michaelneumann
    October 27, 2010
    michaelneumann
    Moral: China = one big clusterf**k. Well, there's more than that. The film was effective in transporting the viewer into crowded scenarios in just about any context: trains, homes, public stations, factories, rinse, wash, repeat. But the film took some kind of Soderberghian lo... read morew-fi approach to storytelling, rather than taking a documentarian approach. The story specifically follows a mother and father who work 2100km away from their children - who are being raised by the grandmother - and the sacrifices they make for working hard and raising money for them from afar, bla dee bla bla. It's meant as a juxtaposition to the western way of life, but the sheer staginess and artificiality of each scene didn't let us forget that with a few inserted lines of exposition: "Westerners are fat!" "Westerners spend all their money!" etc. etc. It was tiresome, and the story uninvolving because at least 3/4 of the film seemed fakely set up. Sure, there were some artistically rendered frames of the lovely Sichuan province and the grimy, hazy cityscapes choking in factory smoke (evoking those Police lyrics, "it's dark all day and it glows all night, with factory smoke and acetylene light"). But there are some frames that feel too much like the director asked the subjects to sit in a certain way because it might look neat or something. There's not a whole lot of intimacy with a teenage girl lamenting her grandfather's passing to a Buddha idol with a cameraman standing 3 feet away in her face. I mean, unless this is a fiction piece - and it isn't - how can you really be absorbed with the story? Because of this specific inauthenticity, the grander authenticity of cultural sacrifices and a study of Chinese peasantry was impeded greatly. In other words, it was a really, really boring film. And that's too bad, because there was some good material here to work with.
  • gator681
    September 8, 2010
    gator681
    "Last Train Home" is a heartbreaking documentary about migrant workers in China who number about 130 million. If the filmmakers had stopped with just the awe-inspiring crowd footage of all of them trying to get home at Chinese New Year, this would still have been very compelling... read more viewing.(It is amazing how they got the footage in the first place which also shows the police and soldiers displaying an admirable level of restraint.) As it is, the movie goes deeper with an emphasis on one couple who have been migrants for the past sixteen years and their trip home of 2100 kilometers, that not only involves a crowded train but also a bus, an antiquated ferry and local bus to their home village where everybody of age has left to seek work elsewhere. Now, it is their 16-year old daughter Qin's turn which creates a lot of tension in the household, since they expected her to continue her studies. These parents, like others elsewhere, see their work lives as sacrifices, so the next generation can have it better and not go through the same things they have had to.(There are differences, as most of the money earned by these workers is saved, not spent. At the same time, the workers form an opinion of the western world, based on the products they make, especially jeans with 40 inch waistlines.) But sadly that is not the case and this continuing trend of worker migration is slowly shaking China apart; at the same time the country is also coming together to celebrate the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
  • merillupin
    July 27, 2010
    merillupin
    A tragic movie about the Chinese 'migration' for New Year. The movie follows one family, and is much less about New Year's celebrations than about their own personal turmoil.
  • mvieaddict
    January 16, 2011
    mvieaddict
    Last train home was an interesting, but disturbing, documentary by Lixin Fan showing us the modern China,where most of the manufacturing for the world were made today. There are huge factories in far away places where the Chinese people migrate to make a living. Working under sev... read moreere bad conditions, the only incentive was to travel back by train to their birth place to celebrate the traditional Chinese New Year with the family.We followed the couple loaded with goods for their family back home, but the train station was over crowded and people pushed themselves almost to dead in order to get a place in the train. The movie gave us the reality about another culture, which was hard for us to understand.

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Critic Reviews

Andrea Gronvall
January 4, 2011
Andrea Gronvall, Chicago Reader

Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan considers the social upheavals wrought by China's economic miracle. Full Review

David Hines
November 11, 2010
David Hines, Dallas Morning News

Last Train Home is a harrowing experience. Don't expect to come out smiling. Full Review

Colin Covert
October 21, 2010
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan presents the human cost of China's economic rise in terms any parent or child can understand. Full Review

Roger Ebert
October 14, 2010
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Last Train Home suggests that the times they are a-changin'. The rulers of China may someday regret that they distributed the works of Marx so generously. Full Review

Carrie Rickey
October 7, 2010
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer

Fan's fly-on-the-wall perspective enables the viewer to empathize with all the players in the family drama, unlikely to have a happy ending. Full Review

Ty Burr
September 30, 2010
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

What else do you want? The question echoes down every frame of this haunting film, and Fan doesn't pretend to have an answer. Full Review

G. Allen Johnson
September 23, 2010
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

Lixin Fan's Last Train Home is a remarkable documentary that, by following a family of factory workers during a three-year period, says a lot about China and its difficult transition to economic power... Full Review

Michael O'Sullivan
September 17, 2010
Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post

It's depressing enough to watch this family's struggles with life. But their pain really hits home when you think that the pants you might be wearing could have contributed to it. Full Review

Kenneth Turan
September 17, 2010
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

An expert, unobtrusive observer, Fan disappears inside his own film and allows us to get completely inside his subjects' lives. Full Review

Peter Rainer
September 13, 2010
Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

Fan's camera moves sinuously through these people's lives and gives a human face to a national panorama. Full Review

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