Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 2004


Delamu

Buy Delamu now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'Delamu' is a 2004 documentary film directed by Fifth Generation Chinese filmmaker, Tian Zhuangzhuang. 'Delamu' documents the people living in the Nujiang River Valley, along the Tea Horse Road, an ancient trade route between China's Yunnan province and Tibet. The film was jointly produced by companies in the People's Republic of China, and Japan. It had its American premier at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival.

The title "Delamu" refers to the Tibetan word for "peaceful angel", and the name of one of the mules owned by a villager in the film.

Synopsis



Stretching across Yunnan, Tibet, and into the Himalayas, the heart of 'Delamu' is the "Tea Horse Road" . One of the oldest caravan routes in Asia, the film documents one such caravan as it transfers raw material to a modern construction site.

As Tian travels with the caravan, he interviews people who have lived along the road for decades, including a priest who was thought to have disappeared during the Cultural Revolution, a 104-year-old woman, and a mule driver who owns the titular Delamu.

Reception



Though quiet and a far cry from either the insulated 'Springtime in a Small Town' or the epic 'The Blue Kite', Tian's 'Delamu' has nevertheless garnered both praise and some criticism. On the one hand it has been well received by critics in Asia. The inaugural Chinese Film Directors Association Awards bestowed its honor for best director to Tian for 'Delamu'. It has similarly been well received in the West. In its premier at Tribeca, 'Delamu's' cinematography of the stunning landscape was praised by critics.

On the other hand, many critics often cannot help but to compare the film to Tian's account of the Cultural Revolution, 'The Blue Kite', often negatively. One notes the "travelogue sheen" as preventing real penetration into the subject matter. Another (admittedly a socialist critic) complained that 'Delamu' despite its beauty, was a "National Geographic style travelogue [that] broke no new ground."

Notes




Buy Delamu now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 2004



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1098703984.