Guest Blogger: Jena Ball – "Up the Yangtze" Review

I’m thrilled to have my pal and writing colleague Jena Ball here to contribute a post for The Great b5Media Blog-Off. Be sure to visit her sites, The Nature of Writing, www.thenatureofwriting.com, and her Second Life Blog, www.daysofoursecondlives.com. Read on for Jena’s thoughtful review of “Up the Yangtze”:

More after the jump…

Tragedy Along the River

“Up the Yangtze” chronicles the rise of the Yangtze River as a result of the Three Gorges Damn (considered by many experts to be one of the greatest eco-disasters of modern times), and how the inexorable progression of the waters has affected the Chinese who made their homes along its banks.  The suffering of the peasant farmers, who lose their land and their livelihood inch by inch to the polluted, muddy brown water is palpable, especially since it is juxtaposed against the gaiety of the tourists taking a luxury cruise up the river. 

The tourists are there to have one last look at the landscapes and towns along the river before the waters drown them.  Even sadder are the lives of the young Chinese forced to give up their dreams of school to work on the luxury boats in order to support their displaced parents.

Seldom has a film had such a visceral impact on my psyche. I left the theater dragging, as if I’d not only taken on the weight of the poverty stricken, displaced peasants, who lost everything to the water, but the burden of the earth’s devastation as well.  Even the weather – murky, yellow-brown clouds obscuring the sun throughout – seemed to cooperate in creating the inescapable feeling that I was watching a tragedy of mammoth proportions unfold. 

The final shots of the gigantic metal gates of the damn closing across the river only confirmed this impression. Up the Yangtze is a film that will stay with you for all the hardest reasons, a wrenching reminder of the price we all pay for “progress.”

Image: Up the Yangtze, Zeitgeist Films, 2007