Review: Last Train Home makes BPAC premier

The Burchfield Penney auditorium was home to the Buffalo premier of Lixin Fan's documentary Last Train Home on Friday, a captivating story of human identity crisis in the face of vast urban development.

Communication department professors Mike Niman and Meg Knowles organized the showing.

Each year, 130 million migrant Chinese workers flee the cities to return home during the Chinese New Year, which is the only time travel is unrestricted for these citizens.

The film is full of powerful scenes of human stampedes as workers wait for trains that would take them back to their rural origins, and heartbreaks when they discover that there are no more travel tickets left to purchase.

Having left the villages to look for work, they abandoned their homes and families to be able to make the money necessary to give their children a better life.

The film follows the Zhang family as they fight to get home to their two children, who they left home as infants with their grandmother. Their only hope is that their children will get an education that will allow them to rise up from their deprived roots.

Emphasis on education is known to be greater among Asian cultures but becomes painfully evident when viewers see the sorrow on the parents' faces when they learn their 17-year-old daughter has dropped out of high school to get a job, or in their disapproval when their son only rises from fifth to third in his class.

Yet another cultural difference is apparent in a scene at the jeans factory, where the daughter, Qin, works. A man jokes about how all the big jeans are made for Americans and that two Chinese could fit into them.

This film is essentially an emotional slap in the face as you watch this family being destroyed over education and the rush to industrialize China.

The family is struggling against money and education, but mostly against the emotional disconnect which has come as a result of striving for their dreams.

There are incredible shots of workers wading through fields, illustrating the city as crowded and drab.

When the parents convince Qin to return home with them for the New Year, the scene feels surreal, almost like falling, as the train speeds down its tracks away from the city.

Back at their family farm, tensions peak between the daughter and father as a violent argument arises. Qin decides not to return to school as her parents had hoped she would be driven to from working for a year in a factory. Qin is intoxicated with the freedom she now has and the power that comes from making money.

The family was distraught by the realization their work had failed. Later, the mother would return home permanently to help guide the young boy, Yang, leaving her husband in the factory squalor alone to face the burden of supporting a family.

When the 2008 world financial crisis hit, many factories closed and train whistles screamed for workers on the last train home.

The film was finished in 2009 and played theatrically across Beijing. The father is working longer hours to support his family, and upon completion of this documentary, is helping to produce and sell t-shirts promoting the film. He receives part of the profits.

One viewer offered to pay for the son's education. Qin had moved multiple times to other cities before deciding to return to school to finish her education.

It is a powerful documentary, filled with conviction and the will to succeed. For the Zhang family, the Chinese New Year is not just a holiday. It's a reason to live.

Jennifer Waters can be reached at waters.record@live.com.