Zhang Yimou has abandoned his trademark reds in favor of blue. No, he hasn’t made a “dirty” film (even if a child does defecate on camera), just a moving drama of fathers, sons, and the distances that separate them. Estranged from his dying son Kenichi (an unseen Kiichi Nakai), an expert in oriental folk arts, elderly Japanese fisherman Takata (Ken Takakura) travels to China’s Yunnan Province to videotape famous singer Li Jiamin (playing himself) in the title Chinese “mask opera” piece detailing the lonely journey of Lord Guan from Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Takata’s is a journey of atonement, one that circumvents clichés (and, unfortunately, politics) through Zhang’s utter command of his craft in a minor work (after the epic canvases of Hero and House of Flying Daggers) that reasserts his status as a humanistic master. On the Web
Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles's official Web site: http://www.sonypictures.net/movies/ridingalone/
