‘Living the Land’ Review: Progress Takes Time In a Stirring, Season-Cycling Chinese Family Saga
Guy Lodge Film Critic There’s a patient, plainspoken poetry, neither overly earthy nor flowery, to “Living the Land,” a rolling rural drama that may be a work of pure fiction — but often feels wholly, organically observed, as if its storytelling were dictated by the rigors and challenges of seasons and soil. An unassuming but impressive second feature from Chinese writer-director Huo Meng, the film deftly captures the pace of life in a modest farming village on the brink of industrialization in 1991: a steady meander, at once languid and arduous, that is felt differently across four generations of the hard-up Li family.