GETTING HOME (China, 2007)
Directed by: Zhang Yang
Starring: Zhao Benshan, Hong Qiwen, Wu Ma

Chinese indie director, Zhang Yang, made a splash with his debut movie, Spicy Love Soup, which became the first Chinese independent film to become a box office hit, and his second movie, Shower, was an even bigger blockbuster, going on to great success all over the world. After the junkie drama, Quitting, he returns to the kind of wry, black comedy that made his name with Getting Home, the touching story of the friendship between a man and a corpse.

Zhao (Zhao Benshan, a Chinese stage comedian) is a dirt-poor construction worker trying to get the corpse of his best friend, Liu (Hong Qiwen, in the performance of his life), home for burial after he drops dead while drinking. Unable to afford any transport beyond the bus, he has to rely on a never-ending series of scams and tricks to transport his dead buddy thousands of miles through China and along the way he meets a road movie’s worth of oddball characters from the corpse of a lonely rich man (played by Hong Kong veteran, Wu Ma), to an angry trucker, a family of beekeepers who’ve dropped out of society and a scruffy homeless woman who makes her living selling blood. Slowly accumulating power, this flick isn’t another depressing Chinese movie about how hard it is to be a peasant. Instead it’s a funny, cross-eyed look at modern day China told from a worm’s eye view and, astonishingly, it’s based on a true story. With dazzling cinematography by Jia Zhangke’s regular DP, Yu Lik-wai (Still Life, Platform, The World), this is the kind of movie that lingers in your mind long after you leave the theater, giving you at least some temporary protection from this cold, tough old world.