Alternate Best Actor 1994: Ge You in To Live

Ge You did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite winning Cannes, for portraying Xu Fugui in To Live.

To Live is a powerful film that follows a couple through years of upheaval in China during the 20th century. 

The films of Zhang Yimou, well his non Wuxia films, seem to seek to grant a real humanity to stories that could potentially be examine in a detached sort of reverence. This is appropriate than that this film is called simply to live, as that is what we see these people do in the husband Xu Fugui and his wife Jiazhen (Gong Li). The film reminded me a bit of Farewell My Concubine, also starring Gong Li, from the previous year and a bit of Masaki Kobayashi's masterful The Human Condition Trilogy. The notable difference with the former are those people were isolated slightly in the world of Chinese opera, and from the later in the protagonist who attempted to make a difference within a oppression regime, the protagonist here is less active. We in fact open up with Ge portraying Xu as basically a bit of a fool. This where he is spending all his money and losing it quite quickly in one bet after another. Ge's performance has a nice bit of foolish endearing quality in it. This as there is this dumb type of optimism as he tries to make every bet with eyes that suggest a man who genuinely thinks he will suddenly win any time now. Of course in fact he loses all his money and even his wife with his non stop betting, and Ge's reaction is less horror and more bafflement from a man who takes quite awhile to fully comprehend much of anything. 

Eventually he wins back Jiazhen's good graces finding himself a father. Ge's performance finds though the same foolishness though creates the same sense of purity really in his warmth with Jiazhen. It is a simple given that he loves his wife and the chemistry between them is sweet even as Gong suggests her sense intelligence that is accepting of her husband's foolish behavior. Now as the film proceeds we do see the two of them go through history, and what Ge's performance really emphasizes is the simplicity in which Xu goes through all this complex history. We find this as he has to go off to sort of fight in the war, though Xu mainly moves around artillery and reacts to the deaths of other. Ge's performance though is moving in portraying the simple reactions of Xu to these deaths. He's distraught however just with general sadness rather than any sort of change in his sort of spirit as a person. We see him as he continues to react with the sense of just a very average man, who takes in no great sense of the greater sense of the world, he's just part of it. Although with that one can run into a little bit of Louis's reviews bingo, and I would qualify To Live as a director's film. This as the depiction of Xu is largely offering this specific perspective not of the actor but the reactor of what is occurring around him. A small part of a larger tapestry who goes along with the world around him. 

We see this as he sort of side steps both the communist revolution and the cultural revolution. In both Ge is good in bringing a sincerity of a man just trying to go along by getting along. He makes his meager living, occasionally through shadow puppets, as a loving father and husband and just really that. Even in the moments of speaking to the party lines demanded by the communist party is with just  a carefree quality of obeying what society currently expects from him. Unfortunately this twice leads to tragic consequences. This first as his son dies in a tragic accident when he is sent to do dangerous work as required by the party. Ge is quite moving in showing the sheer devastation of the reaction. Although I'll say in this instance, and later instances Gong's reactions tend to be more dynamic of the more dynamic person. Whereas Ge as Xu shows the reactions still of the simple man, who even when reacting to the man who caused the death of his son, Ge's portrayal takes in this idea but even shows Xu reacting as basically as he can to it to still maintain some internal peace within himself. Tragedy strikes again, again caused by communist policies that leave children in charge of childbirth, and again we see the dueling reactions to the death of their other child. Ge is moving, but Gong keeps the stronger more potent reaction. Ge though again is truthful towards the role as he shows this wonderfully simple guilt about accidentally feeding an actual experienced doctor, brutalized by the cultural revolution, too much. Ge showing still the nature of the man just to take the personal route of least resistance even in expressing guilt. It isn't as a man who avoids it, rather he just experiences it almost with a childlike clarity. This is a good performance by Ge You, but I will admit other elements of the film left a greater impression on me.