Tragedy written on a small scale is still tragedy for those whose lives are touched by it. But even as we understand this we are still more compelled to try to understand those tragedies that occur on a large scale. Two films that address in different ways the myriad small and large tragedies that were spawned by the Cultural Revolution in China. The 1998 "Xui Xui", directed by Joan Chen (in Mandarin with English subtitles added for the American release) is both a love story and a story of all that was lost for each person and all people in China during the Cultural Revolution while Zhang Yimou's 1994 "To Live" (also in Chinese with English subtitles for its American release) tells of the subtler, less intentioned ways in which each family in China was changed by the Cultural Revolution.
Both movies depend upon the viewer's knowledge of at least the basic facts of the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976, although it did not officially end until 1977. The era was begun by Mao, worried about both his own position in history as well as worried that China was following the Soviet Union down a misguided path away from the people's revolutions that had founded both states. Mao organized groups of young party faithfuls from each city into groups of Red Guards who were to help re-radicalize the country by making all of the nation's institutions - including the Communist Party - less elitist. His worry that the traditional Chinese tendency toward hierarchical thinking would resurface was not unfounded, and it is also understandable that he feared that the then-current generation of party youth would have had no revolutionary experiences upon which to build their own ideology was also not unreasonable. But the economic and social disintegration that marked the Cultural Revolution - in which Red Guards roamed the country mocking and sometimes attacking their elders and all forms of education and in which many people felt that t...