Although they follow a similar genre pattern, movies for different countries showcase their own culture and traditions through them. This makes each movie unique and a complete masterpiece within itself. Here is a list of 10 Chinese movies that are masterpieces.
1. The Farewell
Billi is a headstrong Chinese-American woman who decided to return to China after finding out that her beloved grandmother had fallen prey to terminal cancer. The family had planned an impromptu wedding to make one last beautiful memory with the matriarch. The grandmother, on the other hand, had no idea about her own condition. She didn’t even know that she only had a few weeks left.
2. Seventeen Years
Tao Lan and Yu Xiaoqin are stepsisters who sleep in the same room and even go to the same school, but their personalities couldn’t be any more different. One of the sisters is a diligent student who always works hard academically, while the other is a complete wild child. One day, Xiaoqin decides to steal money from their father and blames Tao Lan for it. But Tao Lan ends up accidentally killing her stepsister while trying to prove her innocence and ends up in jail, only to be released after 17 years.
3. The Blue Kite
Chen Shujuan and her husband, Lin Shaolong, had their first child in the 1950s. It was a brutal time when people were unjustly taken away to labour camps due to Mao’s purges, and Chen Shujuan’s husband was no exception. Unfortunately, Lin Shaolong passed away during his imprisonment, and Chen Shujuan remarried a man named Li Guodong. Chen Shujuan’s luck runs out with her second husband as well, and she ends up losing him to a bad case of malnutrition. After another broken try, Shujuan decides that she and her now adolescent son must stick together to survive.
4. Still Life
In a small town in Fengjie county, a coal miner searches for his ex-wife, and a woman searches for her husband, who had been separated from her. While looking for their respective spouses, the two of them become witness to the changes that their small town goes through while it is steadily demolished and flooded, to make a passage for the ‘Three Gorges Dam’.
5. Enter The Dragon
Lee is a Shaolin monk and martial arts master. One day he is approached by Braithwaite, a member of an international intelligence organisation, with an offer to become an undercover agent. Lee was supposed to infiltrate Han’s island to uncover his crimes. Han’s held a martial arts tournament every three years, this would be the opening for Lee. Lee was told that Han had been involved in a number of illegal activities, but the organisation was unable to acquire any substantial proof against him.
6. A City Of Sadness
The Lin brothers faced a lot of hardships from the changing cultures resulting from Japan's abdicated control of Taiwan in 1945. The oldest of the four, Wenheung, gets mixed up with the local gangsters. Wensun goes missing and, Wenleung ends up in a mental asylum after falling prey to his own mind and the memories of the war. The youngest brother, Wenching, decided to fight against the Kuomintang government that was slowly rising.
7. Blue Gate Crossing
Kerou is a young teen and a form of mediator between her friend, Yuezhen, and her friend’s crush, Zhang. Kerou approaches Zhang at her friend's request, but Zhang becomes further interested in Kerou and doesn’t want to have a relationship with Yuezhen. Zhang is a popular kid at school and is also a swimmer. In the beginning, Kerou thought that she should be happy with what she was getting, but she slowly realised that she was a lesbian and that she was in love with her friend Yuezhen.
8. Oxhide
Liu Jiayin has cast her parents and herself as fictional characters. Her father is slowly going bankrupt despite working hard to sell leather bags. He often ends up arguing with his wife and Jiayin over how to better the falling business. The family is slowly being overrun by anxiety, but even so, they try their best to stay strong for each other throughout their hard times.
9. Internal Affairs
This is the story of how a cop became a gangster, and how a gangster became a cop. A young police academy graduate is tasked to work undercover as a criminal. On the other hand, a gangster is ordered by his crime boss to enter the police academy. In each case, their roles were to slowly rise in position over the course of years and become invaluable as moles.
10. Raise The Red Lantern
At 19 years old, Songlian was forcibly married to the lord of a powerful family after her father’s demise. Her spouse, Chen Zuoqian, was already 50 years old and had three wives from his previous marriages. Each of his wives lives in separate houses within the big castle, and they are in constant competition over who should and who would get attention from Zuoqian. Zuoqian must make a choice every night on who he shall be spending the night with. His choice is indicated using a red lantern that is lit at the doorstep of one of his four wives.
