"Not One Less" tells a simple, simple but touching story, with a kind of warmth and sweetness that makes the audience irresistible. The film is somewhat similar to the Italian neo-realist film, using non-professional actors, real and natural light shooting, extensive use of medium and long-range, calm and restrained long shots, to maintain the objectivity and integrity of the space and performance. The film embodies Zhang Yimou's superb artistic control, realism style, and pure and simple; through the use of scene design, editing and soundtrack, it is sensational but not kitsch. However, in addition to the artistic level, the greater significance of the film may lie in its insight into social reality
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However, Zhang Yimou's way of solving contradictions in reality is a bit too idealistic
. The end of the film ends in the scene where the children write and draw with colored chalk, which is a typical romantic ending. A film can change a person's destiny, but it cannot change the poverty and backwardness of education in a region; a director can smear the end of his film with a layer of romanticism, but he cannot smear the grim social reality in the same way. Romanticism
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