Last Train Home

What I find most strange about this is that the main issue of this movie is not something that's even crossed my mind in the past. Ever. I knew about China's over-population and that there are over a billion people there. I knew that there were tons of migrant workers making shoes and clothes and toys to later be stamped with the label "Made In China,"and I knew there's a holiday that they all celebrate, but I never even thought to think of the fact that these millions of people all might want to go home to celebrate this holiday with their families. All at the same time. Even the idea of that seems like an impossibility. Even when we see it happen on camera, it's still difficult to grasp what you're seeing.

This was a super heavy and depressing sort of observational documentary. The was very rare interaction with the camera or the people behind it. Even when the family was speaking aloud it seemed as if they spoke to themselves like that all the time, not the were responding to a question the filmmaker had just asked them. There were no talking heads, no on camera interviews, in the credits, it was obvious that they were working with just a skeleton crew, which really worked out since almost every scene is packed with people from frame to frame. I feel like I never get to complain about LA's crowded malls or bumper to bumper 405 traffic ever again.

Also in the movie, they touched upon the dynamics of family. The migrant working couple in the movie left their son and daughter home with the grandmother as they went off to the industrial city to make money for the family (as they'd been for 13 years) so their kids can have better. This turns into resentment as the now teenage daughter grows up feeling that her parents abandoned her and had no interests in raising her or her brother. She doesn't like her parents, has no emotional ties to them, defies and disrespects her father like I've seen no child do before in a documentary and eventually decides to make her own life for herself. It's a depressing version of cosmic irony because where she feels her parents didn't love her enough to stay home, and for this reason she quits school and works in a factory herself, the truth is that her parents loved her so much, they'd do this terrible job 24/7 almost every day of the year to make sure her life didn't turn out the way there's is.