To Live... Pt. 2

This section of the movie started nearing the end period of the great leap forward. The entire village is shown to be making steel as a community and when they reach their quota they parade the steel through their commune. The steel is of very bad quality but the peasants don't know any better, they then celebrate by eating lots and lots of food. The irony is that they did not actually have that much food to spare, but they thought they did because of inflated records of food. They were basically eating their reserves for the next year. This caused the great famine that happened after the Great Leap Forward failed. At this point in the movie the son also dies because his father sends him to smelt steel even though he has been worked to exhaustion. His father did not want their family to be punished for being "politically backward," which was a real fear at the time.

The movie then goes into the Cultural Revolution and you see everyone putting up posters of Mao everywhere. There is also much propaganda speech going around. The girl(forgot her name)'s suitor in the movie is also said to be the leader of the Red Guards in the area and you can see that he has a lot of power and influence. They end up painting propaganda images of Mao all over the main characters family home. This exemplified the support of Mao that was present during then 1960's. The movie so far has covered from the original Civil War between communists and capitalists, all the way up to the Cultural Revolution of the 60's.