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The Last Train Home

Good Essays

When watching a film, two questions are usually asked by ourselves: what is this story about? What does the director want to express through the film? Different audiences will interpret the same story variously because of the exclusive experience or the cultural background, rendering them understand the metaphor in diverse aspects. For filmmakers, depending on their unique production methods or intentions, will tell the story in a different structure or style as well. Bill Nichols (2017: 61) declared that three elements are intertwined with each other in a film: the filmmaker, the audience and the film itself, which is also known as the triangle of communication. One function of the triangle is to work as a model for having a deeper understand of films. Therefore, in this essay, both Last Train Home (Fan, 2009) and Steam of Life (Berghall and Hotakainen, 2010) will be analysed and contrasted through the triangle of communication to discover the stories of the viewer, the films and the filmmakers behind the two films.

To start with, Last Train Home is a story happened in China, talking about the experience of migrating from a rural area in Sichuan to Guangzhou, which is regarded as a place to work and earn a livelihood. The documentary concentrates on the life of a couple who have been working in garment factories in Guangzhou for sixteen years and on their children. They decide to leave their young children behind and ask the grandmother to take care of them. Tensions and

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