Not One Less

Not One Less (Yi Ge Dou Bu Neng Shao) directed by Zhang Yimao in Mandarin. Very touching movie-must see. Its an original & extremely affecting story of a small village of Shuiquan in the mountain & isolated area in Hebei Province, China.. It started with 13-year old girl, Wei Minzhi, to replace older school teacher in elementary school. In reality, shes not a teacher at all but giving responsibility to take care the class until the older teacher come back from his leave. There's a clown boy, Zhang Huike, that always become trouble maker to everybody & she has to handle it carefully. At one time that clown was taken away to a big town because his capability in sport. However, because of her promise to her older tecaher that nobody in the class should go anywhere, she decided to bring that clown back. In order to do so, she started 'teaching' math. by calculating the cost she has to pay to get in to the town-return tickets. All students involve to gaint some money for that purpose which i think so brilliant in the way the director come out with the idea of 'working for the cost'. In tracking that clown (he lost in the city) in the big city which so alien to her-shes lost her way...touching part...but at the end she managed to get help from tv broadcast to advertise 'the clown boy'. Zhang Yimao excellently shows his talent in this film where he created increadible journey for an 'unknowledgable' rural girl by showing her responsibility, capability & hopeness of rural people in China. Im so enjoy watching this film. This is not the first film by Zhang Yimao that i watched, but also others like Beijing Bicycle & Raised the Red Lantern...believe me, Zhang Yimao, for me, is a brilliant director in making 'on ground movie', especially with China background. imdb=7.5(19Feb2007)