Greetings, everyone!
Welcome to this edition of Movie Reviews.
I’d like to recommend this wonderful movie of Christian Church, Red Re-education at Home,
done in a true-to-life style.
Just the one word “Red” calls to mind the Communist Party’s rule.
It tells the story of a typical family of Communist Party members in China.
Zheng Weiguo, the father,
is the minister of a municipal United Front Work Department,
who is responsible for suppressing and striking against religious beliefs,
but the son and daughter, Zheng Yi and Zheng Rui, are actually devout Christians.
The scene of a family spiritual battle unfolds.
What’s really amazing about this film
is that it hones in on one particular point to illustrate the bigger picture,
distilling the situation of the difficulties of Christians’ existence and faith
under the regime of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
down to one family of a Communist Party official.
So, how does a red family under China’s autocracy
educate their children?
And how the Christians rely on God to counteract the CCP’s lies and fallacies,
and expose its evil essence so that they can stand witness for God?
Red Re-education at Home will reveal the answers to these questions, one by one.
Centered around just one 4-person family,
the plot of the film is not complex,
but the conflicts that develop between the characters over the issue of faith
become more and more intense, driving the story line.
There are the believers who firmly hold to their faith
and those who stubbornly persist in their atheism,
and the people who gradually awaken through the discourse between the truth and fallacies,
allowing us to see how different people end up on different paths in life
because they have chosen different beliefs and have different values.
They will also have different outcomes.
The father, Zheng Weiguo, is a Communist Party member and a classic atheist.
As the minister of the United Front Work Department in the film,
he is the best mouthpiece for the CCP’s totalitarian rule and red education.
Decades in the CCP have made him a seasoned official;
heavily steeped in this environment,
he became arrogant, slippery, and worldly long ago.
During the debate between him and his children,
they debunk the CCP’s fallacies he upholds over and over again,
and his heart is rocked by the authority and power in Almighty God’s words.
He himself knows that no one buys into the CCP’s red rhetoric anymore,
and acknowledges that believing in God is the right path to take in life,
but he insists on sticking with the CCP
in order to keep his official position and his livelihood.
He also tries to force his children to accept Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought,
and even threatens and intimidates his children with the lies and fallacies
about The Church of Almighty God concocted by the CCP.
He tries absolutely everything to stop them from believing in God.
When they continue to uphold what is right
and use the truth time and time again to refute his fallacies,
he flies into a rage, and wildly shouts out what is in his heart:
Let me tell you,
I am a faithful disciple of Satanist Karl Marx and I am a resolute atheist.
I don't believe a single word that you say.
I don’t care how God will destroy the CCP, and what our outcome will be.
I’m a lifelong, CCP follower.
I work for the CCP, that's how I earn my livelihood.
Even if it means ending up in hell with Karl Marx, I stand by the CCP!
From the vigor with which Zheng Weiguo madly obstructs
and oppresses his children’s faith time after time,
we can see that
when atheism is deeply entrenched into a person’s mind,
he will become extremely arrogant, bigoted, and self-involved,
always wanting others to listen to him,
only wanting to have control over others’ thoughts.
It’s easy to see from this vivid portrayal of an official within the CCP’s system
that from the microcosm of a family to the macrocosm of a country,
the CCP’s rule of atheism seeks to control all people’s thoughts,
to make everyone “red,” come within their grasp, and be under their control.
The CCP cannot tolerate Christians worshiping God;
it wants to establish China as a zone of atheism
and to eradicate God from people’s hearts,
so that all people become slaves under its red education.
The film concludes with a very satirical tone.
Zheng Weiguo, who has lost all reason,
heartlessly kicks his wife and children out of the house.
Beside himself, he says:
It’s over, this home is over!
That wretched government!
What Red education, what Red rule! Go to hell! …
The director handled these few, short lines perfectly,
using Zheng Weiguo’s hysterical shouting and chaotic state
to show his extreme internal dissatisfaction and rage toward red rule and education,
also alluding to the boundless pain brought about by the CCP’s red education.
Using ridiculous lies that even Communist Party members themselves don’t believe
to “educate” the Chinese people—
how can they not be a laughingstock of the world?
Who is the main culprit that brought Zheng Weiguo to the point
that his home is broken and his family is gone?
Who personally destroyed this once-happy family?
Although no clear answer is given in the film,
it must certainly be very clear in viewers’ hearts.
Zheng Yi, the son, is an architect working abroad.
He is thoughtful, insightful, and an honest, upright Christian.
While his father Zheng Weiguo is racking his brains
to use all sorts of the CCP’s lies and fallacies to stop him from believing in God,
he is able to uphold righteousness, take a stance,
and debate with his father using the truth and facts
to dissect the evil essence of the CCP’s resistance to God,
bearing witness to God’s righteous disposition.
His conflict with his father is not a lack of filial piety
but comes out of love for his family.
He doesn’t want to see his father punished by God because of his resistance.
Zheng Rui, the daughter, is a newspaper reporter.
She is courageous, wise, and has a sense of justice.
As a reporter,
she has long had an understanding of the dark underbelly of the CCP.
Her father using red education over and over to try to hinder their faith
accelerated her awakening,
giving her deeper clarity on the CCP’s essence of hating the truth and resisting God.
Faced with her father’s suppression and obstruction so many times,
she has always stood with Zheng Yi
and used the truth and facts to strike back at the lies
about The Church of Almighty God disseminated by the CCP.
She starts to use kind words to persuade her father for the sake of religious freedom
with a tone nearing supplication, she says to him:
We don’t want other freedoms. Religious freedom is more than enough.
Can’t we be given this little bit of freedom?
But in return she gets an even harsher rebuke from him.
What this brother and sister suffer through gives viewers a feeling of
the oppression and the pain of life under the dark cloud of the CCP.
Dad,
it is totally justifiable for a creature to worship God.
Though you are my father, you’ve no right to block my faith.
You …
I’ve made my choice. I follow Almighty God.
And this will never change!
Dad!
God created mankind.
It’s the right path of life for man to believe in and obey God!
I’ve chosen to believe in God, I’ll forge ahead without hesitation.
Do not try to stop me.
These two short declarations
express Zheng Yi and Zheng Rui’s longing and yearning for justice and light,
and even though their father loses his wits and drives them out of the home,
they have no regrets.
That scene when they are driven out of their home is deeply moving.
When Zheng Yi is in his room packing his things, the shot focuses on his face.
Eyes full of tears, he looks at a family portrait, hands trembling.
The sad background music conveys a sense of intricate emotional entanglements:
Being reluctant to let go, nostalgia, grief, and helplessness.
Zheng Yi and Zheng Rui represent the Christians
who persist in their faith under the CCP’s atheist regime.
Although they live a communist family,
they come to understand some truths after believing in God.
They see through the CCP’s red rule,
they shake off the bounds of its red education,
and they step onto the right path of pursuing the truth.
At the end of the film, free from the bounds and strictures of a red education,
their spirits gain true release and freedom,
just like a bird soaring across a blue sky….
The mother, Mu Xinping, represents the majority of the common people
who have been steeped in traditional Chinese Communist thought and its red education.
At the start of the film she has absolutely no discernment on the CCP’s lies
and deeply, fully believes the propaganda instilled by her husband.
So, when Zheng Weiguo uses rumors and lies over and over
to drag her into obstructing their children’s faith,
she goes along, unaware of the truth.
But through the many debates he has with them,
she gradually gains some discernment,
and in the struggle between truth and fallacy, between facts and lies,
in the end she acknowledges that her children are right to believe in God
and they are on the right path in life.
She then advises her husband to support them in their faith,
hoping to maintain harmony in the home,
but in Zheng Weiguo’s eyes, faith in God is absolutely intolerable.
At the film’s climax,
when she sees her husband heartlessly driving their children out of the home
and she is powerless,
in that instant she finally fully awakens in the face of the brutal truth.
She denounces him, saying:
I’ve had enough of your Red rule.
I’m going to my children now, I’ll believe in God with them!
You can go to hell with your wretched party!
A dramatic shift in a character’s emotions once again brings the film to a climax,
and once again deeply imprints the mother’s character into viewers’ hearts.
She who had been timidly living under red education for decades
finally dared to tell her husband of the pain of being enslaved under that doctrine.
She made the right choice, a truly difficult choice.
What Red Re-education at Home reflects is not only the education within one family,
but the education within one nation.
It casts light on the CCP’s trampling of human rights
and its long use of atheist education to rule its people.
It claims to have religious freedom to the outside world,
but inside of its borders,
it shows its ugly face of suppressing and persecuting religious faith,
and shackling its people’s thoughts.
But just like a classic line from the film:
But do clouds, block the sun forever?
Can a crow, darken the sky forever?
I’m sure you know in your hearts.
Thank you for watching this edition of Movie Reviews.
See you next time.