Plot
Following a troubled father-son relationship over more than 30 years in post-Cultural Revolution Beijing, the movie utilizes a simple dramatic structure to support a narrative filled with tumultuous social change.
In the first of its three distinct chapters, set in 1976, 9-year-old Xiangyang (Zhang Fan) finds his unruly, pleasurable existence halted by the return of his upright father, Gengnian (Sun Haiying). A painter who can no longer draw after six years in a labor camp, Gengnian furiously nurtures his son’s artistic talent despite the misgivings of his wife (a marvelous Joan Chen) and the violent rebellion of Xiangyang himself. The pattern for the next three decades has been set.