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Poster for Blind Mountain

Blind Mountain

2007 · 1h 35m · N/A Crime, Drama
Directed by Li Yang

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Overview

Blind Mountain follows a young woman, Bai Xuemei, in the early 1990s who recently graduated from college and attempts to find work to help pay for her brother's education. In the process, she is drugged, kidnapped and sold as a bride to a villager in the Qinling Mountains of China's Shaanxi province. Trapped in the fiercely traditional town, the young woman finds that her avenues of escape are all blocked. As she searches for allies, including a young boy, a school teacher and a mailman, she suffers from being raped by her "husband" and continued beatings at the hands of the villagers, her husband, and her husbands' parents.

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
87%
Tomatometer
Fresh

It's a harsh portrait of a brutal segment of society, only relieved by an occasional handsome landscape shot (filmed in the Shaanxi province) that makes Bai's plight all the more compelling.

Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle
Fresh

[Director] Li was a documentarian before he switched to feature films with the highly praised 2003 feature Blind Shaft, and it shows in his raw style.

Tasha Robinson, Chicago Tribune
Fresh

This is a resolutely tough-minded, beautifully crafted film so compelling as to make bearable watching the nearly unbearable.

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Rotten

For all its regional specificity and grit, the majority of Blind Mountain's turns could have come from any Hollywood-issue flick.

David Fear, Time Out New York
Fresh

For the second film in a row, [director] Li excoriates the values of an increasingly market-driven China, where people treat their fellows as products to be exploited, and scramble to get an edge on their 'competitors.'

Noel Murray, AV Club

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