Up the Yangtze is a 2007 award-winning documentary directed by Chinese-Canadian Yung Chang that follows the path of two young Chinese workers aboard a cruise ship that makes tours of the Yangtze and caters to wealthy western tourists. These tours are labeled "farewell" tours by the cruise company since, with the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the cruise company is trying to showcase the river's pre-dam beauty. The film also follows the effects of the dam on the two young workers and their families and the workers' desire to put their impoverished Chinese past behind them as they strive to climb out of poverty and experience a clash of cultures.
In the film, young Yu "Cindy" Shui has just been hired by the cruise line as a waiter and dishwasher. For her family, this is a momentous occasion as she lives in a makeshift shack right by the river and will make more money than her parents have ever worked for. The camera follows her as she struggles to begin training and be away from her parents for the first time. The most heartbreaking event of the film is Cindy's boss meets her parents for the first time to congratulate them for raising such a diligent daughter. Her parents are the poorest of the poor, peasants who have been farming the Yangtze valley for generations, and Cindy ends up crying as she is ashamed to show her boss and the camera her roots. Cindy's intense yearning to leave her peasant background is vividly pronounced through her tears and words. The camera follows Cindy and her family to their home, which they have lived in for many years but will soon be destroyed by the Three Gorges Dam. The family has been told that they must relocate within the month, and Cindy's parents are filled with mixed emotions. On one hand, they should be celebrating the dam's construction because government agents have told them that the dam will benefit all of China, including the peasants, and that it represents China's national identity and economic prosperity. On the other hand, Cindy and her family will lose their home and their farmland and will have to adjust to a new enviroment and build a new life.
Still Life is a 2006 award-winning Chinese dramatic film directed by Jia Zhangke that tells the story of a man in search of his lost wife. The film takes place in the city of Fengjie, which is upstream from the site of the Three Gorges Dam. Marked for flooding, the city undergoes a drastic process of self-deconstruction. The protaganist, Han Sanming, is a coal miner from the province of Shanxi and returns to the dying town to look for his wife. Sanming asks a local to drive him to his wife's former address. Instead, the driver brings Sanming to the riverbank, and Sanming realizes that the entire neighborhood has already flooded. He manages to contact his wife's older brother, who informs Sanming that she has been relocated from her submerged home but will return to the town eventually.
Documentaries have certain advantages over dramatic films when it comes to depicting and recording an event of cultural or historical signifcance. While the dramatic approach is more entertaining, more appealing, and will often yield a higher profit for the filmmaker, a documentary depicts the event at a more personal level since it captures the true emotions of real people who are actually experiencing the said event, not the narrow, and often flawed, interpretations of actors performing a script that is primarily written to fill the pocketbooks of the bureaucratic heads of Hollywood film studios. Fortuantely, Still Life is a Chinese dramatic work and is a wonderful movie that does not adulterate the facts. Yet, Up the Yangtze is a more delicate and profound work that more effectively communicates a sense of loss since it is driven by the emotions of real people and not scripted characters.
Personally, I've always preferred dramatic films for depicting historical events. I've always thought that they could portray the emotions of the people and the signifigance of the events better than documentaries because the director, by taking artistic liberties, can highlight certain developments in the former.