Critics reviews

So measured is the pacing, so sinuous the timeline, so understated the subtle ache of the performances that you don’t immediately realise that Wang Xiaoshuai’s exquisite three-hour drama has been performing the emotional equivalent of open-heart surgery on the audience since pretty much the first scene... [The film] is a gorgeous, melancholy masterpiece.

Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei are phenomenal as they soldier on against tragic circumstances... But it’s Lee Chatametikool’s temporal-jumping edits that define this compelling drama.

Wang truly embodies the ethos of the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers: ever individualistic yet rooted in their country’s morphing cultural soil.

What So Long, My Son demonstrates in its controlled anger and its late-blossoming sense of hope is that time never stops, no matter how old you get.

Once you have mentally readjusted away from traditional linear expectations, this movie opens up like a flower.

The difficulty of navigating So Long’s complexity is offset by its structural rigour and carefully composed use of visual and musical repetitions.

At just over three-hours, So Long, My Son is an emotionally wrenching film that’s epic in scope but intimate in feeling.

Bolstered by measured performances from his cast and Lu Dong’s subtly effective production design, So Long, My Son signals a return to form for one of Chinese cinema’s favourite sons.

A challenging narrative structure - withholding key information and skipping between several time frames - makes this film a daunting watch overall. But Wang’s ambition and seriousness, aided by strong ensemble performances, ensure it is a formidable and, for the most part, involving work of novelistic scope.

“So Long, My Son” is, thematically if not formally, [Wang's] most ambitious project to date, and not just because it is his longest. At three-hours-plus, it may seem like an ungainly vessel, but it needs the heft to remain seaworthy across the swells and ebbs of more than three decades of Chinese history.

The story is an intimate one, yet it embraces a large cast of characters who reflect the immense changes that have swept China over the last 50 years.