To Live

To Live follows Xu Fugui, a man whose compulsive gambling costs him the family estate and reduces him and his wife, Jiazhen, from landowners to peasants. Over roughly three decades spanning the 1940s to the 1970s, the couple endure war, forced service in opposing armies and the political upheavals of mid-twentieth-century China, rebuilding a household amid constant upheaval.

Zhang Yimou directed the film, the fifth of the twenty-five features he has made in chronological order, coming between The Story of Qiu Ju and Shanghai Triad. Ge You and Gong Li lead the cast as Fugui and Jiazhen, with Niu Ben, Guo Tao, Jiang Wu and Ni Dahong among the credited performers. The screenplay was written by Lu Wei and Yu Hua, and the production was a Hong Kong, Chinese and Taiwanese co-production from Shanghai Film Studio and Era International Ltd, running 133 minutes.

Audience response to the drama, romance and war elements has been strong over the years. On IMDb it holds 8.3 out of 10 from nearly twenty thousand votes, while on TMDB it sits at 8.1 out of 10 from a smaller set of several hundred votes. The two scores agree closely, indicating a widely shared positive reaction rather than a divided one.