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Zhang Yimou lights The Road Home with the tip of his previous film, Not One Less, abandoning the pretense of docudrama but once again acting as an observer with a painterly eye. Unfortunately, because a Brechtian framing device imposes itself this time, the images become overreliant on exposition and, conversely, seem unsupported by storytelling of any particular gravity. As gorgeous as Hou Yong's telephoto cinematography is, the effort amounts to an editorialized slideshow.

The narrative does have a unique hook, though: a son's objective reminiscence of his spinster (as in weaver) mother and schoolteacher father when they were strangers in the same village, the film restricts itself to the Technicolor days leading up to the couple's union, sparing us the greatest hits compilation of scenes from a marriage. Instead, we have the simple poetry of flirting, of Zhao Di (the lovely ingenue Zhang Ziyi, pre-Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon--although the film was released afterwards internationally) cooking for a potluck, eager for husband-to-be Luo Changyu (Zheng Hao) to choose her dish.

Though it is refreshing to see the pursuit of a relationship from the woman's perspective, even if a man is telling the tale, it's all just a means to an end against a breathtaking golden backdrop. Class differences between Zhao Di and Luo Changyu, "a city gentleman," are brushed aside by handsome dissolves, while the teacher's political business back home becomes a mere catalyst for the passage of time. The Road Home is a film of very conscious brevity that, like the decision to shoot the framing device (of Luo Yusheng (Sun Honglei), Di and Changyu's only offspring, arranging a ritualistic transport of his father's coffin at his mother's behest) in black-and-white, borders on banal. I've no doubt, of course, that those afraid to criticize an undisputed poet of the cinema will prefer the term "mature."

Issues of slight edge-enhancement and some flicker during the present-day sequences aside, the 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer* on Columbia Tri-Star's DVD presentation of The Road Home assuages those of us who missed the boldly saturated vistas on the big screen. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix (in Mandarin) is as subdued as one would expect--I can't recall a single surround effect, not that it's an issue. A slim offering of cast and filmmaker bios plus trailers for The Road Home, Not One Less, Shanghai Triad, The Story of Qiu Ju, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon round out the impressive-looking disc.-Bill Chambers