Dai Sijie The Lost Meaning

A Lost Meaning: From Book to Movie
Most books that are reincarnated into movies do not typically portray the book as the reader has interpreted it. Whether it be plot twist, random addition of scenes or a whole new ending, a movie generally never completely follows the book it is based on. This stems from the fact that the directors are in fact not the authors of the book being made into a film and therefore, the director can make the changes he or she deems more palatable to the audience. I found it very surprising that Dai Sijie would choose to make the movie contain the differences it did in regards to the book, especially the ending. Dai noted in his interview with Alan Riding that he does indeed keep “in touch with two of his ‘re-education’ colleagues - both studied in the United States and returned to China to teach - when he visits Beijing” ("Artistic Odyssey: Film to Fiction to Film."). From this statement, the new ending in the movie flowered. What I do not understand is why he would desire a changed ending. Dai mentions that he believes a
While I was somewhat educated on the Cultural Revolution in China, it was not until I began to try to find reasoning behind Dai putting in the Three Gorges Dam flooding the village at the ending of the movie that I really dug deep and discovered how and why the Cultural Revolution happened, the effects of the Cultural revolution on the environment, economy and the Chinese population. When I began to read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, I knew it was fiction and therefore, my mindset was focused on the faultiness of the book and not on how much of the book was actually derived from real-life experiences and events that occurred from 1966-1977. Maybe I was the only one foolish enough to set my mindset this way, but I am thankful for the change in mindset after writing this