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In the film “Mao’s last dancer”, by Bruce Beresford, shows that the film is essentially about hardship and the obstacles Li had to overcome in order to become successful. Throughout the film, Li shows that the obstacles he had to overcome were his background, adaptation to America and his relationship between Liz.
Li’s background shows that he is a courageous character who overcomes the obstacles that are presented to him. Cunxin’s country of origin gave him little freedom which made him to struggle to adapt to America. Cunxin’s family live through hardship because of their status in society, this makes Li’s rights in the academy hard as he feels that coming from such a poor family he has to work hard and stay mentally strong. This was shown when Li’s mother exclaimed to Li that “there is nothing here except starvation and struggle!” This demonstrates that Li’s background and that the film is essentially about overcoming obstacles. Through this, the film is portraying to us that without hard work it’ll be hard to get over adversity.
Throughout the film, Li shows that he struggles to adapt to a capitalist life in America and his homesickness because of no longer seeing his love ones on a regular basis. During the film, Li often had nightmares of his family in China getting punished because of his decision to stay in America and betray his country. Cunxin frequently expresses his struggle to adapt to a non-communist country and feels that you should never question the government. Loyalty has always been a big factor of Li’s personality especially when he expressed that Chairman Mao “is leading us to the first stage of communism”. This suggest to the audience that Li is not realizing the struggle his country is going through compared to America and that adaptation was one of the obstacles he had to overcome. Through this, the film shows that it is a struggle to live without your love ones.
During the film, Li also shows his difficulty in getting into a