Product: Biography - Mao Tse Tung: China's Peasant Emperor (2005)
Rating: 2.0
Dont waste your time
Apart from some interesting early 20th century footage, this video is just a waste of time. Commentaries are superficial and obvious, useless for those who know a little more than Mao existence. Producers lost the wonderful oportunity in the interviews with outstanding sinologist Roderick McFarquhar, and dissident journalist Liu Binyan, who were asked mostly for well known anecdotaries that cannot explain the role Mao played in modern China.The story jumps suddenly from the Greart Leapt Forward to the Cultural revolution, and from here to the Nixon-Mao meeting in 1972 and then Mao dies. Nothing about the significant facts which ocurred from the restoration Deng Xaioping by Mao in 1975 and the death of the Great Helmsman. No reference of the strong relationship between Mao and Zhou Enlai, the Gang of Four role in Cultural Revolution, or to the Lin Biao plot and his death, nothing about the Corean War, the diplomatic strategy for the recovery of the UN seat for C!hina. The sino soviet split is explained in a superficial and annecdotical manner. The role of US advisory of the communist in WW II is also exagerated. Data about deaths in the Mao regime is taken from unexplained sources that diverge from respected scholars, even the most critical of Mao and China. In conclusion, if you think the lifes of political leaders is a good way to understand a society, is better to go to the China Box Sets produced by History Channel entitled China Rising or the China: A Century of Revolution by WindStar Home VIdeo. But if you just want three or four gossips about how Mao liked young girls and other sensasionalists stories, you can get some entertainment in this video.