"A Land of Nowhere" directed by Chinese Zhao Ting is one of the most beautiful films of 2020. In the absence of the awards at the Cannes Film Festival, he won the highest award at the Venice Film Festival - the Golden Lion. When the news came, Chinese moviegoers were especially excited and felt proud, even though the movie was an American movie.
The film begins with a few lines of subtitles. A gypsum factory in Empire Township, Nevada, was closed due to a sharp drop in demand for gypsum plywood. Six months later, the town's zip code was also cancelled.
Immediately after, the picture appeared, the first picture was taken from the inside of the car to the rear of the car. As the heroine pulls the back cover of the car open, a picture-in-picture appears on the screen. The foreground of the picture is the somewhat depressed heroine, and the distant view is the snow-capped mountains. As soon as the camera turned to a close-up and pushed it to the front of the heroine, the heroine was sorting out the old things, looking like she was going to travel far, shaking off a shirt that looked like a man, and was vaguely holding back tears.
The camera turned again, and there was a big panorama. There was a row of abandoned factories on the snow-covered ground, and the whole picture was empty and lonely. Then a medium shot female protagonist was saying goodbye to the neighbors and hugging sadly.
Another big panorama, followed by a close-up of the heroine. The camera is pulled to the medium shot. It turns out that the heroine is taking a break in a wilderness.
The accumulation of atmosphere and emotion coincided with the launch of the title of "Nowhere".
The image style of the whole film is a grand world, and the subtle people, things, and things in front of the heroine are occasionally connected by picture-in-picture.
The heroine's name is Fern. After her husband passed away, she stayed in this small town of Empyre where she lived together with her nostalgia for her husband. However, the poor economy wiped out the home where she had lived for half her life in an instant.
She hits the road in a van converted to a destination she doesn't even know her destination.
Along the way, Fern worked odd jobs, stopped and walked, and met Linda, who was also wandering around, but had the dream of building an environmentally friendly hut. Swankey; met Dave, a clumsy man who loved her; met a group of people who were wandering under the oppression of capital society; met a young man who was on the road and lost his heart...
It is not that she has no hope of returning to a place to settle down. The sisters are deeply in love, and the younger sister in the middle class hopes that her sister will stay, but the values are nowhere to place her loneliness in the elegant courtyard of the relatives who are on a different journey.
Dave and his son and daughter-in-law also affectionately hope that their home is her home, but in the end Fern knows that the sweetness and warmth in front of her cannot heal her wounded heart.
She can only keep on the road, on the road, the world is empty and majestic. She withdraws from the broken walls in reality, takes heaven and earth as her home, and opens her heart, so that she can release her pain and sorrow.
This is different from the previous chicken soup movies, which encouraged us to face failures, setbacks, and difficulties, face them positively, face them, and finally overcome difficulties, show the smile of winners, and be the ones who have the last laugh.
And this film is not like this, this film is to let the audience see "the world has great beauty without saying it". The pain and predicament of specific individuals are relieved in front of such a "beautiful" and become calm and open-minded.
I think that's exactly why the film has received widespread acclaim all over the world. The world today has too many difficulties for every individual living in it that cannot be solved by individual efforts. Almost everyone is dazed and frustrated about this. The sense of failure is almost everyone who has a sense of responsibility for this real world. It is often haunted in their minds that cannot be resolved and can not be relieved.
Especially since the epidemic in 2020, it was first a city, then a region, then a country, and then several countries, and slowly it became the whole world. Many people turned out to be watching the fire from the other side, or shed tears of sympathy, or pointed out the country. However, it is so close in the blink of an eye, what is it to face the difficulty, it is to avoid it.
According to historical experience, whenever human society falls into confusion, it will instinctively turn to the embrace of nature, under the comfort of the magnificent mountains and rivers, seek inner peace, and find the original kindness and beauty of human society.
During the Wei and Jin Dynasties of China, the political situation was ups and downs, and the intellectuals were at a loss. A group of people represented by the "Seven Sages of Bamboo Forest" released their natural instincts, advocating old villages, and proud of the mountains and forests. Among them, Liu Ling even left behind such a story. He met a guest naked and said, "I use the heaven and the earth as my house, and my room as my clothes, why are you in my pants?"
In the Yuan Dynasty, the mountains and rivers were invaded by aliens, the imperial examination system was abolished, and the intellectuals were not able to return to the sky, unable to expel the Tartars, and the rivers and mountains were clean. He can only hide in the heaven and earth, express his love for landscapes, and create Yuan landscape paintings that stand at the pinnacle of Chinese culture.
For many people, not everyone can face the difficulties in front of them, and it is not a bad idea to take a step back and get spiritual comfort in the "broad sea and sky".
Saying this is not to emphasize the relationship between this film and China. I believe that human emotions have a lot in common. The film is a film that fits the mentality of people in this era at this historical moment in the world, so it will resonate in the world and receive so much praise.
America is a country with a tradition of pioneering on horseback. Hyundai America also has a different car culture than Europe. A large part of the American car culture is a truck-based culture, which can be seen as a continuation of the horse-riding culture. The RV in the film is a genre of this culture. The caravans in the film can be seen as modern nomads.
Under the Yin Mountains in northern China, there lived a nomadic people whose culture was not actually the mainstream of Chinese culture at that time, but they had a folk song to sing praises for thousands of years, making everyone with Chinese cultural roots unforgettable "Chilechuan, Yin At the foot of the mountain, the sky is like a dome, covering the four fields.
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