It’s easy to remember the dome in this film when the sun is half down, and then be confused. The magnificence of the wild natural landscape spread out by the camera is looking for sustenance and comfort for the homeless and wandering wanderers. Or a poetic ode to peace and joy for the harmony between man and nature. Is "houseless not homeless" a cynic decoration for an embarrassed life, or a transcendence of life that bravely steps into freedom and land.
The external force of the cruel reality and the gravitational force of the natural landscape have become one, and it is no longer possible to distinguish the primary and secondary, cause and effect. Whether to live this way or that way, whether to choose actively or to be forced to reconcile, whether it is pure transcendence or beautification of frustration, whether it is true or false, it seems that it is not just a puzzle for nomads, but a puzzle for all modern people. The confusing spiritual solution after countless defeats and compromises in life.
This is another significant and memorable advantage of Zhao Ting. When photographing the frustrated, marginalized, and extremely niche groups, they do not magnify their differences, do not focus too much on complex and unique social issues, but stare at a kind of A universal humanity scattered throughout human life and thus still able to establish a spiritual connection between the marginalized and the vast majority. It is not only Nomad who is fighting against the sense of marginality. Every modern citizen of anxiety, thirst, scarcity, and restlessness is not in a wasteland.
For me, the feeling of watching this film may not be strong enough at the moment, but it can bring long-term emotional delay and echo. It still offers at least one solution to life's unanswered questions: find inner peace, to breathe, rise and fall with nature, no matter where you are. Focusing on objective absolute truth seems meaningless in front of such a grand and hopeless proposition, on the contrary, to create psychological "truth", like "I think therefore I am" anchoring the nothingness and supporting the soul, even if it is An illusion, but also an illusion of transcendence, certainty, and trustworthiness.
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