Eileen Chang has a saying, to the effect that the deceased relatives will accompany you all your life, and die again when you die. These words are like the wisp of grandpa's cigarette smoked by Billi half-awake. They are the phantoms and representations of deceased relatives in everyone's dreams... These fragments of others constitute "I" and "I"'s perception of "I".
This film is definitely not about life education, it is more like the director's homeland complex, a journey to find his roots, intimacy, the collision of Eastern and Western cultures, and his identity as a Chinese... But what touched me the most was the reaction to the death of a loved one . When my grandmother died, my parents did the same thing as Billi's parents. They told me after the fact that I was about to take the high school entrance examination, and only met at the funeral home for the last time.
I can't say this is right or wrong. After all, I didn't visit her often when she was hospitalized. How meaningful is it to see her for the last time. But if you don't visit her, it's not that you don't love her, it's more that you don't know how to face it, how to face a person you love, who makes up your life, and who occupies your memories, is about to leave forever... I walked downstairs to my grandparents' house, "They won't be here either"...In fact, "don't tell her" is not because you are worried that "she" can't face it, but we, our relatives, don't know how to face it, how to face the fragments of life that make up us, which will be forever incomplete.
After all, no one ever taught us how to face death, adults only told you to "live"...
Coming back to this film, I don't think the director doesn't understand China, let alone what "black" China is. Her emotional expression is indeed not that Chinese, unlike a very Chinese person who talks about Chinese affairs, and some stand on the sidelines. The feeling of thinking and asking questions. But in her eyes, these things are really happening in China's daily life. Maybe some exaggeration and interpretation, but this is not a documentary. Everyone has a "real China" in their hearts. Why do we think that a Chinese is trying to Is it "fake" in the eyes of Chinese Americans who seek self-recognition in their homeland? Otherwise, how do you shoot so that it is not "black"? Do you shoot like that in Xiao Shi? Everyone lives in urban high-rises and spends a lot of money. Are parents short-lived without firewood, rice, oil and salt?
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