The longing for the homeland, the fear of the loss of a loved one, and the disappointment and reluctance to part with the family relationship between you and me are the common emotions of every wanderer like me.
The director's perspective is very detached and calm, and the final effect is a bit absurd. But the story is a very real story, and perhaps the director himself did not realize that this is the story that is happening in every Chinese family.
The family relationship of Chinese families is always a state of sharing. While sharing the lives of relatives, one's own life is also being shared. If you are a child or an elderly person, this kind of sharing will be more domineering, and your loved ones will make the decisions for you. In the movie, whether Billie should go back to China, Haohao's fake wedding, whether the baby should go abroad, whether grandma should learn about her illness, whether dad should quit drinking, every choice is made by the family for you. Westerners find it incredible, but for Chinese it is inevitable. In a Western context, the relationship between children and their parents will gradually become estranged as the child grows up. Even the Chinese-faced Billie's parents will not take the initiative to help in the face of the child's financial crisis. This is the same in the eyes of the Chinese. is incredible. Westerners' thinking is black and white, and the starting point of all actions is logic and human rights. But in China, we mix family affection, so many things get complicated. Lies also have good lies, and domineering is also out of love and protection. The Chinese cling to this sweet swamp of family, sometimes they feel pain, sometimes they can't give up.
Eastern life is collective, so the death of one person becomes a crisis for a family. Because of the importance attached to the family, the Chinese take death more seriously. The scene of sweeping the grave in the cemetery is the fulcrum of the whole play. It is precisely because death is regarded as a very grand event that the family will be reunited in the name of a fake wedding when grandma is dying. The Chinese will still regard the deceased as a member of the family, so the deceased also has the responsibility to share and be shared. Grandma made a lot of requests for the deceased grandfather, hoping that he would bless this and the other, and the family would eat grandpa's tribute together. Such a process of sharing and being shared expresses a family's memory of the deceased. Such emotions are common in the East, and Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Never Stop Walking" also performed a similar performance.
The background of the story is set in Changchun, and a northeastern family makes such a story more real. Due to the differences in regional development, the Northeast has gradually fallen behind in the torrent of development of the times, so the exodus of the younger generation has become a common phenomenon. Young people fly like sparrows to all corners of the world, while old people stay in their hometowns. There is always a generation that will gradually fade away, so farewell has become a compulsory course for every family. In the movie, you can see that even in the alley at night, there are stalls and fireworks, but there are actually no people on the road. Where are the most people? Hospital. The reason is self-evident.
Tanya Tsai sang in "Suicide Note": I will go to the sea and love without any worries. Grandma said at the tomb that she hoped her ashes would be scattered in the sea. Perhaps for human beings, freedom is always the highest pursuit goal. If it cannot be achieved while alive, it is hoped that it can be blown to the sea by the wind after death.
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