The reason why life is called life is that they can reproduce, which is the instinct of life. In the beginning of life, reproduction was not as complicated as it is now, but a simple division, where one cell splits into two, and two splits into four.... To this day, division is actually still the most basic feature of life, but this process has now been mixed with too much pain, joy and a series of complex things, the most important of which is that it breeds hope.
But if that hope is fading, there may be a need to reunite two lives that have been divided. From this movie, I seem to see this need.
The plot of this film, which swept five European awards, is really very simple. It is an old man who is sad and wants to go to his daughter for a hug. It turns out that the bright-looking daughter is actually in a mess. It used to be a whole two. Sad and helpless life, after some exchanges and struggles, reunited. Not only the plot is simple, but also the shooting method is simple. There is no background music in the whole process. Most of them are hand-held shooting. When watching it, I feel that it is no more than 5 meters away from myself. It is said that this is a new and popular advanced form.
Life has become too complicated after evolution, and now it takes two lives to cooperate to give birth to a new life, and it also requires a man and a woman. The four relationships of mother-child, father-daughter, and mother-daughter. But why does the film use the father-daughter relationship instead of the other three? Perhaps the creator's consideration is that the father represents the strength and the daughter represents the weakness. If this is the case, then this movie actually marks the redemption for this process of reintegration. "Tony Erdman" came for redemption.
"Erdman" isn't the other side of the father, it's the father's role to make his daughter happy, which I guess he did a lot when his daughter was a kid. If you want to say how charming this character is, it's not necessarily true, but in the past, he must have had an effect. Now, it doesn't seem to work. why? Because the daughter has grown up, the troubles of reality can no longer be alleviated by the father playing a comical role. The two long-split lives no longer have the tacit understanding of the past. You think she's always been a part of yourself, but she's already been a separate entity.
But the wonderful thing about life is that no matter how divided, there is always an invisible bond connecting each other. Although you are independent, you were once a part of him, and all your experiences were actually added to him.
In the beginning, the father went to visit his mother, and when the older mother found out that her son was not doing well, she could only say a word of reproach and concern: "Do you usually eat these?" Can't do anything anymore. But when he suddenly broke into his daughter's life and found that she was not happy and didn't know how to take care of herself, he couldn't do nothing. After a series of failed attempts to communicate, he knew that the father-daughter dialogue model was no longer working. So, instead, he played a fictional character and tried to continue his efforts to save his daughter's life as a friend.
It's just that "Erdman", a role that may have amused her daughter and inspired and helped her, has little effect now. The elderly father has been very weak when playing the funny role of "Erdman", often off-screen, especially when he watched his daughter do drugs in front of him, the cool "Erdman" has been softened by his heart. The father role is completely ruined.
It's more of a provocation: aren't you trying to save me? Do you see any help for me?
I don't have kids, so I don't know how desperate he must be as a father.
At this point, a story has probably entered a dead end. What's brilliant about this movie is that it doesn't try to break the knot, and it doesn't ask the father to do something heroic to wake up the daughter like a heroic movie. The battle-weary father and daughter finally reconciled with a big hug.
The fluffy Bulgarian mask that the father wore later was obviously a symbol, but it is really difficult to understand what it symbolizes. Maybe it can be understood as a kind of primitive return. As a father, if all my efforts fail to make you feel better, the only thing I can do is give you a warm hug.
At the end of the film, when the daughter returns to her hometown to attend her grandmother's funeral, she wears the iconic dentures of "Erdman" played by her father. Perhaps it is her to express her gratitude to her father and his other identity, a friend.
We have no way of knowing whether the father and daughter will be able to get out of their depressed life and become happier in the future. The movie does not seem to want to express such a prospect, it is just a relatively complete statement. You may call it an imperfect story, or you may call it a bowl of chicken soup that tastes bad, but in fact, as one of thousands of ordinary people, how much power do you and I have to change and save? What about another person's life? Even if she is the person you care about the most, once a part of yourself.
There is an easily overlooked plot in the play. The father is sitting on a bench in a shopping center waiting for his daughter who is helping others shop. playing. Although he never asked his daughter to get married and have children in the play, the old and powerless father should still have an instinctive hope in his heart: he hopes that after his life has been split once, he can split again and be able to split again. Happy to continue. Another part of myself can also have another part of her.
June 8, 2018 in Chongqing
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