This Maison en Petits Cubes is one such little film. When I watched it, I really didn't expect it to be the work of a Japanese director, and the style was very French. But in retrospect, it is understandable. Little devils have always been good at that small, fresh, warm, and gentle family view.
If you cover the screen and listen to the background sound of this film quietly: the sound of the continuous waves, the creaking old wooden door slowly opening, the light piano tune that is always slow... Bring in yellowed memories. Such a hunchbacked old man, lonely looking at the pictures of his wife smiling on the wall, listening to boring TV one after another, eating like a routine. Until one morning when I got out of bed, the sea flooded my ankles.
It turned out that the whole city was submerged in endless seawater, and every once in a while, the seawater would rise, engulfing the old houses, and people would build new homes brick by brick on the roofs of the old houses. This imagination is really amazing. We often say that time is like flowing water, but we never thought that the water of time is covering our past layer by layer. We have to move forward and upward, sinking our memories into the sea bit by bit. Hazy trance. Just like the heavy steps and tired eyes of the old man in the film.
Until one day, the old man's pipe accidentally fell down and fell through the hole in the middle of the floor to the next floor. The old man hesitated to put on the diving suit and poured into the water with a thud, pouring into the heavy memories.
In this way, every time you go to the next floor, the memory goes forward for a period of time. From taking care of his sick wife and drinking medicine, to shyly welcoming the new son-in-law with his wife, to his daughter just learning to walk... In the end, the old man swam out of the door at the bottom, imagine this Before the city was submerged, everything was so clear, fresh, and smelled of toon wood. Under the tree of that Rongrong, he and she, childhood sweethearts, chased around in circles, from childhood to youth, hand in hand to build the first warm home. The dining table covered with plaid cloth, filled with red wine, clinking glasses gently, to celebrate the young couple having a home of their own... The
camera slowly rises, from the weak one-bedroom at the bottom, upwards, two-bedroom, three-bedroom Living, living together... The middle is getting bigger and bigger, but the top is getting smaller and smaller, until now the old man lives alone in a lonely hut.
This is our whole life.
In this way, people come and go, love and disperse, all the noises that once entered the silent world of the sea and swayed quietly. Looking at these staggered and overlapping high-rise buildings, who can have the language again, and then have the language to explain the various things in this life. I thought I was so special, but in fact it was just the same, I couldn't escape the cycle of life, old age, sickness and death, and I couldn't escape the care of the one I love... I
suddenly remembered an Oscar-nominated animated short I watched before - "The Old Lady and the Grim Reaper" " title. Standing in a barren desert with a lazy jazz record, the old lady picks up the picture of her bedside wife before going to sleep—the old “artist” slyly smoking a pipe—falls asleep quietly, waiting for death to pick it up He and his wife meet in another world.
Only at such an age, in such loneliness, can one truly understand life. Maybe in our whole life, what we care about and pursue is just that brightly smiling, yellowed photo...
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