"Central Station" tells the story of a Brazilian boy looking for his father. The nine-year-old boy Joshua had never seen his father, and his mother Anna died unexpectedly in a car accident. Dora is a single old woman who lives on behalf of others at the station. She accompanied the boy on the long journey to find her father. Dora was also on the journey of helping Joshua to find his father, accepting her crippled childhood and distant fatherly love.
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"Central Station" (hereinafter referred to as "Zhong") is considered to be one of the "best movies in the world", won the Berlin Film Festival 1998 Best Picture, Best Actress Silver Bear Award, 1998 Golden Globe Award Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and the 1998 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and Actress. Director Walter Salles is an outstanding documentary and feature film director in Brazil. He is well-known in the world film industry for exploring the theme of "exile and self-identity". The heroine Fernanda Montanagro (played by Dora) is recognized as "one of Brazil's greatest actresses."
One/ Looking for the hometown of love: Joshua's search for
Joshua has never met his father, but he always talks about his father with a very proud and airy tone. Although the role of the father is vacant in his life, Joshua's description is very clear, and the existence of the father's position is enough to make him very fascinated. When Dora said that his father must be an irresponsible alcoholic, he was very seriously annoyed.
But he still lacked the confidence and calmness of normal fatherly love. There is a small detail in the film that is very delicate: Joshua followed Dora back to her apartment.
"Where is your husband?" Joshua walked in slowly, looked around and asked Dora,
"I don't have a husband." Dora said. The boy walked gently a few steps, reached out his hand to touch the sofa, and then sat down gently.
"What about the kid?" he asked again, folding his hands on his belly.
"No. There is no family and no dog." Dora opened her hand to explain to him.
"Can I go to the toilet?" His hands were still folded on his lower abdomen.
"Can."
This detail touched me very much, but also a little sad. The cautious look of a homeless child walking into someone's home, the politeness of premature sensibility, is too pitiful. Remember how we felt when we were young? I remember that when I was a child, I loved home very much. I went to stay at my grandma’s or aunt’s house. Playing during the day would dilute the feeling of homesickness. Home is a strong impulse that cannot be restrained. I can empathize with the boy’s homeless panic, just like being in a helpless, dark field, empty.
The vagueness of the concept of father cannot stop Joshua from thinking about his father. He is proud of having a father. He has consciously cultivated his sense of masculine responsibility.
"Irene, what do you do?" Joshua asked Dora's beautiful female neighbor Irene after dinner.
"Guess." The charming Irene tilted her head.
"You all look like teachers, but she writes for someone." Joshua looked at Dora.
"Yes, we've all been teachers before." The two ladies hesitated, seemingly sorry for the way they are now.
"You don't have a husband?" Joshua asked Irene in front of him in a solemn, even reproachful tone.
"No." They looked at each other deeply.
"Then who will take care of you?" Joshua's eyes were deep.
"We take care of ourselves."
"Your mother is not alone, who will take care of her?" Dora asked,
"Of course it's me." The boy looked like someone else .
Sometimes, Joshua and Dora talked with the car driver about their views on women, about their body and sex. His sober but decent appearance made people angry and funny. He thought that a man might be like this, talking about women disdainfully but taking care of them who are weak. The absence of his father made him unconsciously fill the male role in the family, playing a seemingly tough image to face a world he didn't understand.
Two/ Warm your eyes: Dora's search
At that time, Brazil officially changed from an agricultural form to an industrial society, and people moved to cities to find opportunities for development. The Central Station in the camera is constantly swimming with a dense flow of people, heading in different directions, and life makes people feel breathless and tense. Dora has been single and unmarried, and her current life is full of embarrassment, and she can't even afford a TV. She takes pleasure in reading other people's letters, tearing up unpleasant letters mischievously, or throwing them in a drawer and never sending them out. Because she doesn't believe in relationships between people, she only agrees with indifference, alienation, and distrust. There seems to be no tenderness and expectation in her eyes, only anxiety and exhaustion, and the red ones always seem to contain tears.
As the journey unfolded, Dora pours out her inner childhood pain to Joshua. She is also like a child looking for a father,
"Do you recognize your father from the photo?" Dora asked.
"I remember his face sometimes, and sometimes it was blurry." Joshua said.
"Maybe there is no photo, so you don't have to remember it, you can forget it." Dora went on to say:
"I have not seen my dad since I left home at the age of sixteen. Years later in Rio Blanco, I suddenly ran into him. I The whole body was stiff, and I could only say, "Do you recognize me?" I knew at a glance that he didn't remember, he didn't recognize his daughter, and he said, "It's you, how could I forget such a beauty like you?" Said I had admitted the wrong person, and then left. Later I heard that he was dead."
That moment should be Dora's most profoundly sad feeling about life. For Dora, his father was also absent. The absurd life of the father in childhood, the harm of the drunk father to his mother like a clown, the father and daughter met but can’t recognize each other many years later, these all make Dora have a huge childhood shadow. There is no responsibility and care between father and daughter, only each other. Discarded painful memories.
The journey of searching from the Central Station, the wide fields and natural scenery on the roadside, the strange crowds and the mission of searching, gradually relaxed Dora's heart. She put on lipstick and even ignited a brief fire of love. Most importantly, as the journey stretched, it evoked the bright color of Dora’s childhood memories: “I remember riding the train with my father before, and he would let me be a little girl and sound the siren all the way.” “...I miss me so much. Dad, I miss everything.” She burst into tears, and finally she felt relieved at the painful memories that she had not dared to face, and her father, who hated the past, became extremely soft. At the end of the journey, she also completed her search.
Dora put on lipstick for the first time because of strange love. The second time, she put on the bright dress that Joshua bought for her, and looked deeply at her face carved by the years in the candlelight. At that moment, her expression was calm and even sweet. She unloaded the long-term burden in her heart, got rid of the heavy and depressed life feeling, got out of the cage of childhood past, with a grateful mood, she walked faster and faster on the twilight road...
3/ Implanted in The root of blood: A nation’s search for the
"Central Station" video advertisement reads like this: "A child is looking for his home, a woman is looking for her heart, and this country is looking for its roots."
Father Jesus is also there. Looking for the woman he wants to stay together for life. The father's two sons, Messiah and Moses, are also waiting for the father's news-the son is looking for his father, the father is looking for his woman, and the woman is looking for his husband. This is a perfect search story. Everyone is looking for their family dreams and comfort in difficult lives.
The coach driver on the road, a strong and optimistic middle-aged man, washes his face in the puddle in the morning, camps by the campfire at night, and drives on the lonely long distance. He is a man who is always on the road. He once provided lunch for the hungry Dora and Joshua, and helped Dora cover up the theft. Dora's indifferent heart thaws, and love sprouts. When they were in the cab, with Joshua sitting in his uncle's arm and touching the steering wheel, the three laughed so easily and sweetly. I really want Dora to marry her, and Joshua to call his father, they need each other, it will be a complete family. But love is short-lived like a shooting star across the horizon, with no results, and it is embarrassing. Even if it is very regrettable, it can only be relieved, because everyone is destined to walk on the road, the journey cannot be stopped, and everyone's fateful life has a certain trajectory. There can only be two people walking on the road to find the father, a middle-aged woman and a young boy, and the only truck drivers walking on the lonely long-distance road. And love is only "occasionally projected on your wave heart", you have yours, I have mine, and direction. Whether you remember it, it's best if you forget... the
letter, in "Central Station", is an emotional prop throughout the whole process, which promotes the development of the plot and string the pulse of each character. At the beginning of the film, Anna asked Dora to write to her husband on the platform; after her mother died, Joshua asked Dora for a letter, and wanted to find his father; Dora and the boy set foot on the road, and the letter kept guiding them to find one of his father’s A footprint; Dora writes letters for others to make a living in a different place; Dora sends away all the letters written on behalf of others, instead of tearing them away indifferently as before; Dora reads what his father Jesus left Anna in front of the three brothers Letter, he missed Anna and the children deeply; Dora left Anna’s letter, and walked to the station alone before dawn; on the returning car, Dora picked up a pen to write to Joshua in tears Xin, saying that she missed her father... All stories revolve around "Faith."
In the film, in different stations, different villages and markets, the crowds are flowing, everyone has the need to talk to their faces, to their lovers, sisters, brothers, friends, women who meet in peace, consignees in the same acquaintance, and even Enemies who have deceived themselves, they have to pass on, express happiness, sadness, regret, resentment, loss, excitement, distress... all kinds of feelings. The letter has a symbolic meaning, it is a symbol that conveys emotions, a testimony of communication, a reliance on nostalgia, and a basis for searching. The movie "中" tells the story of the letter, the circulation of the letter, and the legend of the letter...
The scenery along the way, the folk songs at the funeral, the spirit flags on the mountain, and the collective worship of gods make the film full of religious colors. Especially the collective worship of gods in the night carnival style is a collective spiritual appeal of the people, calling out to unknown gods, passing messages to the dead, praying for blessing their humble destiny, and rescuing the suffering of all beings under the pure sky.
Four/ the unbearable weight of life
The sorrow of children and the heaviness of adults have all experienced life experience in the common search for childhood.
The expressions of the children on the road looked so stern. Compared with their young age, their mission was too heavy. Joshua’s tearful face and stubborn eyes showed his fearless determination to complete his father’s search across Brazil. The huge space of losing their parents is torturing children. Maybe they simply don't have the power to face such a big emotional lack and collapse of dependence. When Joshua was crying helplessly and silently in a crowded station with his arms in his arms, you knew how weak the corner of the world was. There were sorrowful children in the corner, and their small bodies were unbearable. The weight of life.
Life has treated them poorly and lost the shelter of home. The lonely children were exposed on the rough road, and the outside world showed them a hideous corner. Joshua was sold by Dora to the so-called foreign children’s shelter, but it was actually an illegal organization that sold human organs. Take the risk of "stealing" Joshua from the traffickers, and the family dare not return. The dangerous claws hidden in the corner are waiting for the opportunity to invade the weak body, and the child is only weakly contending with a crying back. . This is the grief caused by the absence of parents.
Therefore, in order to get rid of the grief of boundless love under the weight of the rootless spirit, they must go on the road to find, and touch the hard reality with a soft heart. This kind of life impulse to find relatives is the child's desire for the love of his parents, the desire for protection from the parents, and the call from the source of blood. Although he can't understand that this world has too many helplessness and imperfections, the persistence of a child is not only a struggle for fate, but also the protection of the integrity of childhood. Who can not say that this is the greatest mission? Therefore, it is inevitable for them to go on the road, no matter how hard they endure, they will always go on the road fearlessly.
From the city to the countryside, and from the countryside back to the city. His childhood is over, the pain is in his heart, and they will bear the weight of another life. They will not become Dora and his like in middle age? I don't think so, because they have taken on the incompleteness of the survival sky a long time ago, and they know how to find hope in imperfections. This is the meaning of the journey.
In this movie, none of the boy's realistic tasks have been truly achieved. The father of Zhuya only left a gospel-like letter from the family. Therefore, the child's long journey will have no realistic results. However, the goal of the director is not here. The adults who accompany the children continue to find the mission of finding in the film and repair the spiritual lack of childhood. When they returned to the city from the countryside and faced life again, they brought back childhood gifts in their hearts. The heaviness of the middle age corresponds to the child’s search for the road. The continuous unfolding of the journey is more like a symbol for adults: the process of stripping off one's own weakness and relieving the pain of the heart is like a body with sores, redness and swelling. After a long time, I finally made up my mind to squeeze out the pus forcefully, painful and relaxed. At the end of the road, they stood in the same place of life, the end and the beginning.
Therefore, this film is not simply the theme of children's search for relatives. It is not just a model of a road film. Behind it is the recovery of childhood, the search for the inner spiritual core, and it is stubborn in this emotionally lost society. Value questioning. The child’s search is a tangible search for relatives on the way. The search of an adult is an invisible root search, the spiritual root for an individual to establish his own homeland.
Where are the once turbulent love and sorrows? How to collect the missing that was once impossible to face? Perhaps these are no longer necessary, Joshua finally found his strange and dear brothers, waiting for his father's return together.
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