The movie begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral.
Like the title "A One and a Two", life goes round and round.
The film depicts the different life stages of the three generations, like the "intertextuality" in literature, which complements and interweaves each other, slowly flowing out the "flow" of life.
The main characters in the play are three generations of Jian family: mother-in-law; Jian Nanjun, wife Minmin; son Yangyang, daughter Tingting.
The beginning of the film is the wedding of Min Min's younger brother "Adi". Ingeniously, under this wedding, the problems of the three generations have quietly sneaked in and continued to ferment.
"Twilight" and "Chao" in the Elderly
On the night of the wedding, the mother-in-law went into a coma. The excitement and rebirth of the wedding, the coma silence and aging of the old man, this gap set the tone for the gradual change of life from the very beginning. The mother-in-law's coma, from the beginning of the movie, runs through the entire movie, and finally ends at the mother-in-law's funeral. This also seems to represent the state of the old people-silence is not noticeable. In addition, at the mother-in-law’s funeral, Yang Yang’s mention of her new cousin gave her mother-in-law’s silence in the whole movie more of the power to nurture a new beginning.
"Confusion" and "Not Confusion" in Middle Age
The mother-in-law's coma is the beginning of Minmin's "middle-aged crisis" and "confusion". The doctor advised the family to speak to the mother-in-law every day in order to "wake up" the mother-in-law. After a few days, Minmin cried and said, "Why do you tell mom the same things? I told her for a few days, and I said exactly the same every day, what do I do in the morning, what I do in the afternoon, and what I do in the evening. It's over in a few minutes. I can't stand it anymore. Why do I only have so little? I feel like I have lived in vain." It's really a pain point. When we look back on ourselves every day, who is not the same? We just lack a "review". Minmin therefore went up the mountain to "practice", seeking religious consolation. At the end of the film, Minmin's views on "practice" after going down the mountain are quite interesting. "They (the monks) are like, I talk to my mother every day, just change the position and repeat the same thing every day." Min Min still believes that life is "there is nothing different", but is more relieved, not that complicated, this is life.
At the wedding, Jian Nanjun met his first love girlfriend A Rui at the elevator entrance. At the beginning, we didn't go together because Ari hoped that Nan Jun could choose electronics major to live a high-paying and secure life. Nan Jun left his beloved Ari because of this compulsion. What fate teased is that he left A Rui, but he still lived a life like A Rui. In the days when Min Min went up the mountain, Jian Nanjun had the opportunity to choose again, but he still did not go beyond. His words seem to be a commentary for Minmin: "I had a chance to go there when you were away, some time when I was young. I thought that if I live again, it might be different. As a result... It’s still the same, it’s no different. It’s just that suddenly I feel that if I live again, it seems... really unnecessary, really unnecessary."
The "ignorance" and "clearness" of young people
Tingting's love story is the same as that of the third child in "Diet Men and Women", but it hasn't gotten proper results. When the fat man held Tingting's hand on the streets of Taipei, his father Jian Nanjun also held A Rui's hand on the streets of Tokyo. The meaning of life inheritance here seems to be stronger, there is a kind of trance that travels back to Nan Jun when he was young. Like the ending of his father, the fat man ran out of the hotel in the room.
For Tingting, an important prop is the pot of flowers cultivated in the biology class. Tingting took good care of her every day, but couldn't produce flowers; after a few days of carelessness, the potted plant actually grew flower bones. Isn't the emotion like this, just like moonlight, the tighter you hold, the darker you are.
Yangyang's sexual enlightenment is more poetic.
In a popular science class, when talking about the origin of life, there was thunder and lightning on the projection cloth. A standing girl, with a shadowy figure, was accompanied by the narration of the lecture:
In the process of flying
Little ice particles left positive electricity in the air
Turn yourself into a raindrop of negative electricity
Two opposing and attracting energies
As small raindrops rush to the ground, they keep accumulating
Mutually irresistible
Finally in a flash of lightning
Positive electricity and negative electricity are combined intensely again
This is
Thunder
All life on our planet
Should be created by lightning
Scientists believe that a lightning bolt 400 million years ago
Created the first amino acid
The most basic unit of all life
This is where it all started"
Yangyang's camera has to be mentioned. Yangyang once asked his father: "Are we only able to know half of the things? We can only see the front, but not the back, so that half of the things can't be seen?" This is why Yangyang learns to take pictures. . He wants to take pictures and show others things that they can't see, so he took pictures of many people's backs. And the movie seems to be seen by the filming director, but we can't see things, just like the very wonderful poster of this movie: Yangyang's Back. Yangyang patted someone on the back for others to see, but who patted him on the back again?
Weddings and funerals are very important ceremonies in life. As always, there are indeed endless implications. The different life stages of several generations are more like the condensing of a lifetime. As Yangyang said at the funeral of her mother-in-law, "I think I am old when I see that little cousin who has no name yet."
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