The whole story is not difficult to understand, but the director has broken up the narrative sequence and timeline.
The whole movie is divided into two clues 70 minutes before putting on the 3d eyes-
1The path of reality detective opened by clues in mother's photos
The male protagonist Luo Hongwu returned to Kaili again because of his father's death. This is a realistic timeline. His father left the restaurant to the male lead's stepmother and a truck to the male lead. There was originally a clock hanging on the place where the father’s portrait was hung. The stepmother told the male lead that his father always smoked against this clock. The male lead realized the significance of this clock to his father. Why did the father remember the clock and miss his early departure? The mother where their father and son were gone? So the male protagonist found a photo on the back of the clock. The woman in the photo was scalded by the cigarette. The male protagonist found a name and phone number on the back of the photo, so he followed the clue to investigate like a detective. With the help of a police assistant, he found that the number was that of a women’s prison, so the male protagonist set foot on the search. Mother, look for the way to investigate Wan Qiwen's current trace.
2 The road of memories of lover Wan Qiwen
The timeline here goes back to 12 years ago. The male protagonist returned to Kaili because he was looking for the murderer Zuo Hongyuan (the gangster who sang in a white top hat) who killed his friend, the white cat (the boy who ate the apple). The gang boss is of course hard to find. The male protagonist first found Wan Qiwen, the lover of the gang boss. The male protagonist was gradually attracted by her charm, mystery, danger, and detached temperament in Wan Qiwen's relationship, and gradually fell in love with her. Wan Qiwen was pregnant with the male protagonist's child, and knew that she could not give birth to this child, so she knocked it out within a period of time after she disappeared. After the female protagonist came back, he wanted to fly away with the male protagonist and let the male protagonist kill the gang boss in the cinema. Of course, the male protagonist was unsuccessful in the end, so we saw the male protagonist being sung by Karen Mok and Wu Bai’s "Reason for Strength", holding a microphone The gang boss hangs there.
Memories are different from dreams. Memories are real, but dreams are fake.
Of course, the road of memories is different from the dream road of the last 3d segment . All the segments in the road of memories have happened in real life, which are the thoughts and memories of the male protagonist. And all the characters and scenes of Dream Road have realistic projections and directions, which will be explained in detail later.
How did the director take the path of reality detective that the male protagonist returned to Kaili because of his father's death and was opened by the clues in his mother's photo on the line of reminiscing his lover Wan Qiwen 12 years ago?
Note that in a room full of water and the river of time is surging, the male protagonist found clues to the photo from behind the species and the director gave a lens. The clock appeared under the reflection of the water surface. At this time, the male protagonist moved the species. The hour hand of, because it is the reflection of the water surface, the order of the hour hand is reversed. The hour hand of this kind is rotated counterclockwise, which means that time has started to go back here, so the camera switched to the male lead 12 years ago, back to the male lead and Wan Qiwen Those short dream-like years like fireworks.
When the protagonist saw Wan Qiwen for the first time, he said that she looked like his mother with makeup.
Because clues on the male's mother came to the prison to see a picture that is called Tai Zhao Mei woman, the woman told her that she was stealing Joey Meng with past friends.
Dreams, time, and loneliness are the eternal motifs of Bi Gan's movies. The two timelines of the movie are parallel, and the present and the past are intertwined and appear, like a pair of entangled lovers, dreams and reality vie for the end of the movie. The quirky pictures, the poetic and romantic dialogue, and the shadows of the uncertain characters make the whole movie as erratic and profound as if falling into a cloud. It also allows the audience who really loves this movie to immerse themselves in the movie and detach themselves from the boring reality. , Soaring with the characters inside.
The director uses the Kaili dialect to make the ungrounded lines spoken by everyone inside come to life, and to make the dialogues that solidify the philosophy of life and the concept of love, such as clouds and mists, closer to the lives of ordinary people, and use dialects to dilute the dialogue. The esoteric and boring literary atmosphere adds to its pyrotechnic atmosphere. Let this incomprehensible movie a little closer to the audience.
Continue back to Clue 1-the road of reality investigation detectives.
The male lead came to the prison and found the woman named in the photo. This woman told the male lead that she was a former friend of Wan Qiwen. The woman said that this picture of her was given to her by Wan Qiwen. At that time, they went to a family to steal something. After coming back all of a sudden, Wan Qiwen hurried away and finally took out a book. They read the story of this book in the forest. It is a love story. The title page of the book is a spell. If you read it, the lover’s house Will spin. Later, Wan Qiwen gave the woman books and photos and asked her to send them back to Kaili.
The male lead left the prison and was called to stop by the prison guards. The prison guards gave the woman who was in jail what was left to the male lead. It was the torn-off title page of the book. On the title page was written the name of a woman named Priscilla Chen and the location of a small city. This is a pseudonym used by Wan Qiwen. The hero went to the place to look for Priscilla Chen, and found clues that a woman with the same name appeared in a hotel. So the host found the hotel again. The host told the host that the woman finally had no money. She used a story every day in exchange for the room fee, and finally married her, and told the host that the woman said she was not fertile. , Which means that I have never had children with the hotel owner afterwards. Finally, the male lead went to the karaoke hall to continue looking for clues to Wan Qiwen, who had worked there. A karaoke lady told her that it was still early, so let's go to a movie first. So the male protagonist fell asleep with 3D eyes in the cinema, and entered the last 70 minutes of the 3D dream scene.
Dangerous elements are everywhere in the whole movie
The viper in the glass cabinet keeps screaming, the cup that trembles when the train passes by, the light that can short-circuit at any time when wet by the water, the makeup mirror on the train, and the gun that has been pointed at people but has never sounded. Barefoot on the ruins of the wall, the room burned by the fire, betrayal, resignation, crumbling affair will happen at any time. These elements make the whole movie look like a mysterious woman who feels detached from you, but makes you unable to extricate yourself, and makes you unknowingly fall into the long dream set by the director.
Of course, in addition to danger, there are also romantic and poetic elements.
Wan Qiwen ate wild grapefruit when she was crying while watching a movie. In the end, the sign of the girl with short hair who won the prize in the game console in her dream was also grapefruit. Grapefruit is a fruit that will not appear in that season, which means that things are almost impossible to appear in the current environment. For example, Wan Qiwen and the male lead are dangerous but let each other sink into the love. The most painful time for the white cat is the apple that eats even the nucleus, the spell on the front page of the book, the flying room, the eagle on the ping-pong board, burning in the dark, representing the fire of hope, and finally a burst of fireworks that bloom for a short time, These poetic elements are also Bi Gan's consistent style.
Finally, let’s talk about the most important 3d part of the last 70 minutes-Dream Road
The timeline of the male protagonist in the current reality. At the end of the Detective Road's tracing of clues, he came to a movie theater and put on his glasses. The last part is completely a long dream of the male protagonist in the movie theater, no doubt. This passage is a bit like David Lynch’s "Mulholland Road".
Of course, this dream is not meaningless and random. The appearance of each character in the dream is a projection of the male protagonist’s reality. Behind each scene is something that the male protagonist cannot get in reality.
A little bit to analyze.
1 The boy who appeared in the cave first is undoubtedly the friend of the hero's death. The boy said, only you are here to accompany me, I have always been here alone. The meaning here is that only the male lead always misses him and dreams of him from time to time. At first I hesitated between the aborted child of the male protagonist and the boy’s friend. Later, I thought about the unborn child who did not communicate with the male protagonist in reality, and the friend was the male protagonist’s childhood playmate, so there was a relationship. Memories of playing table tennis. There is also the intention of the huge table tennis board removed by the male protagonist representing the board on the hand trailer where the male protagonist collects the body of his friend in reality. Playing table tennis is a communication between the living and the dead.
The boy said he was a naive ghost, but he was actually a ghost. Note that the boy appeared from a doorway wearing a mask like a "ghost, ghost and snake god". The doorway was also like a coffin, which proved that he was the dead friend of the hero.
There is another proof. In a trailer video, colors are used to distinguish the relationship between the characters represented by dreams and reality.
The reality projection represented by the little boy in the dream is the white cat, the boy’s friend who eats the apple.
The second girl with short hair, Kaizhen, who appeared next to the game console, is undoubtedly the woman Wan Qiwen lost by the protagonist 12 years ago. Kaizhen in the dream speaks Mandarin, simple, gentle, and cute, which is different from what she says in reality. Kaili dialect, mysterious, dangerous, snakelike woman Wan Qiwen.
The woman who took the fire (Zhang Aijia) is undoubtedly the mother of the protagonist. Why did the director use the white cat’s mother to act as the illusion of the male protagonist’s mother in the dream? Because the male protagonist’s mother left him when he was very young. His mother, "Zhang Aijia", was very fond of chatting. For the male protagonist's childhood, what a mother imagined in his heart is probably what a white cat mother looks like. So in the dream the image of the mother appeared with the face of the white cat mother instead.
In the dream, the mother wanted to elope with a man, but for success, she even burned his house. The male protagonist helps his mother and the man he likes to leave in his dream, and also hopes that his mother will have a good home in reality. In the dream, the fire in the mother's hand represents hope and the blessing of the male protagonist. So the male protagonist uses a gun to force the man his mother likes to open the iron door and drive away with his mother.
The Huo Bar woman gave the watch to the male lead and told the male lead that it was his most important thing.
The hero gnawed an apple sadly after his mother left. Because in the saddest time, even the apple core will be eaten together. The male protagonist certainly hopes to be with his mother forever, but leaving him is his biggest pain since childhood, so he is distraught at this time.
The hero finally gave the watch to the girl Kaizhen, which means that in reality, Wan Qiwen will always be her love.
The protagonist and the cute girl Kaizhen did what he and Wan Qiwen could not do in reality. They flew together, closer to the moon than ever before. They went to the revolving room and kissed when the fireworks were burning brilliantly. .
However, this is a dream after all. The last shot of the movie is a small bunch of fireworks that will burn out. This means that the relationship between the hero and Wan Qiwen is as gorgeous and short as this firework. When the firework goes out, it is the man. When the protagonist wakes up from a dream, he returns to the scene of the first male protagonist waking up naked.
When the movie was over, the theater lights turned on. I got up and found that the buddy next to him had fallen asleep deeply. His head was pulled low, as if he had been severed. I shook him and said, Friend, the movie is over. At this time, I found that his clothes, his figure, and even his face were exactly the same as mine, which made me wonder whether I was in reality or still in a dream.
Just when I was panicked and at a loss, I caught a glimpse of that buddy’s mouth rising slightly on his face and smiled mysteriously. Suddenly all the nowhere to rest in my life was completely relaxed. I know that he finally Had a good dream.
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