"Long Time" is the longest film in the list of works that Wang Xiaoshuai has directed for more than 20 years, and it is also the film with the largest text span. The grand historical narrative of the fifth generation, of course, is not enough to criticize the film. However, "Long Time" is not as profound and heavy as the fourth generation, nor as sharp and meticulous as the fifth generation. From the narrator's point of view, irreconcilable self-contradiction and ambiguity appear, and the huge story body is like a toilet , while the narrative text exploits the viewer’s sensual experience like a shit stick without restraint. The positive performance of family planning that seems to be groundbreaking in film history is actually just an almost barbaric "exploitation" of a virgin land in history.
The expression strategy (in surface form) of "Long Time" continues the director's previous work "Intruder". They all aim to reveal the pain caused by history that is difficult to be diluted by time and erased by life. The profound and long-lasting impact of the generation at that time. In "The Intruder", the cancer of the Cultural Revolution turned on the current and followed the wires of time to the three generations after the Cultural Revolution, like a ghost of history breaking into a seemingly peaceful modern family. The uniqueness of this film is that it Going deep into history with individual incisions and wrapping culture in a suspenseful shell is a kind of lightness.
In contrast to "Long Time, Heaven", this kind of character symbol also existed at the beginning. Li Haiyan was also in a state of being overwhelmed by the system. As the executor of the policy, he destroyed the unborn child of Liu Yaojun and his wife. Li Haiyan's individual attributes and Liu Yaojun's political attributes are very clear, which can be reflected from the scene where he smashed the game console. All his resentments are clearly directed to the system, and he still shows tolerance and understanding to the Shen Yingming family. The relationship between good friends (this kind of friendship was finally magnified and rendered infinitely), if you put aside the question of whether Liu Yaojun and his wife have zero negative emotions about their neighbors, it is still self-consistent. The film's position is that distortion and qualitative changes began to occur after Liu Xing's accidental death, and Li Haiyan was burdened with a huge moral burden. The author's critical object suddenly disappeared, and the so-called "historical legacy" and "representational system" were absent in the following pages. The above-mentioned historical cancer was artificially grafted onto Li Haiyan's son Shen Hao by the director. The tragedy caused by Li Haiyan's "fair and fair law enforcement" reflects the inevitability of history, while Shen Hao's direct cause of Liu Xing's death is just an accidental event deliberately designed by the creator, that is to say: even if the historical background is set up, Shen Hao caused Liu Xing's death, he concealed it After many years, a "big tree" has grown in my heart, and I can no longer bear the guilt, so the plot logic and dramatic climax of confessing to Liu Yaojun and his wife are still valid. The break between these two events is the fulcrum of Wang Xiaoshuai’s idea of stealing a change, even if it is possible to ignore the ingeniousness or even a little bit of bloodshed in the design of the play, homogenize the contingency and inevitability, and pack the main body of the event into a family rudely To sew up the barriers of expression to complete the so-called historical criticism, such criticism is bound to be invalid. Contrary to "Intruder", "Long Time" is a dimensionality reduction from a grand historical pattern to personal emotional redemption. The elimination of historical scars through individual reconciliation also exposes Wang Xiaoshuai's compromise and chicken thief as a creator.
If the old house confesses that the director still has at least a little critical awareness, then the quiet years at the end are the complete collapse of the author's attitude. The film has always been only responsible for raising questions, not seeking solutions. Just like "Intruder", it neither tries to restore history nor easily defines history. This calmness brings speculation and warning, while "Dilong" The ultimate consummation and consolation of Liu Yaojun and his wife in Tian Chang is basically based on the birth of the next generation of Shen Yingming's family, and the Shen Yingming family is the supporter of the policy and the bearer of historical stains in the dimension of the director, so the values reflected by this are even more. It's outrageous, what an ironic shift from the underground director group to the mouthpiece of the second-child policy, after all, the illusion of "everything will be alright" and "the future is full of light" has never appeared in any of the sixth-generation directors before. In a work, whether it is Jia Zhangke, Lou Ye, or Wang Xiaoshuai himself, because in their previous consciousness, apart from pain, nothing lasts forever, just like what a friend popularized to me: the current two-child policy is essentially or family planning. In the end, no matter how good Wang Jingchun's performance was, it couldn't cover up the wretchedness and inferiority I felt when he said the phrase "he's a man with a handle".
In addition to the ambiguity of his position, Wang Xiaoshuai also has no achievements in techniques and aesthetics. The style before and after is seriously inconsistent (hand-held photography to static composition), and the flashback is blunt, so that it is impossible to form a structure, a huge length, and the state of the characters. The lack of coherence between the characters and the strong quality of the TV series are also obvious problems, and all of this is dispelled in the grand narrative (out of touch with the theme) of the changing and vicissitudes of time and incitement, all critical With the soothing melody of "Friendship Lasts Forever" dissipated in the sky above the tube tower.
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