1. The boundary between reality and illusion
Sometimes people who are trapped in a story are like looking in a mirror, not knowing whether they are seeing a shadow or themselves. At some important points in the story, illusion and reality also fork - at the moment when the peony jumps into the water, the story appears in a garden with forked paths. For the divers who salvage Peony's body, Peony is dead and the story is over. For the boatmen who saw the mermaid on the Suzhou River, the mermaid is not a peony, but a reflection in their own hearts - the light of fantasy in the infinite grayscale life of Suzhou River.
For Ma, a deliveryman watching pirated DVDs at midnight, and Che Guevara riding a motorcycle looking for a story of life, life is even a story, and a story is even more important than life.
For Meimei, she is also a confuser of stories. She can't distinguish the story she fell in love with from a person. Until the end, she wakes up from someone else's story and finds that it has nothing to do with herself. She must also firmly believe that the man on the balcony will find her. She will have the same story as Peony, she will have her own motor.
As for the man on the balcony, a photographer who has sex with others, gets married, and takes pictures of everything as long as he pays, this is just a story told by others when he smokes, whether it is true or false, it has no meaning to him, the story is the story, he is The only person who sees the fire from the other side with an incomparable insight into the boundary between reality and illusion, because he is the mirror, the mirror of others.
2. Wine, balcony, motorcycle and
bottle of vodka throughout the film, but their attributes are different for everyone. For Peony and his father, it is a smuggled goods and a commodity. For Peony and Motor, vodka is life, it is a walk in. The key to the story is also the means to end the story, and for the Balcony Man, after Meimei left, drinking the vodka of the motor on the cargo ship is just a summary of other people's stories. A summary for yourself.
The balcony is the attribute of the balcony man. He secretly took pictures of Meimei on the balcony, and watched Meimei from the balcony. He even appeared at the end of the day, and even at the end he said, "If you go back to the balcony, the story will continue." The balcony is his base, and he will not take the initiative to go. Looking for "what, he is always waiting and watching, so when Meimei asked him if she would go to him like a motor, the answer was already clear, this is not his story.
Motorcycle is the Zen of Mada, and the soul of Mada is “searching”. At the beginning, he was looking for his own story from a pile of pirated VCDs. Later, he rode a motorcycle to find Peony. Finally, the motorcycle fell into the water, and the “searching” was over. Neither is the motor.
3. There
is only one love story. There is only one love story in the story, and that is the motor and the peony.
Balcony Man is only addicted to the "image" of Meimei. He watches Meimei cross the road on the balcony, and shoots Meimei on the camera. Meimei is fragmented and imaged to him. He and Meimei don't even have a story, no ex. Cause, no consequence, no reason, have you seen any stories?
And Meimei is obsessed with a story for Ma Ma, no matter if the story is false or true for her at the beginning.
4. The distance between the observer and the story
I always thought that the man on the balcony was Lou Ye's watch.
He observes everything, shoots everything, and is extremely indifferent to the subject he shoots. He knows the edge of the story. When he is almost addicted to it at the end of the story, he may go to Meimei like a motor in a moment, and work hard after a bottle of wine. Pull back to reality, he is not the protagonist of the story, he is just the person behind the camera, a frank and melancholy narrator.
In the reserach method, there is a concept called observation as a participant, which is to observe the object like a participant. For such a model, the biggest taboo is to lose the distance with the observed and lose the objectivity.
For the balcony man, this is unacceptable. He will lose his balcony and lose control of his life.
This is also a symbol for the director himself. The director must exercise restraint between his own stories. Once caught in the story, he also loses his place.
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