I never thought that the opening song of the movie would be "My Girlfriend Is Married, The Groom Is Not Me". This song is so familiar that I can hum and dance to the tune. The director is very smart. One song explains the background of the story. When this song became popular, it should have been around 2002. Cheng Yong appeared in the cheerful tune, with hair reaching behind his ears, puffy cheeks, a greasy jacket, and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. Every corner of the city has such a depressed middle-aged man. The past is a bad debt, and I can't see the future, but I am burdened with old and young, like a snail, unable to move.
In Cheng Yong, I saw a vague figure of myself, the weak soul that was devastated by reality. To live in society, one must have an identity. What is identity? If you have money, if you have a lot of money, you will have a house and a car, and you will have a safe body to rely on, and you will have dignity. Cheng Yong has a soul, his ex-wife is going to immigrate with his son, and his father is waiting for life-saving money. He has nowhere to go except to take risks. The appearance of Lu Yiyi, a leukemia patient, made him embark on an adventurous journey to smuggle 'fake medicines' between China and India.
There is a poem in "The Divine Comedy": Those who enter this gate should give up all hope. This poem was originally written about the gate of hell, but if it is placed at the door of the hospital, it will not violate the harmony. In the hospital, except for the obstetrics and pediatrics departments, which are full of vitality, the rest of the hospital is forever shrouded in death, and no amount of sun can dispel the haze in the ward. Only when you enter the hospital will you know how useless money is. The difference between it and paper is not as big as you think.
In late spring when I was 25 years old, my father had an accident and was lying in the hospital. Much like the leukemia in the movie, he also suffered from terminal illness, uremia, and a serious car accident completely destroyed the balance he maintained on drugs. Totally hopeless. But it is human nature to survive, and he works hard to cooperate with all treatments. I always hope that a miracle will come. The cost of a day in the ICU is 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, and the chance of life-saving is less than 1% if you hang your life with money every day. When I lived for a month, I really ran out of money. I was going to ask for an account, going to a remote town in Henan, asking for tens of thousands of yuan in credit. I bought a map and was going to rent a car and set off overnight. My mother knew, hugged me and cried, forbid me to go. She was afraid that I would never return. Never doubt a mother's intuition. I really had the ambition of Jing Ke in the beginning. I just wanted to get money. Even if I had illegal activities, I would do it. Maybe kill someone or sell a kidney. Both are possible. Later, the businessman heard that I was going to his house, so he sent the money. My father passed away after a month in the hospital. Until now, I don't know how I got through that time. The matter seems to have passed, but the guilt is carved into the bone marrow, and every night makes people restless. I can only go among the patients and soothe the guilt with that little sense of accomplishment.
In the oncology department, the most indispensable thing is the look of despair, which often makes me unable to bear to look directly. In the corridors of the ward, there was a constant moaning sound. Patients with mild illness go home at night and come to the hospital for re-examination every few months; patients with severe illness are just tortured day and night. Patients who go on chemotherapy have uniform round heads and wear pure cotton home clothes. They like to chat with doctors and nurses for as long as possible. As for those who can't even get on chemotherapy, they are dying in torture. 'Nurse, give me a morphine shot! I'm in pain. 'Working on the night shift means weaving between the moans, opening the anesthetic medicine cabinet again and again, and injecting various painkillers for the patients.
There was once a female patient, from a rural area, who was very ill and was sent here. The body is as thin as a wood, but with a big belly, it looks like she is pregnant. Ovarian cancer, stomach full of ascites. I can't walk anymore, I have ascites at least once a day, and I can only stay in bed. She took two courses of chemotherapy before, but the rejection was too great, and she had no money, so she stopped. He had difficulty breathing at night and could not lie down on the bed, so he could only sit and sleep on the bed. People have no hope, but money keeps going out. The ward at that time was on the seventh floor. One afternoon, she asked her husband to go down to buy food, and she got out of the ventilated window, looking for a shortcoming. A year later, on the anniversary of her death, her husband quietly came to the hospital, still in this ward, jumped out of the window and jumped out of the building when no one was there. Maybe die in the same place and on the same day, they can meet in the underworld. After this incident, the windows of the entire hospital were sealed. The windows that used to be able to stick out a head were now only able to stretch out an arm for ventilation.
One day at three in the morning, the director suddenly called. In an emergency, he returned to the hospital to work overtime. In the winter, I put on a coat and rode a bicycle to the hospital. It turned out that a patient had disappeared. She had leukemia and was in her fifties. The surveillance saw that she slipped out of the ward while the nurse on duty was pumping medicine in the treatment room, and there was no camera outside the corridor, so she could never be seen again. So we searched everywhere, the corridors, the garbage room, the safe passage, the boiling water room, and looked down the stairs one by one. The police also came. After everyone searched the ward, they went to the carport and the garden to see the light beam of the flashlight shaking in the winter night. Finally we found her, at the back of the hospital, in a small hallway between the supply room and the cafeteria. The three-meter-wide small aisle has a ditch about 40 centimeters wide and 50 centimeters high because the supply room and the kitchen need water. Later I kept thinking, how much willpower did she use to die in that position? Humans have the strongest desire to survive. Her hands are on the concrete floor beside the ditch. As long as her arms are slightly propped up, she can avoid the god of death, but she did not. She greeted death with a toughest attitude. She may have searched the whole hospital, but couldn't find a rope, a patio, or a knife. Even death was so difficult. In the end, she could only choose an unexpected small canal.
Although Cheng Yong aimed to make money, his medicine saved the common people who could not afford imported medicine. This incident, although the starting point is disgraceful and the process illegal, does make sense. In the process of selling medicine, he made friends, regained his dignity, and was suspected of falling in love. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and the drug dealer Zhang Changlin found the Shenyou shop and asked Cheng Yong to transfer the agency. At first there was a lure, and then there was a police raid, Cheng Yong backed away. He was originally for money, but now that he has money, he values his own family more. The former five-member group disbanded. Cheng Yong became an innocent businessman. Zhang Changlin was wanted soon, and there was no way to buy generic drugs with a price increase of 20,000 yuan. After Lu Yiyi stopped taking the medicine, his condition deteriorated. His wife went to Cheng Yong and knelt at the factory gate in despair. Cheng Yong went to see Lao Lu, and he looked at Cheng Yong with a weak smile, without the slightest resentment. This aspect is goodbye. Under the pain of hopeless illness, Lu Yiyi chose to commit suicide. I totally understand his choice, sometimes people don't have a choice.
The despair of the patient is unimaginable for ordinary people. Illness can deprive a person of everything: health, hope, dignity, money, and affection. Even if he is accompanied by his family, he cannot hide the fact that he has been abandoned by God. When even breathing is an extravagant hope, you are willing to give everything to survive, or you are willing to give up everything to escape pain. Family members are suffering for a long time: worrying about illness, worrying about money, day by day. In the anxiety, there will also be guilt: why is it not me who is sick? When someone you value is suffering, you feel guilty about your luck. You have to do something to 'atone'. This is driven by the subconscious mind. The soul needs to maintain a balance so that the cracks will not expand and collapse, so that life can continue.
After Lu Yiyi died, Cheng Yong was tortured by his conscience and began to think about the meaning of life. He gave up the stable life of earning hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, and chose to resell medicines to save people for self-redemption. When he sent his son abroad, he never thought about money or whether he would be arrested. He used to sell 5,000 medicines, but now he only sells 500. His money came from the sick, and he gave it to the sick. At the dock, he asked Huang Mao, do you look down on me in particular? Huang Mao said yes, but that was before. The two smiled at each other. At this time, Cheng Yong did not expect that because of this righteousness, Huang Mao would be determined to help him take the blame, and thus sacrificed his life.
After losing two friends one after another, Cheng Yong became more silent, but he was still selling medicines and continuing to help those leukemia patients who had never met before. Although Lu Yiyi and Huang Mao are gone, every patient has their shadow, and being able to help them is another comfort. There is a very beautiful poem in the ancient poem: I still remember the green skirt, and the grass is everywhere. Because I fell in love with a woman in a green dress, I couldn't bear to trample on all the green grass. Because my friend has suffered, I can't bear to see the same sick stranger suffer. This kind of empathy is the greatest part of human nature. Terminally ill people also need dignity and have the same desire to survive. A mayfly can only live for one day, a turtle can live for a hundred years, but they are just as important in God's eyes. The meaning of living one more year is no less than living ten more years. Saving a hundred people is no greater than saving one person. Every life is worthy of respect.
Life still needs a little heroism. In Chinese, I like the word 'the courage of a single man'. Although it has a derogatory meaning, it is a positive meaning in my opinion. It contains the tragic and solemnity of knowing that it cannot be done. If Cheng Yong had always been Cheng Yong in the first half, there would not have been this movie that made me cry and have a headache. Everyone dies, that's the only fair place in heaven. When bad luck comes, everyone is weak and cannot resist. However, in the barren sea, I always long to see a few uninhibited stars, want to grasp the meaning in nothingness, want to see the sudden burst of human brilliance, and want to wait for the appearance of Noah's Ark.
The most touching scene for everyone is the scene where Cheng Yong was arrested and the leukemia patients lined up to see him off. What touched me the most was the part about the container terminal. Huang Mao jumped into the car and the police chased the car. The moment the gun rang, the car rushed out of the guardrail tragically, the corner of his proud mouth was not raised, the truck slammed into it with a bang, and the shot seemed to be for Huang Mao's Salute to life. The whole movie has its climax at this point.
I like the righteousness of the little people. It is precisely because they have no way out, so this loneliness is even more moving. Cheng Yong helps patients to buy medicine again and again when he knows there is nowhere to go; Huang Mao's firm eyes as he runs through the container terminal; Police officer Cao's thin and lonely figure when he refuses to lead the way; the counterfeit drug dealer is interrogated after being caught. The silence in the room. The bravery of these little people in the movie is the struggle of ordinary people against fate, and the song of the nightingale under the rules of personal power.
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