In the movie, all the characters are painful. Pain and exhaustion were written on everyone's faces. It feels like everyone has been through a lot, falling in love and being separated.
As if everything happens mechanically, life is cold and boring. Mam always put two spoons of sugar in his breakfast and always smoked in the kitchen. Mam also yearns for change in his unchanging life. He takes pictures of the tiles seriously, but he still wants a new change in his life.
The movie has a "British Patient" feel to it, and Ceylon is somehow uncomfortable. Unable to find my own position, every day is like living in the air, wrapped in dense fog. The director narrates in this way, he narrates such a breath with indifference and quietness. Forcibly inserted dialogue makes all the characters and the movie world seem even more out of tune.
The snow scene in Ceylon was swaying, and Yusof walked on the shore with one foot deep and one foot shallow. Except for Yusoff's footsteps, there was no sound in the snow. Yusof must feel lonely in his heart, and his world only has his own voice. I also felt lonely at that moment, especially when Yusof was standing in the snow with couples around.
The most loneliness in the movie is that Mam hesitates and goes to see the light upstairs. Dark bedroom and red clothes, bright TV screen. The setting of the scene, a little red, is more lonely.
Everyone is filled with worries, and the sadness is so thick that it cannot be resolved. Yusof followed the woman, finally mustered up the courage to walk out, and finally had to quietly retreat. All things are desperately trying to break through the sorrow and pain, but all the action is dead in the beginning, and all the courage is swallowed back.
Yusof traveled from the countryside to the city, thinking that the city was that distant place. From city to city, there is actually no distance, every distance is just a whirlpool of others. Eventually the ship would have to sail away. People and mice on the sticky mouse board will eventually be trapped in the cage of life, unable to move.
Nothing different, nothing to be proud of. Everyone is struggling in life, and with their only remaining self-esteem, they are silent with each other.
Ceylon's way of expressing estrangement is simple, but it hits the heart. The final silence between Mam and his ex-wife on the last phone call ends up sneaking to the airport. How did that happen? Mam couldn't understand it either. She was clearly a woman who embraced each other, but in the end she could only remain silent.
Yusof is even more so, not only has a huge gap with Mam, but he is out of tune with the entire city.
Except for Mam hiding from watching porn and Yusoff from making phone calls, Mam put Yusoff shoes in the cupboard twice. There is one scene that I remember very clearly. Yusof bought a creeping soldier for his sister. He kept pressing the switch of the gun, smiling happily. As a result, Mam stood there without saying a word, looking at Yusof indifferently, and finally Yusof stopped smiling. This scene is the most indifferent and lonely scene in my opinion.
How can it be so lonely? Indifference pervaded the room quietly, spreading into everyone's heart along the smoke of Mam and Yusof.
In the end, Mam smokes a seaman's cigarette and watches the ship go away. Yusof was like a pebble in Mam's ordinary life, with a little turbulence and disappeared. Mam's thought, also a pebble, disappeared.
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