Abandoned graves, abandoned wells, dried trees, a girl married to money... These things that happen in the countryside are rarely paid attention to, but they are really happening in almost every country that is vigorously promoting the process of urbanization.
In the land of Turkey, Sinan, a young university graduate, returned to his hometown of Anatolia with his manuscript "Wild Pear Tree". It is his long-cherished dream to become a writer, and he hopes that people from his hometown will be able to invest in this anthology describing the style of his hometown. However, things backfired, and every time he discussed this matter with those older and more powerful people in his hometown, it ended up being unhappy. Not because the manuscript is bad, but because their understanding of life is completely different. In fact, the young man never cared about how the place where he was born was and how it was at that time. In his opinion, his hometown, and any village, were synonymous with backwardness, ignorance, rudeness, and filth. He believes that as a new generation of young people, he has the obligation to tell the people in his hometown how wonderful the outside world is, and he has the responsibility to pass on the popular concepts of modern society to the elders and villagers. Unfortunately, the unhappy part is the common ending of every attempt.
In fact, Sinan does not need to challenge the existing ideas of the people in his hometown. As long as he can explore clearly what his father is thinking, he will understand the whole rural world. It's a pity that he has no patience for this unrealistic and unrealistic father who is over half a hundred years old but is impoverished. He was only bored, incomprehensible, and even despised for him.
In the conflict with his hometown and his father, Sinan's "Wild Pear Tree" was finally published at his own expense. He gave a copy to his mother, and also brought several copies to the small bookstore in the village to sell. Every author wants his work to be read carefully and liked, and Sinan is no exception. But when he came back from military service, he found that no one had read "Wild Pear Tree" seriously, including his mother. The few books that were delivered to the small store have been removed from the shelves, and no one cares about them. Sinan, who has matured at this time, began to learn to face reality and face the village that he despised.
He didn't expect that the only one who read "Wild Pear Tree" seriously was his father. Sitting in front of a log cabin on a hillside one afternoon, the father spoke with pride about his favorite passage from "The Wild Pear Tree." Sinan had never seen a father like this, and he was poetic, imaginative, and romantic gleaming in his smile. It was in the process of his father's retelling of "Wild Pear Tree" that Sinan really learned to appreciate his hometown and the wild pear tree in his hometown.
This poetic yet conflicting film by Turkish director Nuri Beagle Ceylon was released in 2018 and was nominated for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section of the 71st Cannes Film Festival. Regardless of the narrative of the plot, the performance of the actors, the beauty of the pictures, and the uniqueness of the soundtrack, they are all worthy of appreciation. Of course, most notable is the theme that director Ceylon wanted to express.
Young Sinan represents a new generation of young people born in the countryside who have received higher education and are desperate to escape from their past. But he doesn't know that he seems to have a free soul, but he is actually a rootless person with nowhere to place his soul. People like Sinan, who have no thoughts about their roots, can only live one day at a time, running in a beautiful new world that never ends. Behind him is the countryside that has been left far away. There were no people, no rivers, no dirt, no trees, no roads, he ran forward, and the road behind him cut himself off.
However, everyone who comes out of their hometown loves their hometown. When I think of my hometown, I can't help but write a collection of essays like "Wild Pear Tree" to praise my hometown. The desolation of the hometown is something that everyone does not want to see, but there is nothing they can do about it. The city has convenient transportation and a prosperous night scene, but there is no open communication between the people in the village and the well next to the tree. Every person in the city is an island, separated from each other physically and spiritually, and it is impossible to have the warmth of the ten miles and eight villages to take care of each other.
The hometown in the director's lens is the place where the idea of progress is about to disappear after it has become popular, and it is the most real in memory. There lies the place where he was born, grew up, left, and went back. Having seen the flashy pan-scenes outside of the hometown, when returning to the hometown, they will be surprised and saddened that the hometown has nowhere to hide under the radiation of the flashy pan-views. In the comparison between urban and rural areas, the director can have an extremely active passion and deep concern for the already down and out of the country, and even arouse profound wisdom, and then express it through the lens, which is very remarkable in itself. What's more interesting is that the name of the protagonist Sinan translated into Chinese is also "Ceylon", which is the same name as the director. It has to be said that the change of thought Sinan experienced in the film is also the director's own experience.
But this is by no means the director's hometown story. A large number of people who have abandoned their hometowns and villages are rushing to the prosperity of the city, pursuing the convenience of the city and the richness of material life. You and me, or one of them. For this reason, watching this movie makes me feel ashamed. I am a person with roots, but I have no roots, and I have never reviewed or recorded a single moment of my roots. And Sinan in the movie at least wrote "Wild Pear Tree" for his hometown, and finally reconciled with his father, with the backwardness and vulgarity of his hometown, willing to pick up farming tools to help his father dig a deep well, and willing to stand on the land of his homeland into a tree.
Time flies, nothing is different. The transformation of urban and rural areas, the alternation of generations, to see the ills of the times requires not only experience, but also distance. It takes a person and an era to be pulled apart from space and time, and with a certain distance, in order to be in it without being blinded. This kind of opening requires insightful wisdom and courage to face it. Undoubtedly, Ceylon is both a witness and a bystander of the changing times. The prosperity is in front of him, and the prosperity is on the side, but he has the deep affection and reason to look back on the past and remember his hometown, which is deeply admirable.
From the country to the world, from the world to the country, is it really far? Far away, not far away. To miss the countryside is to miss the world, and to love the countryside is to love the world.
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