Knowing that director Hirokazu Kore-eda should have started from "Miracle"
As for why I was moved by this movie, I can't remember a little, but I vaguely remember that I was moved by the sincerity of the children. So I came up with the idea that "the director should be a very cute person", and then bought 5 books written by Hirokazu Koreeda in one go.
It should have been two years ago that I bought the book. It wasn't until I went to Chongqing on the plane half a month ago that I unpacked one of the essays, "If You Have the Speed of Walking". The essay is like a diary, recording what the author met. Little things and mood, I sighed after reading it, this is really a sincere and lovely old man with a little childishness.
So last weekend, I started reading another book he wrote on the shelf, "Next Stop, Heaven" and watched the movie of the same name in one sitting on the same day. (The reason for choosing this book is that in "If You Have the Speed of Walking", it was Hirokazu Kore-eda who begged readers and friends to take a look at this work if you have time.)
"The Next Stop, the Kingdom of Heaven" tells that between death and heaven, there is a place similar to a "transit station". The deceased comes to this transit station to complete one thing: choose a period in your life that you most want to be recorded. And cherished memories, the angels help the deceased to relive this memory, the deceased will go to heaven with memories and feelings, and all other memories will disappear. There are 5 staff members (that is, angels) in this transfer station. They are responsible for interviewing, listening, and guiding the description of the deceased, and reproducing the recalled scenes.
When I was reading, the memory that moved me the most was a 21-year-old boy who chose the memory of his crush on a girl when he was in the third grade of middle school. There was a bell hanging on the girl's schoolbag. When it rang, he knew that the girl he liked was about to appear. And the moment of memory he chose was one day when he was tying his shoelaces in the classroom, he heard the sound of Jinglingling again, so he deliberately slowed down the speed of tying his shoelaces and waited for her to appear. What he chose was the blank period before seeing her with excitement and anticipation.
Seeing this, I felt as if I followed his heart and came to the empty classroom in his memory, with the same feeling of waiting for someone I liked to appear.
After reading the book, I was thinking, what is the author trying to tell me by depicting everyone's mood and memories so delicately? More than half of the people in the book recall the happiness and peace of mind when they were intimately connected with others, and a small half were recalling the moments when they were full of longing for life.
With such doubts in mind, I opened Hirokazu Koreeda's third book, "Things I Was Thinking About When Filming", which recorded his mental journey and how he filmed his works in his life. After watching it, my heart was shaken.
It turned out that when the author was making this film, he hired college students to interview nearly 600 ordinary people, including students, white-collar workers...the elderly in nursing homes, etc. In the process of looking for inspiration, the director decided to choose these ordinary people to tell their own stories and take pictures of their most authentic memories. Therefore, the 22 dead in the movie and the actors in front of the camera are all real people who tell their stories about themselves. The real memories are the real events and feelings of people in this world.
The movie itself allows the audience and actors to stand on the side of death and think about the meaning of life together. Is life worth it when it is truly at the end of death? Does it still make sense? Is there anything else to be cherished and commemorated? What is the meaning of life?
I think everyone, just like the 22 dead in the movie, has his own answer.
I can't help thinking, if I were to choose a memory as the only memory I can recall after death, what would it be?
This is an interesting thought.
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