A middle-aged man drives down the street looking for someone who can help him. He looked calm, but his eyes sometimes revealed inner sadness. After a 20-minute long shot, we see his appeal: I hope a well-meaning person can bury his body under a cherry tree after he kills himself.
The film does not discuss the reasons for the man's suicide from beginning to end, but only focuses on the suicide itself. In the first half, we can feel the man's determination to commit suicide. Every time he chats with strangers, it is like saying goodbye to the world. His tone is gentle, and he regards them as his family. When he drove the soldier directly to his cemetery, his tone was still calm, and he said, look, it's very simple, just shovel ten handfuls of soil on my corpse, fill it up, and that's it. It's like teaching general labor skills. Xiao Bing was frightened and has not stopped, but refused. He asked why, and Xiao Bing said in a hurry, although I used to be a farmer, I planted seedlings and planted vegetation, but I would never shovel soil on the corpse. The two are different.
So the first focus on the opposite of life unfolds in these simple conversations. People who commit suicide may have understood and made up their minds, but others have respect for life and are unwilling to be executioners or accomplices. In their eyes, the connection between other people's life and their own life is much closer than imagined. As long as they are willing to live, they never want to see others die. Therefore, it is very difficult for suicide victims to impose their will on others, and it is even difficult to instill political ideas. People can be apathetic to politics, but no one is not concerned about death.
The man came to a small village, and a worker chatted with him. Xiaogong said he was from Afghanistan, fleeing the war. The man said that we have a war here too, and the worker said that as long as the people who suffer are not Afghans, they will at least feel better. Although this is a self-deceiving idea, it is human nature, and this is the human escape from the fear of death, even if it is only an ostrich type. The man asked Xiaogong, aren't you alone in your life? The worker said, I'm used to it. Yes, it is better to get used to being alone than to die. The man understood and left.
He met Xiaogong's friend, a seminary student. But the man still took him into the car. This round is actually a contest between man and God's thoughts. The man opened up and said, 'I know suicide is a sin, and the end of our lives should be determined by God, not by ourselves. However, if a painful life causes harm to those around us who love us, is it not a sin? I know I shouldn't kill myself, but I don't want others to suffer either. The little teacher said, I understand your difficulties, but ending your own life is essentially the same as ending someone else's life. If you don't want to kill, you shouldn't kill yourself. Once again, he showed the equivalence of life to the man more directly, but this was clearly what the man had thought about before. So, he declined the priest's invitation to dinner and continued his search.
Finally, he found someone who agreed to his request. An old Turkish grandpa. Taking the job is just to treat his son with the reward, but this does not prevent him from standing on the opposite side of the man. He said, I was ready to commit suicide once, my wife ran away with others, and I couldn't bear the pain. So one day I finally decided to hang myself. He picked up a rope and threw it at a cherry tree. The first time he missed it, it fell off. The second time he missed it and fell off. He also knocked down a few cherries and hit him. forehead. He picked up one, tasted the wonderful pulp and juice, and his heart suddenly became mixed with five flavors. He had eaten cherries before, but he had never felt so delicious. He leaned against the cherry tree and watched the beautiful sunset gradually fall. He felt that for the taste of these cherries, he should live.
Although the camera did not show the man, I think his tears should have been in a lot of circles in his eyes. The grandfather's narration seemed to make him immersed in the scene. He also saw the sunset, tasted the taste of cherries, and finally let him appreciate the taste of life again. Yes, the anticipation of death is replaced by the taste of this imaginary cherry.
The final round is a direct confrontation between life and death. Good expectations for life seem to save the man. After he sent the grandfather away, he watched the sunset in front of the planetarium and smiled.
After he finished dressing at home, he drove up the rugged mountain road again, drove to his cemetery, lay down, and watched the stars shuttle among the clouds. The movie ends with this open ending. We, like a man, go through so much discussion with the film, and as he falls asleep in a poetic wonderland. Yes, it is dreamland, because, he will wake up.
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