If time is reversed, how much different enlightenment can it give us? When I was thinking about this question, I had not yet faced the loss, not even the beginning, and was standing at the origin of this story. Thinking is because of confusion, and confusion requires random ideas. What I think of is the story of a poor middle-aged man who was successful and emotionally defeated. He has had some dewy relationships, but that can't heal the faint regret that often arises in his heart. One day when he was looking through old things, he found an unsent card, and the memories flooded in uncontrollably. The sweetheart who did not dare to confess in the old days, the days of ideals and longings, those old dreams appeared one by one and intertwined with each other, and the plot unfolded in a strange and grotesque way. Still a young man who embraces infinite possibilities. I admit that this is a rough or even vulgar idea, and although this story of Li Changdong has many similarities, it has a different perspective.
The beginning of the story is the first clue, the train. A train is a long traversal of time, distance, and field.
A Jin, the male protagonist who failed in his life, felt the trick of fate. He decided to take revenge on fate and huge time. His way of venting his anger was to kill someone aimlessly. Aimless killing is more terrifying than purposeful because it negates the whole rules of the game. However it failed. So he decided to ask fate and time (actually to himself) directly, and he stood in front of a train that hit him and roared at the train like a god: let me go back! He roared at the impact of time, utterly denying past life in shattered destruction.
The story is to shuttle forward scene by scene through such a backward train, all the way back to the origin of the story, back to the beginning of regret that was not caught.
2. Mints -
every person Yiren has been in love with can be a kind of food, leaving his unique taste. Like chicken feet, it is spicy and addictive, like French fries, it is real and easy to taste. And Ah Jin's mints are refreshing and exciting, opening up new functions for the first time.
Some foods, eaten several times, but never eaten again, are like horses reluctant to eat grass. And some food, after eating it only once, becomes the favorite food after that, just as some people know that there will be a story with him at first sight.
How many flowers that bloomed just right at the time and made my heart flutter in my life, and met a few people who "turned around for a moment, and was barren for a lifetime"? Time flies, and that moment is no more. However, the person who was long-winded and nostalgic in the sunset when you were old is quietly engraved into the rest of your life.
If you don't reach out to grasp it at the right time, and you haven't made the slightest effort, then you will be disappointed and lonely no matter how time goes by, whether you rise or fall in your life. Because no matter the future glory or the downfall, it is a lifetime of escape, and in the end of escape, there is always no way to go.
3. Camera - Catch her
Actually, in my opinion, the camera (dark line) is the most important clue in this film compared to the train (bright line) and the mint (direct point).
The significance of the camera lies in the act of retaining the beauty of the moment, and "retention" is the whole meaning of the camera.
However, in the face of the great beauty bestowed by God, people will feel their own insignificance and powerlessness. Our inferiority comes from a kind of worship, a kind of infatuation, a kind of resonance, a kind of love and pity. Great beauty knows no bounds, how do you possess it with limitations and clumsiness?
At the beginning, Akin simply said that he wanted a camera to freeze those beautiful flowers forever. But when facing his sweetheart, he didn't dare to meet her eyes. He avoided his eyes many times, just like the fate of dodging again and again later. The sweetheart had given him a positive response, and out of self-righteous love, he let her open up alone. He thought it would be enough to just lie beside the flowers and watch the time pass overhead.
However, when a person breaks into your spiritual garden unexpectedly, and undoubtedly cuts a hole in your heart, the beginning of life in the name of him is engraved. And you escape all the way and deviate all the way, and you are doomed to a tragic fate. Ah Jin didn't choose to hold the rudder that threw himself into the lake and sea of destiny. He became less and less worthy of her, so when she gave him the camera at the station, he took it or returned it, because he knew he was not worthy of possession. He didn't want to keep the camera until his sweetheart passed away, but sold it at a very cheap price. That's it, at the end of the most precious things, the value is no longer there. I couldn't face reality, so I went further and further, and finally I was smashed head-on by the speeding time.
It takes courage to be with beauty for life. Taking a hobby as a career, enduring its repetition and dullness, choosing a woman you love as your partner, watching her growing wrinkles and thick waist is like setting your favorite song as an alarm clock. But if you don't do that and make it a real part of your life, how can you be sure that you love it deeply?
Choosing it does not necessarily mean smooth sailing, and it also requires continuous efforts to live, but isn't that what life should expect. Have the courage to face the life of your dreams, face the scene of life, because dreams are never easy.
Possession is the beginning of loss, but if you don't have it, don't lose it. Maybe our endings are destined to be empty, but the blank ending of the drama is better than the emptiness and nothingness of a lifetime.
Sometimes we wish we could let go of our pretentious self-righteous maturity, smash the sly and cruel expressions on our faces one by one, return to the simple stubbornness of our youth, believe in our destiny again, and be willing to let the child in our hearts come out. From nature, I found another child and sailed across the mud pond together. Occasionally, they would face each other in a sullen mood, but when it rained, they still secretly held an umbrella for the other party with their backs on their backs.
4. Going back to the origin
Half of the meaning of time lies in its infinite possibilities. If everything is doomed, people will have no meaning, no passionate love and pursuit, and no growth and courage when they fall. Conversely, to do nothing in the face of the present is to live up to the possibility of time, and even to be punished.
Going back to the beginning of the story, the down-and-out middle-aged man under Li Cangdong's camera and the successful middle-aged man I imagined in my mind are actually suffering from the same misery, and both are asking the same question: what should people do? How to die?
It's not a good idea to die alone, and when you're in your 50s or 60s, regretting that you didn't really love is probably the worst thing in the world.
It's not a good idea to live in the future either. Rather than dying alone, it's scary to live with someone who makes you feel lonely all the time.
Wu Nianzhen told the story of "New Year's Day and Old Days" from another angle. In fact, I know that kind of situation very well, maybe too well, so to me the story is the same as if it was not told. However, why did Wu Nianzhen make it into a film, doesn't he understand? Or is it just old, so I also embrace my own complaints, and use one kind of senseless to resist another kind of senseless? I came to realize later that I underestimated reality and began to understand that story more. Some helpless life will be diluted by time and replaced by other things. You can't say that those things have no value. They also have a moving part, but I still can't praise it. It's not a question of right or wrong, it's just a life without really bloom.
"Is life beautiful?" This question is mentioned several times in the film "Mints". Of course life can be beautiful, just as ugliness exists everywhere. What you choose, and whether you let your life bloom, that's the core of the question.
Upstream or downstream, time itself has no value, the value lies in standing firmly in the present, and then everything can be grasped. I think the other half of the meaning of time is to seize the one that cannot be easily missed among all the possibilities, and make it splendid and open. In this way its value is complete.
Compared with the setting of "a dream" I conceived (that kind of surrealism reveals a sense of cynicism), this solid tragedy created by Li Changdong is of course more powerful. Tragedy is a template for breaking life into pieces and giving us a deeper re-examination. However, our original intention is the same, and time has returned to a place where there are infinite possibilities.
If you were facing such a situation now, would you choose to freeze it?
Seeing such a film, just like when Li Cangdong watched Hou Hsiao-hsien for the first time, he was surprised, "How could this director know my secret?" Director Li Da's film is a good film for me, he said frankly that it is a minister A film about young people re-examining time, and discussing the issues that young people are most confused and unable to grasp. However, I didn't give five points because I wanted to keep one point for myself.
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