In fact, the story of "Summer Time" is very simple: after the death of the mother, how the children dispose of the inheritance. But the director's handling of this issue goes beyond the norm.
The first thing that caught my attention was the control over the rhythm of the film. The film opens with a lively but well-defined family gathering, complex characters, mother, old maid, three children and their spouses, including third-generation children. It is invaluable that their personalities, preferences, occupations, closeness and distance from each other are clearly explained in one play. It's a pretty good foreshadowing for the unfolding of the following plot.
The second is the attitude of people towards material things presented in the film. The eldest son regards things as a carrier of ancestors' emotions, and advocates the preservation of the house and the mother's artworks; the daughter and the younger son, however, regard things as commodities with labor value, advocate selling them, and realize these values. These two representative thoughts in contemporary times were transformed into conflicts within a family, and finally the eldest son had to make a compromise and sell the real estate and artworks. Is it a symbol of the traditional, beautiful, with a few The loss of sentimental humanistic spirit is ultimately defeated by the rigid material itself. For many years, human beings have been trying to "cultural" things, but they have been sold out in the end.
A detail somewhat leaked the director's view of things: the old maid who served her mother for many years, finally left and was left out by her mother, but she liked it very much, a vase with bubbles that she thought was worthless. ——Reserved as a love for my mother. The vase did not realize its economic value and was not sold - it was preserved as an emotional vehicle. The director sets the character who retains this emotion as an old lady with little culture, which seems to tell us that she has not been influenced too much by contemporary civilization, which represents destruction and cold money. Only she is pure and beautiful; but her old state is disappointing.
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