- Anonymous
Sowon, a 7- or 8-year-old Korean girl who was tragically killed on her way to school alone on a rainy day The drunk uncle brutally sexually assaulted her and cut off her anus and part of her intestines, causing her to live on an "artificial anus" and a pee bag for the rest of her life. The uncle ruined the beauty that this girl who had never experienced the flowering season should have, but what he paid was only twelve years in prison.
In fact, I had a general understanding of the plot before watching the movie, and I thought this movie would attract attention with the bloody scenes and psychological thriller like most Korean movies. Unexpectedly, the entire film did not show any scenes of sexual assault directly, but only through a pair of bloody hands in the old factory. The director knows very well that the real cruelty is no longer in beatings and rapes, but in the moment when a loved one sees the scars, how to face the society and the eyes of relatives and friends after the incident, and more importantly, how she wears such a Pain goes through a lifetime.
And "Su Yuan" faces such vivid cruelty. When Suyuan's mother rushed to the ward desperately and saw her dying daughter with black and red eye sockets, swollen lips, and bleeding from her lower body, it was also the first time the audience saw Suyuan after being hurt. Entering the role of "mother", I felt a moment of heart-wrenching pain. The director rarely directly shows the pain Suyuan experienced as a victim, but through the almost distorted facial features of Suyuan's parents to tell their bottomless despair like an abyss.
When Suyuan's life is in danger, the focus of the film's narrative turns to "the affairs after the sexual assault", and the first one is "the eyes of others". Suyuan's mother reacted very early. If Rongzhi's mother (close friend) who notified her knew that her own Suyuan was sexually assaulted and spread the news, she would "rip her mouth to pieces". When the news media exposed the incident as a social hot spot, Su Yuan, who had planned to live in a six-person ward, was sent back to the ward by her parents and doctors in a frenzied manner. In the face of the constantly flickering spotlight of the media, my mother used her body as a wall, while she collapsed and begged, trying to move their camera away.
To be honest, this scene hit me especially hard. As a state media practitioner, I have always scoffed at the so-called censorship of the news, which I feel undermines the authenticity and freedom of news. However, truly market-oriented news must be based on satisfying the public’s desire for information to the greatest extent possible. In layman’s terms, news must have a selling point.
Humans are curious animals, we always want to find something exciting for our dull and boring life. When we see Hong Xing, the owner’s daughter-in-law, we will tsk tsk and sigh that beautiful women can’t be kept; Invading, will be filled with righteous indignation and feel that all wretched men should be cut with a thousand cuts. But, after that? When people empathize with strangers that they have not used for a long time, and after venting their curiosity and sense of justice, they will gradually forget this emotion and return to their 9-to-5 life. In other words, Suyuan and her misfortune were consumed by the public through the camera, leaving her with a lifetime of stigma and indifference.
Why is there "stigma", people say, shouldn't everyone sympathize with her? But the fact is that as long as the chastity archway for women remains in people's hearts, Suyuan's smearing at the age of 7 will always attract attention. Over time, people's sympathy and attention for her slowly ran out, and all that remained was disgust and alienation for an "unclean" girl. This is a chronic disease of the group, a common problem for each of us.
Xiao Suyuan still doesn't understand the stubbornness of the adult world. Her first sentence after waking up was to ask her father to catch the "bad uncle". When the reporters were besieging her, she was covered by her parents and quickly ran away. At this moment, she Only when I was young did I suddenly understand the word "shame". Ironically, this "shame" was exactly what her parents who loved her most showed her.
The frightened Su Yuan was incontinent, her father panicked and opened her legs to wipe her. The familiar scene touched Su Yuan's memory. She hysterically rejected her father's hands and even fainted for a while. At this time, the father realized that his behavior had aroused Suyuan's psychological shadow, and it was only natural for the daughter after being sexually assaulted to refuse the wipe from the man. So, my father loves her in a different way. He dressed himself up as his daughter's cutest cartoon character "Cocoa Dream". In order not to let his daughter find out, he didn't even make a sound, and only communicated through writing and body movements.
In the dead of night, Ke Kemeng came to visit her good friend Su Yuan, and when her mother came to visit suddenly, Ke Kemeng hid in the bathroom and quietly waved goodbye to Su Yuan when her mother was not paying attention. This is a little secret between daughter and dad. In this way, as Su Yuan's most trusted friend, Ke Kemeng has been quietly accompanying her through the most difficult days, giving her courage and confidence. After Suyuan was discharged from the hospital, her father still put on a thick and sultry Cocoa Dream coat during his lunch break and ran to the playground of his daughter's school, just to make his daughter smile. In reality, he did everything possible to worry about his daughter's feelings, and even separated a screen between himself and his daughter when connecting her home, in order not to let himself irritate her any more.
When Suyuan found out that "Kokemon" was her father, the camera turned from outside to inside, and gave a close-up of her sweaty father in the costume. His head is low, and his dirty face is covered with black sweat, which is in sharp contrast to the cute and fresh image of "Cocoa Dream". A middle-aged man who was overwhelmed by life tried his best to create something for his beloved daughter. A dream-like fairy tale world, I think, this is father's love.
Father's love is so deep and sweet. Suyuan needs to carry a urine bag at all times. Her father was afraid that she would be embarrassed, so he quietly put a handful of candies in the compartment on the top of the bag. When someone asked what was in the bag, Suyuan could take out a candy for him. . This reminds me of "Life is Beautiful" I watched when I was a child, about a father who was locked up in a Nazi concentration camp and tricked his young son into saying that it was all a game, and that they had to work hard, hide from the cat, and not do it with the guards. Cry or not in exchange for points, and finally the winner can get on the tank with arrogance. The son has always believed in it, until the moment when his father was dragged by the guards and shot, Qian was still making faces at him, making him believe that his father was just playing a game.
The world is so cruel, can children who are ignorant of the world dilute the cold reality with fairy-tale lies? After all, they were not supposed to be martyrs. Perhaps, Suyuan knew from the beginning that her father was behind "Cocoa Dream", and she just needed a period of time wearing a mask to ease the pain in her heart. A story with tears in laughter is always unforgettable.
I've always felt that this movie is sincere because he doesn't deliberately create any "right values". When her mother received psychological counseling, she admitted that she had hoped that all children would suffer the same pain as Suyuan, so that no one would look down on her. Then, she denied this dark idea, just because she felt sorry for the fetus in her womb. What a real psychology! The director did not whitewash anyone's generosity and tolerance. On the contrary, he believed that the only one who could relieve his mother, or save her from this dark memory, was the next child.
Therefore, the scene that crossed with the celebration ceremony of Sowon's discharge from the hospital was the little shoes that Young Sik's mother prepared for the birth of Sowon's younger brother. The birth of his younger brother brought peace to the already collapsed family. The father was still lying on the sofa watching the ball, the mother took a nap with her brother in her arms, and Suyuan escaped the afternoon class and returned home. At home, the camera swept across a table of small toys, all prepared by Suyuan for her younger brother. Suyuan held a paper airplane to tease her younger brother, and said the last sentence in the film, "It's great that you can come to this world."
Some people say that this indicates that Suyuan will eventually end her life, because there is a younger brother to replace her. She also gave the family the tranquility and beauty it deserved; some people said that this was Suyuan's response to her own question. She had asked the doctor "why do people come to this world" before. The ending of the film can be regarded as a blank space, allowing the audience to freely imagine. There are everyone's guesses and everyone's faint expectations.
If Suyuan really chooses to end the years that have not yet begun, I don't know whether it is the fear of 12 years later that killed her, or the countless next "Monday" and "questions from friends"...
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