. After the release of "Return", it received almost as much criticism and praise.
As a sensitive film with the "Cultural Revolution" as the background, the most criticism I have heard is that Zhang Yimou avoided the important and chose the safest way to touch the Cultural Revolution, but failed to do what he should have done for the political disaster. reflection.
In fact, for a political catastrophe like the Cultural Revolution, the road to reflection and reconciliation is long and difficult, and requires the joint efforts, wisdom and necessary time of a community. "Minerva's owl will not take off until dusk arrives" (Black Geer language), when the era has not yet bred light, it is the virtue of art and artists to not declare a sun from the perspective of God. Those who are eager to give a political answer, those who think the truth is already hanging on their trousers and put their hands on their hips to criticize, are not mature and prudent reflectors, but the remnants of the disaster.
Mature reflection may take time, but ethical repair cannot wait. Countless individual lives need to be cared for due to the trauma caused by political catastrophe, and family relationships that have been almost destroyed by totalitarianism need the healing of beautiful souls. Lu Yanshi not only endured the pain of 20 years in prison, but also suffered from the guilt of the harm his rightist status has caused to his wife and daughter. Missing life and death, being injured, betrayed by his daughter, and bullied by Master Fang is amnesia. The great pain that Feng Wanyu bears, and Dandan, who told her father as a class enemy, was bound by deep self-blame. Lu Yanshi forgave Dandan, and prompted Feng Wanyu to forgive Dandan as well. Together, they used each other to soothe the politically distorted relationship. In fact, it was in this way that the great wounds of the disaster inflicted on the nation were slowly but surely healed. A film narrative that tells how a family has endured the painful moments of life torn by catastrophe in a murmured narrative, and also provides everyone caught up in the frenzied political whirlpool a possible overcoming of the fate of their time, and Crucial comfort.
What's more, the film not only presents the unbearable "heavyness" of life in the repair of ethical wounds, but also hints at the path and possibility of reconciliation in a very restrained manner. Lu Yanshi carried a spoon in his hand to seek revenge for the "Master Fang" who had hurt Feng Wanyu, but in the end he found out that the former leader of the Revolutionary Committee's rebel faction, Master Fang, had been captured by the task force. It is here that the film establishes a minimum consensus of "we are all victims, we are all survivors", and escapes the accusatory totalitarian description of the binary opposition of the face. Truth is the first step on the road to reconciliation, but truth cannot automatically bring reconciliation. Only by upholding the current position that we are all survivors of history, transcending the simple dichotomy of the victim-victim, and seeking a minimum consensus, can the reconstruction of family ethics and social morality be possible.
The ending of the film is meaningful. Many years later, both Lu Yanshi and Feng Wanyu had gray hair. They came to the exit of the train station again. She stared at the crowd repeatedly, and the lover she was waiting for held up The pick-up sign with his own name written on it, stood beside her in the snow.
If a nation loses its collective memory, a generation will never be able to "return".
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