return

In the early 1970s, Lu Yanshi, a labor prisoner who had been isolated from his family for many years, escaped home during a farm transfer. This brought great pressure to the daughter Dandan, who dreamed of ballet. She prevented her mother Feng Wanyu from meeting her father. Therefore, the husband and wife are so close but far apart. After the Cultural Revolution, Lu Yanshi was finally rehabilitated and returned home, but he found that his daughter had already given up her ballet dream to become a factory worker, and his beloved wife no longer knew him because of her illness. Deep feelings and life changes forced Lu Yanshi to make the most absurd but most reasonable life choice for him. From then on, on the 5th of each month, Lu Yanshi would ride a three-wheeled car with Feng Wanyu, who was getting increasingly old and haggard, at the train station to pick him up.
The tragedy of Lu and Feng is certainly sympathetic. In those days, the trampling and cruelty of human nature were all given the crown of revolution. When millions of working people were told that it was reasonable to rebel and that the revolution was innocent, they could use irrational behavior to destroy everything that surpassed them in spirit and matter. It can also be revolutionary and just. The fate of Lu Yanshi and Feng Wanyu's generation can be imagined, they were not tortured and persecuted by a certain person, they were thrown into a corner by an era. When the emotions of the majority of the citizens are mobilized, the power to act is enormous and even terrifying. In particular, everyone is using extreme forms to justify their political leanings and attack groups that are at odds with the mainstream ideology. Everyone does not want to be isolated by others, and at the same time wants to isolate as much as possible on the premise of proving themselves right. In the absolute and cruel struggle, the extreme inferiority of human nature must be exposed. After the illness, Feng Wanyu unconsciously kept repeating about a character, Master Fang, who had never appeared in the movie. It could be seen that this Master Fang was the person Feng Wanyu hated and feared the most in the past ten years. An ordinary worker before the Anti-Rightist and Cultural Revolution, an ordinary person who stands in front of you will not surprise you. It is this common man who can torture a highly educated teacher to the point of collapse. Finally, in the mouth of this master Fang's wife, he is a good person. A good man who works hard and thinks progressively. Of course, when we talk about human nature, we cannot put aside the political and social environment, but when the soil of the political environment begins to ferment violently, how unbearable the human nature of our nation is. In the past, it was unprecedented to have an attributive word for the Cultural Revolution. Is it really unprecedented? It should be that there are ancients before and there are people who come after. If so, what is the return we look forward to? Is it the tender touch of the pain after the catastrophe, or the reverie of the lewdness after the tragedy. It was just the reconciliation between Lu Yanshi and his daughter, or finally he chose to accompany Feng Wanyu silently for the rest of his life. The memory of these years in his heart may never disappear.
Whether it is a novel or a movie, which one is more difficult to interpret the rise and fall of a dynasty in 30,000 miles of rivers and mountains, or to show the emotions and sufferings of a nation in a square inch? "Return" can be said to be a rather difficult narrative. In such a cramped space, Zhang Yimou tells the story so hard to let go with the help of extremely limited scenes and characters. But unfortunately, I thought the movie didn't touch the nerves that should be touched the most in those ten years. The director wanted to use human nature reconciliation to downplay the complicated cause and the miserable catastrophe in the process, which seemed to lack depth.

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