At the screening of the 8th Beijing Film Festival this year, the "Beijing City Events" unit, consisting of 8 films with Beijing as the spatial background, was the first to appear. As a sub-unit of the special exhibition on the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up, this series of films, released from 1982 to 2005, keenly grasped the key word "change" and described a city and the people living in it. People are "saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new" at the juncture of modernization. As for the old and the new, no value judgment has been made in these works, the taste of which is entirely up to the viewer to experience.
"The South of the City" (1983) and "Shower" (1999) are two of the films that clearly point to the past. The former stands in the present and looks back on the distant childhood, and pines the author's "light sorrow and deep lovesickness", while the latter stands in the present and looks at the present, watching the passing away.
The story revolves around a public bath called "Qingshui Pond" in a hutong. This is a typical old Beijing "bathhouse", which operates traditional businesses such as cupping, massage, and bathing. Most of the old and young men come here not only to take a bath, but also to listen to opera, play chess, and fight here. Crickets, chatting, or alone, or in twos and threes, enjoy their leisure time. For these old customers, the clear water pool is like a spiritual nest. In the fog, people are talking about a "friendship" with each other.
In the heart of the shopkeeper Lao Liu, Qingshui Pond is his home. Like a tavern owner in the martial arts world, he maintains the peace of a small world with a sense of righteousness. Here he solves problems for old customers, takes care of his younger son Erming, who is mentally handicapped, and finally achieves reconciliation with his eldest son here. . However, when everything seemed to be settled, Lao Liu came to the end of his life, and Qingshuichi and the homes of the old neighbors were about to be demolished.
In that collective transition from a bungalow to a building, the ending of the film was already doomed from the very beginning. Every little character in the film stands in their own position and waits for the arrangement of fate, and at the same time, they also bear metaphors and act as roles in the grand narrative. Lao Liu is a typical father figure. In the world centered on the "bathhouse", he is the guardian of order and the only authority. He does not allow outsiders to break in, and protects the guests in the bathhouse like he protects his own children. When He Bing's second-rate son said that he would increase the cost of materials for lamp repairs, Lao Liu, who was about to give him a bath, said "you lie down for me" and asked him to obey, thus ending the topic. He played Tai Chi and engulfed the "opponent"'s demands for money with his dominant words. "In any case, this is also a place where I have lived for a lifetime." As the inheritor of the tradition, Lao Liu represents a constant force of stability.
From the real children of Lao Liu, Daming and Erming, the future that the tradition is about to face is reflected. The eldest son, Daming, who left home for business, appeared as a rebel at first. He despised his father and his father's bathhouse son, and chose to adapt to the current situation and go out into his own "territory". He came back this time because he received a letter from his brother's painting and mistakenly thought that something had happened to his father. After that, the process of father and son from mutual opposition to conflict resolution is not so much the return of patriarchal power, but rather to complete a farewell. After all, the old era is about to pass, and no one can resist the arrival of the new era. On the surface, for Erming, Daming did replace his father, however, he was not sure what kind of life he would lead Erming to lead. Leaving the familiar bathhouse, Erming's world has returned to confusion, and why is he the only one who is confused?
After the death of Lao Liu, Daming and Erming saw the "Animal World" broadcast on TV, which was about the reproduction and reproduction of the natural world, and the young animals gradually grew up and completed "evolution to new life". It is precisely in Erming that we see warm and future-oriented hope. Among the regulars of Huaqing Pool, Miao Zhuang, who is shy by nature and loves to sing, can only sing in the shower, but he can't sing a word on the stage of the community party. When embarrassed, Erming rushed to the stage, picked up the water hose for watering the flowers and sprayed it at Miao Zhuang. In the scenario simulation, a song "My Sun" finally burst out, infecting everyone present. From the bathroom to the square, what changes is the occasion, and what continues is the sincerity and goodwill between people, and the latter may be the goal of urban development.
Ironically, though, the theme of the evening was celebrating demolition. At least in the plot shown in the film, the demolition is nothing to celebrate for the old neighbors. When they leave this "place where they have lived all their lives", the broken wells and ruins left behind will disappear into history forever with their traces. At the end of the film, Erming listened to the tape recorder Miao Zhuang gave him, and sang "My Sun" alone in the empty bathhouse. This song condensed the love of the homeland and became an empty signifier at this moment. , neither sentimentality nor joy.
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