At this year's Berlin Film Festival,
Wang Xiaoshuai's "Long Time, Heaven" won the best actor and actress in one fell swoop,
For the first time ever for a Chinese-language film.
The film was three hours long but no one left,
The entire audience burst into tears.
The film tells the 30-year life of an ordinary Chinese family,
When the couple reached middle age, they unfortunately lost their only son.
unable to face the sympathy of others,
Going away from home, trying to start a new life again.
They have gone through family planning, reform and opening up, going to sea, being laid off, real estate fever, going abroad...
The seemingly peaceful but actually fragile life is repeatedly impacted,
The two lived together forever,
Finally ushered in a glimmer of light in life.
"In the torrent of the times, sad things happen in the world,
No hysterical crying,
Some are Chinese people's forbearance and tenacity,
This kind of forbearance is a kind of true greatness and kindness. "
Written by Chen Xing , Shi Ming
Forever
When Wang Xiaoshuai went to the Berlin Film Festival, he never missed a beat.
In 2001, "Seventeen-Year-Old Bicycle" won the Jury Prize, and in 2008, "Left and Right" won the Best Screenplay Award. This year's "Long Time" has won the best actor and actress in one fell swoop. This is the first time in the history of a Chinese-language film that both male and female lead actors have captured the silver bear.
The film is three hours long, and the story spans 30 years. It tells the story of an ordinary Chinese couple who lost their only child in middle age. In order to get rid of their sad memories, they went away to another country and adopted a son, trying to start a new life.
Family planning, reform and opening up in the 1980s, the wave of layoffs in the early 1990s, the wave of laid-offs in the late 1990s, until the current craze for studying abroad and real estate—the labels of the times appear and disappear in the film, evoking a generation of Chinese collective memory.
During the screening in Berlin, no one left from the beginning to the end, and the audience was full of tears. Comments described the film as an "epic" that "touched the most painful place in every Chinese's heart", and Wang Xiaoshuai defined it as a "big drama, national emotional film".
As soon as the film opens, an unfortunate accident is brewing.
A group of children were playing by the reservoir. Liu Xing's best friend Shen Hao also wanted to go into the water, but Liu Xing had been hesitant. Not long after, we saw Liu Xing's parents running to the reservoir while calling his name piercingly. Tragedy seems to have happened.
However, in the next shot, Liu Yaojun's family of three sat happily at the table to eat. Liu Xing, wearing a white shirt and a red scarf, happily called "Dad".
Continue to watch, we know, this is the only one called "Dad" by Liu Xing in the whole film. He did die, leaving his parents half a lifetime of despair. But he seems to be alive again, growing into a rebellious and rebellious eldest child, bringing endless troubles to his parents.
The film keeps flashing back, and the truth is revealed bit by bit and in moderation. The director doesn't seem to want us to rudely establish cause and effect and criticize, so the story is cut into pieces.
But we still understand two key facts: Liu Xing's death was originally related to his best friend Shen Hao. After Liu Xing's parents lost their only child, they could no longer have children, and they had to "blame" Shen Hao's parents.
The bright line of the story mainly tells the story of a family, but the dark line has another family. The two families have always corresponded in parallel. In the beginning, the conditions and situations were the same, but in the end, the economic ability, social status, and family happiness were very different. This comparison is intriguing.
"Actually, the two of them worked as educated youths in the same place. After returning to the city, they became best friends. They got married at the same time, and gave birth to a child on the same day in the same year. I became a baby boy. I didn’t expect to have a boy, and I was very happy. I felt that the two children could be brothers for life.”
"Suddenly one day, one of the children accidentally disappeared. The relationship between the two families cannot be maintained as it was in the past, and it can only drift away."
The title of the film is "Long Days Long", from the famous Scottish folk song "Long Days Friendship".
In the first half of the film, when showing the close relationship between the two families, the singing sounded again and again. In the second half of the film, Liu Yaojun's family went far south and no longer had contact with Shen Yingming's family, and the music of "Friendship Lasts forever" never played again.
The last person who used this song as the name to create was Wang Xiaobo. His debut novel "Long Time" is also a story of friendship, and it is also a tragedy at the end.
"Can friendship really last forever? When we were young, we often said that we would never be apart for a lifetime, but can our best friends and best relatives really be able to go on peacefully for a lifetime?"
This question is the original intention of Wang Xiaoshuai to make "Long Time", and it is also one of the reasons that prompted him to shoot the film with such a large time span.
"Give you a period of time, three or four years, you will feel that friendship can be eternal, love can be eternal. But when you cross to twenty or thirty years, the changes in life, the possibility of that combination, are It will surprise you."
From "Three Lines Trilogy" to "Homeland Trilogy"
Wang Xiaoshuai was born in 1966 and graduated from the director department of Beijing Film Academy in 1989. He is one of the leading figures of China's "sixth generation" of directors.
The sixth generation was a little out of time. Basically, he was banned as soon as he debuted, and after the ban was finally lifted, he seemed at a loss when facing the market. When the new generation rises vigorously, they are almost forgotten by the public. Only when they are implicated in some negative social news will they have the opportunity to be on the hot search.
Their brilliance has been obscured by fifth-generation directors (Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang, etc.) for many years. Huang Shixian, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy, said: "The ball has been kicked to the feet of the sixth generation, but they have not been able to reach a climax."
Another point that the sixth generation has been criticized for is being too narcissistic. It is believed that a typical difference between the sixth and fifth generations is that the fifth generation focuses on the "big self" and the sixth generation likes to talk about the "small self."
Before "Long Time", Wang Xiaoshuai spent ten years filming "Three-Line Trilogy" - "Qinghong", "Me 11", "Intruder". "I 11" is his autobiography, and this "three lines" is also a historical concept that is not known to the public and is related to a specific period and a specific group of people.
In the 1960s, Sino-Soviet relations were at odds. In order to prepare for the war, China relocated a large number of factories and strategic materials to the deep mountains and old forests in the interior, and the "three fronts" became the strategic rear. In order to keep the word secret, it was not even reported in the newspapers.
When Wang Xiaoshuai was born, it was the time when the "third-line construction" was in full swing. In less than five months, he left Shanghai with his parents and lived in the valleys around Guiyang for thirteen years.
"They keep saying that the common people don't care about your own experience and experience. But no one took pictures of the third-tier (theme). I counted tens of millions of people who went to the third-tier, involving two to three generations. They really care about and I'm the only one who tells their fate. If I don't say it, everyone's memory will slowly be overwritten."
As a third-tier child, Wang Xiaoshuai saw that the fate of ordinary people is often arbitrarily manipulated, and how accidental the direction is.
His father, who originally studied drama, taught at the Shanghai Theater Academy for eight years with little success. However, because his wife was a technician in a military factory, he had to move to the "third line" as a family member with a transfer order. In the valleys, his knowledge has nowhere to show. All he can do is put the microphone before the leader speaks. Time is wasted, and it takes more than ten years.
When Wang Xiaoshuai was 13 years old, his family moved to Wuhan, and he was fortunate to be one of the first group of people to leave Guiyang from the factory. The cause was a nearly missed call to invite his father to the Wuhan Military Region Art Troupe to arrange a play. "Before this, I had never even heard the name Wuhan."
Later, because of his father's obsession, he learned to paint. Unexpectedly, with the skill of painting, he was admitted to the high school attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and later he was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy and became a director.
He ranked first in the examinations of the film academy every year, and the fifth-generation directors have won awards internationally one after another. Seeing that the world is about to show his power, he did not expect that the 1980s were over, and he entered with everyone. Nineties.
We all know what happened after that. After graduation, he was assigned to Fujian, where he wrote 5 plays, but none of them passed. After doing nothing for two years, he resolutely decided to leave, no need for the household registration file, and returned to Beijing to become the first generation of "Beijing Drift".
The first film "Winter and Spring Days", which was filmed on loan, was rated as one of the 100 best films in the 100-year history of the film by the British BBC, and was the only Chinese film to be selected. Together with the "sixth generation", he was written into the history of Chinese film.
After becoming famous, he was briefly commissioned to shoot stories written by others that "can make money". But he soon decided not to do propositional essays anymore. Perhaps it was because his father's life was "abandoned", which touched him very much, and he decided to choose his own destiny.
"A person's life is not like a game, it can be restarted and restarted. Sometimes he has a choice in his life, or is chosen again and again, and he embarks on this path. When he retires, he is old, and the society is changing, but it is too late for him. Change, his whole life has passed like this."
He also saw how great changes have been made in the living conditions and thinking of people who were originally similar after one fork after another.
In "Me 11", the protagonist Wang Han has three best childhood playmates, and the prototypes of the four little boys are Wang Xiaoshuai and his friends. He found out the group photo of the four people that year, and marked each person's subsequent situation in detail:
One returned to Shenzhen (their family was from Shantou, Guangdong) and became the chief of security. One went back to Shanghai, but couldn't get his hukou and files back. He had been doing some low-level work. Before, he was helping people with debts, and then he went to Internet cafes to help people look after the door. Another has stayed in Guiyang and has become the deputy director of the local CDC.
For those who stayed in the third-tier, "their children and grandchildren became Guizhounese, and their language was slowly diminishing. The first generation still spoke Shanghainese, but gradually to the second generation, Guizhou dialect and Shanghai dialect blended together. , and then to the third generation, it will directly become the local Guizhou dialect, and the people are also Guizhou people."
After filming the "Three Lines Trilogy", Wang Xiaoshuai announced that he would spend another ten years filming the "Homeland Trilogy". "Long Time" is the beginning of the "Homeland Trilogy".
The "Homeland Trilogy" is still based on his own experience. "How did the life trajectory of this group of people born in the mid-to-late 1950s and 1960s change with the torrent of this era."
This time, his eyes are not limited to "third-line people", but try to include all groups who have experienced that era.
"Long Time" was originally cut for more than four hours, but was later cut to two hours and fifty-five minutes.
"I really want to start the talk, but I can't finish it in eight hours. It can be made into a TV series of dozens of episodes, and really put the lives of generations into it."
Wang Xiaoshuai was 50 years old when he decided to make the "Homeland Trilogy". "As you get older, people's horizons may become wider and wider. When you are eighteen or nineteen, it is impossible to bump into and feel these things. It takes time for people to experience these things."
He once said that he was a "people without a hometown". His ancestral home is in Dandong, Liaoning, but this is a place that even his father has never been to.
He was born in Shanghai and understands Shanghainese, but he has never lived in Shanghai for a long time. He has lived in Guiyang for thirteen years, but the local friends in Guiyang still think that he is an outsider, not one of them.
He has been drifting north for nearly 30 years, and he still does not have a Beijing hukou. In the middle, he tried to entrust someone to apply for it, but the hukou trafficker was arrested. Now his hukou is in Zhuozhou, Hebei.
"His life and his family, like thousands of other Chinese families, are like a piece of duckweed, drifting. It has long been unclear where is the hometown, and I don't know what the hometown is like."
"So no matter what the subject matter is, family and blood relations always seem to have a little shadow in my films." Wang Xiaoshuai said.
Until the end, the hometown is no longer a place name, but a person's name. In "Long Time", the heroine said to her husband: I can't live without you, and the place with you is my home.
The Forbearance and Great Life of Chinese Ordinary People
In fact, at this year's Berlin Film Festival, many Chinese films were shortlisted for the main competition, which is regarded as a "big year" for Chinese-language films.
Unexpectedly, Zhang Yimou's "One Second" and Zeng Guoxiang's "Youth of You" were temporarily withdrawn, and Wang Xiaoshuai's "Long Time" became the only focus.
"This time we are back in Berlin, and we are actually looking forward to it. When we went, everyone thought that we might not come back empty-handed, but we didn't know what it would be. Our confidence is that we are taking pictures of ordinary Chinese people very seriously. I feel like I won't fall behind this time." Wang Xiaoshuai said.
A key turning point in "Long Time" is the loss of independence. The English title is "So Long, My Son", which means "Goodbye, My Son".
In the film, Liu Xing's parents experienced three farewells to their sons: the first time was their own son, the second time was their adopted son, and the third time was a mysterious and invisible child. Is he really? Existed, became a mystery.
Aside from the specific historical contexts of family planning and laid-offs, at the level of family affection, the story of "Long Time" is universal. At the Berlin Film Festival, foreigners wiped away their tears.
"We are talking about the relationship between people and society, the kind of forced, helpless, and sometimes forbearing life, I think foreigners will also feel the same when they see it." Wang Xiaoshuai said.
Children are the weakness of all parents
Wang Xiaoshuai is not an only child himself, he also has a younger sister. "But in the future, when I reach my age and want a child, I will enter a one-child family."
Ten years ago, he filmed a story similar to "lost alone" called "Left and Right".
A divorced couple had already remarried separately, and the wife lived with their only daughter. Unexpectedly, my daughter had leukemia and could not find a suitable match. The doctor suggested that if you find the original husband to have another child, you may try to use the newborn's umbilical cord blood to save the daughter.
A child, let four middle-aged people get into trouble together. Two people who no longer have feelings, should they have another child? Their respective incumbents were innocently involved in this turmoil, how should they face and deal with them?
"What I want to shoot is when people enter middle age and encounter this kind of embarrassing thing, and this matter is very difficult and difficult to solve. The four people are entangled in this way, and everyone has to pretend to be a fool and a good person. , but pretending to be a good person is very uncomfortable."
He then made another film "Rizhao Chongqing", telling the story of a father looking for his lost son.
"This can only be done after I became a father. When people reach the age of 40 and have children, their mentality will be different."
He began to realize "the importance of people, the importance of family affection, the importance of caring for children's growth". The older the child is, the more time goes by. "It is impossible for a person to step into the same river twice."
When it came time to film "Long Time", there was a need for a level in the plot design. The time span is as long as several decades. "How did the two families reach an irreconcilable conflict in the end? If it is a small matter or a small misunderstanding, a few months or a few years will pass and be resolved. What kind of things can Cause the two families to move in an irreversible direction of destiny?"
He chose "lost alone". Combined with the policy background of family planning, it designed a plot where the heroine lost her fertility for life due to forced abortion, and finally locked the atmosphere of tragedy.
"For a normal family, the sky is falling. For parents, the loss of the child is the most important thing."
The wife played by Yong Mei said sadly to her husband played by Wang Jingchun: Time has stopped since then, and we only have to grow old slowly.
In order to make the movie, Wang Xiaoshuai went to check a lot of information about the family who lost their only child.
"Families who have lost their only child really hate the festivals. Usually they can get by, but when it comes to the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, and Mid-Autumn Festival, it's really terrifying, as if other people's joys deliberately set off their loneliness. Open, the curtains are drawn, the firecrackers outside pretend not to be heard, and the two of them sit silently opposite each other, how do you live?"
But when families who lost their only child re-adopt children, there are even bigger problems.
In the film, Liu Xing's parents couldn't forget the past. When they adopted them, they chose a child who looked like their own. This means that when the child is adopted, he has grown to a certain age and has self-awareness. After being adopted, he has to convince himself that he will live in the identity of another person from now on. "It's actually a huge danger."
This is our life
From the beginning to the end, the film does not accuse, but calmly shows the price an ordinary person has to pay to continue to live.
"In the beginning, our ambition was actually very big. We wanted to push forward year by year, just like our life, moving forward little by little, giving a pulse on the fate of ordinary Chinese people for decades, one by one. I touched it. But later I found that it was too complicated and impossible to complete, so I readjusted the structure and only focused on a few main stages of the characters' fate, and finally became what it is today."
Liu Yaojun and his wife were laid off after losing their son. The two drifted to the south and settled in a small village where they couldn't even speak the language.
"Two people actually feel like they are fleeing. When they arrive in a completely unfamiliar place, they have no relationship, no friends, no colleagues, no memories, and no past. You can imagine how difficult it is to take root and live there."
The husband cheats, the wife commits suicide, and the adopted son runs away from home. These seemingly bloody plots are handled very lightly in the film.
"What I want to say is the impermanence beyond the plan in the long life, the things that seem impossible in the logic of normal life, appear in the long time span, people slowly deviate from their own will and design, by fate Take it with you."
At the end of the film, Liu Yaojun and his wife are in their later years. They are invited by their friends to fly back to their hometown.
Encountered air disturbance during the flight, the security alarm sounded, and the two subconsciously held hands. When the alarm was over, the wife laughed at herself: It's ridiculous, people like us are still afraid
"We often say that Chinese people are hard-working and kind. It is true. Ordinary Chinese people don't have too high requirements in their daily life. They only care about firewood, rice, oil, salt, and whether I have everything I need. On this basis, the whole family is reunited during the Spring Festival, and I have a son. Grandson, most people follow this simple way of life. When encountering misfortune, it is often attributed to their own bad life.”
"I want to say that this kind of forbearance is the real strength and greatness. They have worked hard time and time again, wanting to change their fate, and finally accept their own destiny calmly."
"People's life is long and short. How many times we can't get our wish, but we still insist on living."
Audio and video materials provided by the filmmaker
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