After watching "Long Time" last weekend night, Zhou Hui's "Promise" was playing in the car on the way home. The elegance in the voice and the vicissitudes in the lyrics, plus the sense of age of the song itself, seem to be about the same. More in line with this movie than Friendship Lasts forever. "The Promise" is a love song, and "Long Time" is also a movie with "love" as the core. Among them, friendship, family and human feelings are the most intense, and love is also very important, but in this story, it has become a magnificent An emotion that times and difficult lives have forgotten.
"Long Time" is a very iconic Wang Xiaoshuai's film. The background of the story is inseparable from the history after China's reform and opening up, and the decades of great changes in China's development. The characters are always in the factory, they are educated youth , is the working class, but also a small person ignored by the times but not ignored by Wang Xiaoshuai.
In this movie, even in most of Wang Xiaoshuai's movies, the characters are just foils, and time is the only protagonist of the movie.
Liu Yaojun, Wang Liyun, Shen Yingming, Li Haiyan, as well as Jasmine, Xinjian and Meiyu, these main characters formed a group portrait of people and life in that era. Factories, bungalows, collective dormitories, the director used the vivid life scenes of these characters to outline the era, and they were also a generation washed away by the torrent of the times and the ups and downs of fate.
From the 1980s to the 21st century, the time span of the film is as long as three decades. The non-linear narrative used in the film disrupts time, aiming to present a fragmented and mottled memory and the imprint of the times in people's minds, not just a story. In the face of memory, we always think of something from time to time, and often forget what happened first and then what happened, but they are very clear. There are happy things, painful things, we always remember repeatedly.
The shadow of a family's loss of a child has always been shrouded in this long river of time that has been washed and disrupted but still has a long and difficult time. The torture of another family's unsolvable sins has never dissipated with aging and growth.
Yaojun and Liyun must be the two most distressing characters. Affected by the policy, they had to abort the second child in the womb, and have no fertility since then, and then suffered the second loss of their child, the adopted son. Later, they also left them... The two have gone through ups and downs in life and encountered ups and downs in life, but they still have to hold their breath and continue to live until they are old and vicissitudes of life.
Yingming and Haiyan caused Yaojun and Liyun to lose Liu Xing because of their son Haohao. On the other hand, Haiyan, who was the leader of the factory, instigated Liyun to have an abortion, causing irreparable regrets. These two things became Haiyan's heart for a lifetime. The inner demon that could not be eliminated has also become the torture that Haohao has suppressed in his heart for so many years.
The ties between the two families, as well as the ties of blood and kinship, have gone through ups and downs, through migration, and even the vicissitudes of life, and they cannot really be relieved.
3 hours of movie, tears broke out in the last hour. The first time I cried was when Liu Xing, played by Wang Yuan, knelt down to his adoptive father Yaojun, then when Yaojun Liyun and Yingming's family met again in the hospital, including Yaojun Liyun's return to the room where he lived in the past The white walls and green paint of the rooms in the Tongzi Tower have not changed, and the position of the furniture has not changed, but the hands of time have poured over their bodies and faces, leaving their temples white and the corners of their eyes vicissitudes.
The script and characters are impeccable, and the extremely restrained performances of the two lead actors are very much in harmony with the era they encountered. A lot of work has also been done on the set and modeling, and the presentation of that era is very detailed. The whole movie has to be said to be deliberate, after all, all movies are designed. But there are also resonances, especially those who have really experienced that era, or those whose family members have elders from that era, and the resonance will be stronger.
Such as the rolling machine tools in the workshop, such as the huge waves flocking to the ground, the eras are staggered, and the regions have migrated. We will share weal and woe, and the world will last forever. When we meet again, you and I agree that the sad past is not allowed to be mentioned.
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