"Long Time" shows the most intuitive part of how long it is, that is, the length of the movie. The 175-minute film not only tests the audience, but also tests the skill of director Wang Xiaoshuai. Although it is not separated into several scenes like old-fashioned movies, the narrative center of several parts of the movie here is particularly obvious, and there are obvious breaks , which seems to want the audience to concentrate but also to whet the appetite. The deliberate reversal of cause and effect makes the memory and the current situation not separated. This " fusion " is the frame of the whole film - whether it is the past or the present, everything is reality, it must be arranged according to the reality, but he must also hide something. Where there is sunshine, there is shadow , so this movie is just the tip of the iceberg.
living person choked to death
Feelings of home and country are the characteristics of East Asian movies, even in the era of eating a big pot of rice. The employees of different units and enterprises all live in the condominium and live together as brothers. This is a variant of the family system, which is supported by a larger social system, that is, state-owned enterprises. This one was originally a product of socialization, and its purpose was to ensure the survival of most workers, as well as the larger goal of building socialism.
But is it really socialism to rebuild a family or even a clan-like system based on factories ? We can see from the movie that the whole movie places great emphasis on the condensing effect of family on interpersonal relationships. Of course, the family here is still a semi-open structure, and it is subject to the parents. This can be seen from Haiyan's strong order. Come out, the leaders here are not inferior to the patriarch. Can such a hierarchy and family ethics strengthening really build a bridge to society?
The family is not an empty shell, it needs its core, which is the father. It is not difficult to see that the male characters in the whole film are very heavy. The first is the use of the camera. From the perspective from the beginning, it means that this film is from the perspective of the parents, so we can only use the perspective to see the children by the reservoir, and for every adult, especially men, it is to give From close-up and even close-up, the most important object of performance here is Liu Yaojun's family. If the movie is divided into two parts: memory (the past) and reality (now), the main line of the memory part is undoubtedly the death of the star, and the reality part is Yaojun. In the past, Yaojun appeared as an honest and kind-hearted male worker, and he also had contradictions as a man, and this has extended to the present. The first is the pain of his bereavement . Even if he loses the child, he still has to protect Haohao because he is sensible. The family hopes to put all their trust in the child. Continue to grow, other people's families have to be maintained; the second is the conflict between him and the "child" who was aborted . Yaojun felt that he was useless, and Haiyan (leader) revealed that he concealed the second child. Maybe his son) just disappeared, and this was a catalyst for the tragedy to expand later. Later, he got on with his former apprentice Jasmine, which also means "returning the vow", but in the end, he still refused to let Jasmine give birth to a child, because This is not in line with family ethics - he can't let Jasmine be the third child, and the illegitimate child can't have the same status as a star; the second conflict is the conflict between him and the current adopted son. As the head of the family, he is fundamentally I can't discipline this wild horse that I brought back from the orphanage. These contradictions fully highlight that "he is not a man enough", and a family without a man is naturally fragmented, not to mention that even their real children have sunk into the heart of pain. Contrary to what Yaojun said, living people choked to death with urine.
Such a tragedy is even more tragic for a family that has left the state-owned enterprise. The mass layoffs have created a group of people who left the factory—the original warm big family, and their small family is also at risk of being demolished, because free and cheap labor cannot have a happy family. Yaojun and Liyun fled to a "foreign country", they don't want to go back to the sad place, and the "Xingxing" they adopted is not a star, as Liyun said, time has stopped , and this kind of life can no longer be lived. .
Leaving the company, all the resources and benefits are gone. The laid-off workers are materially separated from the big family. For Yaojun and Liyun, they are no longer a family, and they have fled to the ends of the earth, and all the interpersonal relationships in the past have vanished. . This personal atomization can be reflected in the lack of communication between them. The biggest connection between husband and wife is children. Whether it is a dead star or an adopted star, and even when they return to Baotou, they still use their child (Haohao) as an emotional bond. This is a deliberate design, and it is also the reality of most families today. That's why I say that Yaojun's conflict is a conflict between his father and his child, and the conflict between husband and wife has nowhere to go. However, life has to go on, in other words, this homeless home has to maintain its decoration. As the leader said, workers must go to society, but can society accommodate the homeless?
Reconciliation and Reincarnation
Although this film is a direct depiction of reality, Wang Xiaoshuai uses a strange flashback. He divides the whole film into two spaces, and then asks them to regroup into different segments, and there is no obvious Breaking point, the plot is very strange, and the previous narrative is very vague, and it is not clear until the end of the entire recall part later.
It's hard for me to say what kind of trick this is, but it's certainly not a shrewd arrangement. In my opinion, the tension of the film is crushed by the constant trivial fragments , and even the shots and pictures are very "quiet". This is indeed difficult to support such a grand background atmosphere, and it has also led to the reduction of the whole film. The end is the embodiment of this shackle-grief has been crushed by life, and finally we can only reconcile .
Undoubtedly, this reconciliation remains family-based. The leader of this reconciliation is Haiyan . Her dedication to her duties has made Liyun fall into the abyss of losing her only one. Haohao is the protagonist of another reconciliation scene. Like repenting to a priest, he has held himself back for so many years. The truth was spoken, however, obviously, the confessions in the confessional were not told to the priest, but to themselves - they were just reconciling to themselves . Obviously, their contact behavior has formed a thick and embarrassing estrangement. On the other hand, Haiyan, the representative of public power, has died, and there is no greater external force to "pay off the debt" - how many families that have lost their only child have been created by family planning And human tragedy? Without that, the settlement, then, is a giant catwalk . From the plot of the movie, it is more like the end of a student who was in a hurry to hand in the papers and fooled-the last hour must correspond to the details laid out before, or deviate from Chekhov's pistol law, but this forced neatness makes people Looking bad.
As Liyun said, time has stopped, but time has to continue, so it is necessary to create a false linear progress. There is no need to separate the past from the present. Yaojun and Liyun have returned to their hometowns they are no longer familiar with. This is the impetus of the local complex. It seems that they have reconciled. However, for this seemingly forward story, it has to go back to Baotou, to the two families and the "culprit" Haohao, and to Xingxing, it is a dead person, it can't go back, all this reconciliation is one A kind of compensation, but also a kind of reincarnation . Life is a cycle, and it is precisely the constant torture of painful memories and the status quo of loneliness that constitutes life. "Long Time, Heaven" is to achieve eternity in reincarnation. It uses a seemingly warm ending, but it is an alternative escape, because Wang Xiaoshuai did not need to continue the stalk, let alone complete, tragedy is the greatest art , he is incompetent.
Absence: Don't say a word
The whole movie seems to be very down-to-earth, but it is actually stingy from the narrative point of view. I don’t know if it is because of censorship. The historical background is not as large and thick as imagined. Different from the macro narrative, "Earth" only focuses on the family; this is also different from expressionism, the director's point of view is not obvious, and the psychological feelings and communication conflicts of all characters are absent. This is the most paradoxical point of this film - not big or small, which makes the audience like a peeping family, and this kind of stare is one-way, because the film's criticism of the whole society is almost zero, the audience The stare did not exchange for the "concern" of society .
Even if the film's social concerns are buried, you can infer from each frame. Let's start by looking at what the film lacks. The most prominent is the absence of women . As I said above, men are the main characters driving the plot, and women are in second place, abiding by the role and task assignments of traditional families, and even Jasmine is thinking about giving birth to children. It was not an unexpected accident to come to "pay off" his brother. Compared to Haiyan and Jasmine, Liyun is the least talkative, while Jasmine, who has begun to accept new things, is a little more open. The most powerful person here is Haiyan . She is very in line with the strong temperament instilled by the bureaucracy in the managers. This is to better comply with her duties - on the one hand for the country, on the other hand for herself and her family (promotion), It can be seen that Haiyan has the most voice among the three families.
Compared with women, children seem to be submerged in quicksand, the stars are dead, and the abnormality of the new "stars" is equally confusing. Maybe we can explain it with rebellious psychology, but the various mental processes behind it seem It doesn't exist; and Haohao's fear and self-blame are brushed aside, he seems to have grown up suddenly, and the other process is blank. Haohao's biggest role at the end is repentance, and he is also the voice of Yingming and Haiyan. In this way, when he grows up, Haohao is just a scapegoat asking for immunity from punishment .
However, Haohao is of course innocent. Yaojun knows that a child will never know how to be safe or break the law, so he will not pursue it, but instead hopes to make him grow up healthily; The suffering was evident from his pale and feeble confession. If no one needs to take the blame, then who is the real culprit?
This culprit is indirectly expressed in the movie, and its incarnation is Haiyan, so Haiyan is both at fault and atonement. She is the head of a big family in a state-owned enterprise . Every word she says seems to be giving orders, and she is serious enough to condense the air, which is most vividly shown in the process of her abortion. However, after the death of Xingxing, the steel woman burst into tears, trying her best to save her sins until she died. This is obviously a manifestation of her castration by the symbolic order. Haiyan's identity is a small administrator of the system. She enjoys the surplus of the bureaucracy of state-owned enterprises. It is not difficult to see from her indifference. However, her order made Liyun infertile. If their family lost the stars, they lost their children forever. This kind of enjoyment was interrupted by the real world. She is a person who has lost her master's signifier. Emotional breakdown . This solution can only be made up by another subject, neither she nor Haohao, but the family - this ancient system speaks through Haohao's mouth, and his confession fills the gap. However, what the real world can grasp is incomprehensible. Can the cauldron of rice that has completely collapsed and the dying family be able to assume their main responsibility ?
Although the market economy has completely destroyed the good or bad legacy of the past, regardless of whether family ethics are prosperous or wilted, the cycle time of the farming and animal husbandry society has been completely broken , and the time on this shore can no longer be cycled. How to write about the past history and even the future society? The ending makes a false impression of historical progress, but, leaving the ending and appearance aside, let's take a look. Yaojun and Liyun were rated as advanced models, but they were "expelled for the lead", and their lives became increasingly poor after that. As the former leaders of Haiyan's family, even if they lost their iron jobs, their lives became better and better, and they even became The big boss; Haohao and "Xingxing", who grew up in very different environments, had completely different growth trajectories. One became a doctor with considerable social status, and the other was a marginalized youth in society (even if he "returned to the right" later). What does this mean? The movie did not elaborate, because, facing this desert-like land:
"Don't say a word!"
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