Jia Zhangke once said: "When a society is in a hurry, you can't ignore the person you bumped into just because you want to move forward."
After watching the movie for nearly The reason why this theme resonates so easily is that everyone can see their own shadow from the characters in the movie. arrive.
"Long Time" spans nearly 30 years of historical changes in China. Yaojun and Liyun in the play are actually the age of my parents. My childhood was spent in the affiliated kindergarten of my mother's factory. The deepest memory is the scene when a group of female workers in navy blue overalls waited at the door to pick up the children from school after school. The overalls are still in the box under my bed, until the day when we moved last year, my father wanted to bring some old clothes together. We donated it together, but my mother refused to let it go. Later, the work clothes moved with us to a new home and continued to lie under the bed. The work clothes should have a special meaning for my mother. To use a popular saying to describe it, it is the highlight of life. At that time, the female factory workers had a very decent and stable job. Their self-confidence was on their faces. Everyone thought that they would stay in the factory for the rest of their lives. No one expected that they would be ruthlessly thrown away by the train of the times. Down.
Later, the factory was restructured, and the wave of layoffs came overnight. I should be only seven or eight years old, maybe even a little younger, and I didn’t understand anything. Looking back now, I begin to understand my mother’s mood at that time. Including the one-child policy, in fact, I also had a younger brother or sister that I had never met, just to keep my father's public office and was kicked out. This memory is actually very vague for me. I only remember that when my grandmother came I lived in my family for a while and took care of my mother, and the clip in the movie brought my memory back to that time completely. So in the three hours of watching the movie, I watched it very deeply, because this is the life of my parents, and I am the Haohao in the play.
A child's death, two families' friendship lasts forever
Actually it wasn't the death of one child, it was three. It just starts with the death of the first child, Liu Xing, and begins to tell the story. The two lines are interspersed, memory and reality, Inner Mongolia and Fujian, two children who have been given the identity of Liu Xing, and the two families have a long-lasting friendship. The song "Friendship is forever" that runs through the whole play. Whenever the melodious harmonica sounds, the memories of those beautiful days will come to my face. Celebrating birthdays together, the fashionable dance steps in the hut, the shoulder dance in the ballroom Carnival, can friendship really last forever?
The death of Xing Xing was a watershed. From then on, the two families were separated from each other. The two families chose different paths. One continued to stay in the north and the other went south to a fishing village by the sea in Fujian. Now it seems that the death of Xing Xing is like a metaphor, meaning The turning point of an era, the demise of a system, the complete silence of a group.
Father Liu Yaojun has been to the hospital three times in total. The first time was when the star drowned. Yaojun walked through the tunnel with the star in his arms. A train rumbled over and went through the long slope of the hospital. This slope is also very interesting. I believe the director In fact, there is no intention to set it like this, and there is that big static word hanging high above the head. The second time was when Liyun was pregnant. In order to keep her job, they had to be forced to have a flow of people. They came to the hospital again and walked down the long slope with the word "Quiet" hanging high above their heads. The third time was Liyun. Taking poison to commit suicide, Yaojun took Liyun to the hospital, another long tunnel, and the train rumbled over.
Whether it is the tunnel, the slope or the static word, it all means that this is a group of people who were abandoned after the wheels of the times rolled over. The identity they played is a group of aphasia, who lost their identity and lost their voice.
Two families, a metaphor of two roads, a change of times
In the play, the different development trajectories of the two families are used as a metaphor for the ending of the two parts of the people who parted ways in the process of the transformation of the times. At that time, a popular word after being laid off was called "going to the sea". In textbooks, it even just passed by. Just a few words, not worth mentioning, but in reality, it has changed the development track and destiny of an era, and any text description and picture reproduction are too one-sided.
Shen Yingming went to sea, so he became President Shen and entered the real estate industry early. This industry later created 50% of China's richest people, Meiyu went to Hainan, and Jasmine also caught up with the wave of studying abroad. In short, they all caught up with the times. The tide of the train, and those who were left behind went to a fishing village in Fujian, opened a repair shop, and they adopted a stepson, who was given the name and identity of Liu Xing, but he resisted this identity, so He left, leaving only Yaojun and Liyun to depend on each other.
Peanuts throughout the play is a bright spot. After most of the episodes of losing children in the play, there is a scene of Yaojun drinking alone on a plate of peanuts. Peanuts in China means more children and more happiness. It is such a simple wish but cannot. Realized, lost and laid off, life seems to add all the hardships to this kind family. After losing their only one, the Liyun family and others would always ask each other in their chats, are you okay? The answer is always good, very good. This is a typical Chinese greeting, especially in the context of losing one's independence in the movie, it is not so much a greeting as a subconscious self-praise and comfort.
Haiyan was the first of the two families to leave. Haiyan's death brought the two families together again. Haohao told the truth. The tree of his body finally stopped growing. Liyun and Yaojun returned to Inner Mongolia. Xingxing went to the grave, hand in hand, climbed the soil slope with difficulty, placed the sacrifices, the camera swept down the slope, and below was a black tombstone. Lu, looking back, there is a clear state of mind, when Yaojun's phone rang, he received the news of Haohao's child's birth, one side was death, the other side was new life, with a tombstone at his feet and hope ahead.
Is there any hope for this bereaved family? some. At the end of the story, a group of people gathered in the living room, sharing the joy of the birth of their grandchildren, and remotely connected to Jasmine in the United States. The unknown child who was about to appear made Liyun and Yaojun uneasy, and also made the audience sweat. The mixed-race child that appeared later made Liyun's heart fall to the ground, and Yaojun's heart was mixed. He originally had fantasies, but the appearance of the mixed-race once announced the official death of a child.
Thousands of times, Yaojun's phone rang, the other end of the phone was the return of the child who was given the identity of Liu Xing, and the sound of parents made the audience on the screen couldn't help but feel relieved, the first and only shot of the scene. Once I swept to the door of the simple repair shop, Fanxing Repair Factory, this small shop finally waited for the return of its star. The return of the child named Liu Xing represented his recognition of his identity and also represented Liyun. Yaojun's return to his parenthood, through the vague white gauze, Li Yun finally transformed from an aphasiac to a mother. She expresses her longing for the stars without any scruples, like an ordinary nagging mother. Homely, the director brought this Chinese-style warmth to the extreme.
Some people say that this drama is a pantomime, and the male and female protagonists don't have any lines, but I think the director's setting is very in line with the characters' identities. Liyun and Yaojun are the people who were knocked down by rolling wheels during the social transition period. ,
What happened to those who were hit by the wheels of the times? They become aphasia, forgotten in corners. Just like a tube building surrounded by high-rise buildings, they can't even do anything about time. They live by their memories alone, quietly aging into eternity.
Another interesting point is that although the title of the film is called Di Jiu Tian Chang, its English name is "song long, my son". Goodbye my son. This is a parent who spent a whole life saying goodbye to their son, and it is also a process of a generation that spends their entire lives reconciling with the past. I recently read a sentence on Douyin. This is the last winter of the 2010s. It is a pity that what I wanted to do was not done, and the people who wanted to wait did not wait. I hope 2020 will be a new beginning. , all the old things are reconciled in the old age.
May we all be happy.
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