In my opinion, this is a tragedy. The ending male protagonist threw the cigarette butt into the wine glass, looking to the future, seemingly happy ending, but actually echoing the beginning: endless tall buildings, row upon row of desires and ambitions, deep despair and humbleness buried under the tall buildings.
"The huge city, from the beginning to the end, there is no change, let alone a drunkard." I think this is what the director wants to say.
Hope is a momentary fantasy, just like a momentary thought when he vowed to write well on the way. When I couldn't write anymore, I was addicted to alcohol and started to do stupid things again.
Addiction is often thought to come from depression, and most of the alcoholics are social dregs. However, according to the male protagonist’s imagining when he was drunk, he was living at the pinnacle of his life. Alcoholics are just coveting a life that doesn't match their own strength and hard work after being drunk. They are not satisfied with the present and cannot make up their minds to change step by step. Desire makes alcohol addiction go with them, and alcohol addiction eventually makes them see ghosts.
Even if the people around them really help themselves from the heart, the alcoholics still cannot accept that true self. The contrast makes it difficult for them to reason. It has nothing to do with society.
Back to the end. The hero began to imagine the future, which is another accumulation of desire. I believe he started such accumulation when he decided to embark on the road of literature. The more it accumulates, the heavier it is. Compared with shooting suicide, this is a more cruel punishment. Hopes and failures are repeated, just like the trials of reincarnation. Accompanied by alcohol addiction time and time again. Will eventually consume the will of the male lead.
A qualitative leap is produced: death, or Hao unquietly struggling in despair.
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