The first time I was moved by a movie in my life was the first year of high school. The school organized to see Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine". A 16-year-old child, who is ignorant of his age, I really don’t know what the school did to promote such a profoundly conscious and avant-garde movie back then. Whatever the reason, a bunch of bustling boys and girls did walk into the cinema and sat in the dark honestly for nearly three hours. Many things in that year have been forgotten until now, but this movie has remained in my heart forever, in the long river of memory.
At that time, I had no idea about homosexuality. Although I was shocked by words like Su Tong when I was reading the Red Mansion, and the ambiguity hidden behind the friendship between Baoyu and Qin Zhong's classmates was even more interesting, the lust between the two men was not something that my little brain could understand at that time. It's not so much touching as it is charm. In the movie's square house compound, blue bricks and green tiles, those babbling beautiful lyrics, and those colorful lines on the face, Cheng Dieyi looked at Duan Xiaolou's charming, eager, desperate and sad eyes. I was completely fascinated, lost in a complicated story beyond the mental comprehension of my age. I don't understand why Juxian, played by Gong Li, hates Cheng Dieyi so much. I don't understand why Duan Xiaolou always lives in contradictions and struggles. I don't even fully understand why Cheng Dieyi committed suicide in the end. But I clearly remember the scene where the Beijing Opera props were burnt during the Cultural Revolution, and the three people accused each other of destroying each other. All the people in the raging fire were burned into ghosts, dying with scars. The pain I felt while sitting there was so real, and tears flowed down my face like a river. This is the first time in my life that I shed tears for a movie, moved by a story I can fully understand, and heartbroken for a relationship that I have no concept at all.
Sitting next to me is the boy I secretly liked at the time. With tears streaming down my face and even crying, I suddenly felt in the darkness that my hand was warmed and held tightly by someone. I secretly turned my head to look at him, watching his tears rolling in his eye sockets, watching his eyes reflect the blazing fire. We both shook hands like this, we shed tears, and watched the whole movie without saying a word. When the lights in the movie theater came on again, when Lin Yilian's sad song "When Love Has Become a Past" sounded vigorously, the emotion in my heart could hardly be described in words.
Later, I have watched this movie countless times, and the emotions are different every time. But that kind of charm, but Cheng Dieyi's charming, eager, desperate and sad eyes are the details that will always touch me. I will still burst into tears at the scene of the fire, and I will still sigh with emotion that I have lost all my words when the music plays. Only then did I know that the impact of a good movie on people can surpass all the story lines of all languages.
Many years later, the look in my brother's eyes was still charming and desperate, and the feelings between Peking Opera and men still fascinated me. Many years later, whenever I think of the boy I had a crush on, I always think of the warmth of his palms and the touch of tears we shed together.
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