The teenager asked, "How long are you going to be away?" "There is a buzzing sound in my head, I have to do something." The father was reluctant to answer directly. Disorders and derailments in life often seem sudden, but in reality there are early warnings. Once the illusion of self-deception is destroyed overnight by external forces, the hidden cracks are scrambling to be exposed.
What "Wild Life" exposes is the dichotomy between the appearance and the essence of life, the dilemma of whether to be born as a human being or born to be someone else. What the father needs is a sense of authority, so he chooses to put out the wildfire (becoming a hero); what the mother needs is a sense of intimacy, so she chooses to teach people to swim (becoming a teacher); what the teenager needs is a sense of security, so he chooses Help in a photo studio (become a witness). In this family, there is only a lack of trust.
On the day my father left, my mother lay in bed and said to herself: something will happen tomorrow, everything will change. She can only choose to believe in herself, or let it go and believe in the arrangement of fate.
I like the dim tone of the film from beginning to end, with nostalgia for the old days, but it is the opposite atmosphere to my mother's determination to say goodbye to the past. The director's perspective is unhurried, the dialogue is often tentative, and the tacit understanding is silent.
Although it is about shooting wild life, the film is mostly still shots, and there are very few fast movements and editing. Even if the teenager experienced the broken family and witnessed his mother's cheating, Yunjing maintained a calm and depressing rhythm. The young man's heart is not without turbulence, but deep down he is determined. Often, the closer you are to the truth of life, the more you can accept everything peacefully. Even if you endure severe pain, it is better than getting depressed by self-deception.
The most symbolic scene in the whole film appears before his father returns. The teenager is waiting for the bus at the platform. The bus pulls in from the foreground to block the teenager. After a while, the car starts and drives away, and the teenager disappears into the picture; the camera slowly pans. To the right, the young man in the distance is running in the opposite direction of the bus, and his figure is getting smaller and smaller. When everyone thought that he had chosen the A side of life, but they didn't think that he had already rushed to the B side without hesitation.
So, everyone in the film made a choice. The father chose to leave the family temporarily to fight the fire in the forest; the mother chose to leave the family to live alone; the teenager chose to understand everything and accept everything. What matters is not what choice was made, but the act of "choice" itself. Once this step is taken, life has the meaning of restarting.
The ending of the film is really good. The family whose life was restarted reunited for a group photo. Does the group photo face the past or the future? Only they themselves can give the answer.
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