The movie's timeline begins in 1999 with the smash hit Go West as the opening song. Just like the picture in the MV of this song, the lead singer wears a Soviet military hat and walks towards the Statue of Liberty above the sky. China in 1999 was also an era of go west. Some people got rich first, and new things began to immerse in people's lives. Typical twentieth-century China often appears in video recordings: disco, radio, Santana, BP machine. In that golden age, we still had Su Tong, Mo Yan, Xu Sanguan, the chess king of Zhong Acheng, and the first sitcom "I Love My Family". Perhaps the people who are in the midst of the millennial wave are unaware that they are being written into other people's stories in the thriving and dusty urban development. This is the best of times and the worst of times.
At the Hung Hom Stadium in 1997, He Yong sang, who made the questions so difficult, and there are correct answers everywhere.
The story begins with three young people: Zhao Tao, the heroine, Jin Sheng, the coal mine owner of You Tou Fen Mian, and Liang Zi, who is not good at speaking. Life was ordinary. Later, Jinsheng bought a car and took them to the river to set off firecrackers together; Liang Zi accompanied Zhao Tao to see the shop at the canteen, and Jinsheng bought discs from customers for her and expressed his heart. There must be a third party in the three-way trip. The camera returns to the frozen river bank. At this time, only Jin Sheng and Zhao Tao are left. They ignited the firecrackers again, the ice and snow melted, and the last spring of the 20th century came. A pair of Bi people got married and lived a prosperous life, and Liang Zi went away alone. Then their child was born, and Jin Sheng named him Dollar.
The second part of the film turns to 2014. The two main lines of characters cross each other and go further and further apart. One is the half-life wandering, life and death of the hero and heroine, and the other is the exile of the old partner. Fifteen years later, Liang Zi, who was seriously ill, returned to Fenyang with his wife and children. He returned to his hometown, but he could not return home in fine clothes. The family was still the same as the day he left fifteen years ago. The two names are no longer side by side. We can remember great joy and great sorrow, and we can remember the stimuli of the senses. Those who are often forgotten are ordinary people, such as Liang Zi. He has never directly expressed his love from beginning to end, and there is no suspense in losing in love. There are only five clenched fingers and pale knuckles left. In the end, he threw away the key and was determined to walk away, but even if he ran away in a fit of anger, he still went to work in the mine. The embarrassment and embarrassment when borrowing money from an old friend to see a doctor, etc., it is said that fate makes people, but it is so "going with the flow".
Liang Zi's clues just faded out of sight, and then Dole's appearance made the movie go to another track. Zhao Tao's father passed away suddenly on his way to celebrate his friend's birthday, and closed his eyes safely in the waiting hall of the train station. Dole returned to Fenyang after his grandfather's death. He wore a Western-style school uniform and sat in the co-pilot obediently. The 'Mummy' blurted out his mother's anger, and his mother tore off his square scarf and put it on him. On the filial piety chapter. This scene in the car was brought up again in the last section of the movie. Ten years later, he was throwing a key from his mother on his chest. He even burst into tears because of the pain of missing, but the boy couldn't remember it. It felt familiar. What was the person who was in the driver's seat.
This time the mother and son reunited, and people saw the slaps and tears of mother's love. At the funeral, Zhao Tao burst into tears and scolded his son to kneel and kowtow. Dole may not understand the meaning of family at his age, and he still brazenly makes videos with his stepmother in front of his mother on weekdays, looking forward to his immigrant life in Australia. In the end, the parting of mother and son is inevitable. The son innocently asked why he took such a slow train. Zhao Tao said, the slower the train, the longer the time with you will be. The mother looked at pictures of the country he was about to live in.
Before parting, Zhao Tao said to his son, "You still have a good relationship with your father. Mom is an incompetent person. You can go to Shanghai to study in an international primary school and go abroad." As Wang Shuo said in his letter to his daughter, children make people sad, they want to let go, but they don't want to look back. Probably also the voice of most parents, Chinese-style education allows many children to face leaving their hometowns at the same time as adults, and complete the transition from immaturity to maturity alone. Some things can only be done alone, and some roads can only be walked alone. Parents can't accompany them, children can't turn back, they can only tell them not to chase with their backs that are drifting away.
The third part of the story takes place in Australia in 2025. Jin Sheng and his friends gag about the news of the domestic officialdom. The son is learning Chinese in the language class. The Chinese teacher played by Zhang Aijia mentions the topic of his mother in the class. Avoid or get angry, the boy said with a smile that I don't have a mother.
Dao Le was reluctant to speak Chinese, Jin Sheng did not understand English, and conflicts broke out in the language deviation. What was particularly absurd was that even the quarrel and confrontation between the father and son had to be translated by a third party, the difficult Shanxi dialect and Zhang Aijia's Taiwanese accent. , plus the son's pure English, the picture is funny but can't laugh. The parents were in a strange place in a foreign country, and they were at a loss, like a nostalgic feeling like a lost dog. The younger generation lost touch with their homeland and made a clear line with their mother tongue. Australia was not the place where he was born, but he grew up there. His mother was far away from home. He wanted to go back, but the ten years away from home made him feel timid. . The boy in the rebellious period struggled to break free and asked his father for freedom. How could he know that absolute freedom was not something he could afford.
At the end of the movie, Zhao Tao wrapped a table of dumplings by himself, dressed up neatly, and went out to walk the dog. The camera finally turned to her standing alone in the snowy wilderness, singing the song of the year, dancing, Go West's music again, and the story came to an abrupt end, just like the last scene of "Ren Xiaoyao".
In the old people of mountains and rivers, I saw that China, which is advancing rapidly but full of contradictions. From the winter in our hometown, the frozen river, to the sound of the waves on the Gold Coast of Australia, when we have everything we used to chase, when we finally become the outcasts of the times, the world has changed, the old people are no longer, I only hope to be you in the future The footprints are all over the world, and there are still those rivers and mountain ridges left in my heart.
[Director's Voiceover]
- Clip
In Jia Zhangke's films, the faces of ordinary people, the streets, the constant flow of people, and the noisy background sound often appear in Jia Zhangke's films. The first part of the movie is interspersed with some DV clips with a sense of age, such as a close-up of a boy in the crowd. The director also mentioned this bridge. The script itself has only four words, and the crowd is like weaving, but it is difficult to express when it is actually filmed. There was no character focus, so I remembered this scene, which was taken with a handheld DV, a boy with a determined expression holding Guan Gong's big knife. There is no context, but a scene flashes, and people's minds have already outlined the plot of an underage eldest son who has to come out to make a living.
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Jia Zhangke, his hometown, said that he put his background in his hometown Shanxi many times, not because of the so-called hometown complex, but because of its ordinaryness. In China, in addition to the economic and political centers under the spotlight, there are more small cities that are humble enough to dust. There are ordinary people here who go to and from get off work, boring but real. There are also many modern buildings here, living a good life and spending a lot of money. Many of his films are dramatic expressions of contemporary Chinese realism, such as Xiao Wu's protagonist, whose prototype is the director's childhood friend, such as the commoner's anger in Tian Ding, in which many news events can also be seen.
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The character of the boy Dole in the boy's movie is very full and there are traces to follow. The family broke down when he was young, he left his mother too early and went to an international school in Shanghai. Although his stepmother took care of him, he did not continue to appear in his later life. From this point of view, the last emotional scene with Zhang Aijia does not seem abrupt, and the lack of maternal love is enough to explain. Dole's story also narrates the confusion about identity and the lack of identity of some groups. A colleague of mine is a third-generation immigrant, and he even thinks it's discriminatory to be praised for being good at English, after all, English is his mother tongue and England is where he was born and raised.
- In the end
, Zhao Tao lived alone after the divorce and did not remarry. Perhaps she still retains the moral constraints that people have on women in the past. Perhaps the table of dumplings at the end of the movie means that she has a new family, or perhaps her son has moved abroad. After crossing the sea and returning home, the final direction of the story is unknown. The director himself also joked that if his son is going to shoot when he comes back, will he take Zhang Aijia back? It's too difficult to write, so let's stop there.
- Trilogy
When it comes to the three narratives of the movie, the style is very similar to Ge Fei's Jiangnan trilogy, "Peach Blossom on a Human Face", "Mountains and Rivers in Dreams", and "Spring Ends Jiangnan". The three books span a century, from From the late Qing Dynasty to the 1950s, the tortuous search ended at the turn of the century. Interestingly, after watching the movie, an audience asked the director whether the way of Shanhe's old friend was inspired by Ge Fei. Jia Zhangke smiled and said that he hadn't read any books for many years.
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There were many Chinese people in the audience at the screening of the documentary, and most of the questions were directed at Jia Zhangke, such as the Mainland film censorship mechanism, such as the so-called competition for Oscar applications. In the Screen talk session, Jia Zhangke and Walter Salles were invited. Jia said that he brought "Xiao Wu" to the Berlin Film Festival in 2017. Walter watched Xiao Wu, and two great souls have met since then. I didn't even know who Walter was at the time. I saw him chatting with the audience at the door at the end. After going back and checking, I found out that it was actually the director at Central Station and on the road. Oh my god. Walter also made a documentary for Jia Zhangke , which was exhibited in the documentary section of the film festival this time.
- After the
nonsense is over, in short, the old man of the mountains and rivers is a good movie. It will be released at 10.30 in China. It is worth going to the cinema. There is memory, there is temperature, there is loneliness, and there is conflict.
At that time, I looked up and watched it for two hours by myself. I was very embarrassed to cry while holding the milk tea. The movie ended without a sip of the milk tea. On the way back, I listened to Ye Qianwen's precious song in the movie. The tunes of Cantonese songs in the 1990s always had a special sense of picture, and the lyrics also belonged to the love and righteousness unique to that era. Now pop music rarely has this feeling anymore:
Stopping on the way makes people look back at you again, waiting for you even in the two places.
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