At the beginning of the film, the two children had a small disagreement about whether to go down to the reservoir to play.
In the first second, my mind went astray, and I remembered that it was directed by Hirokazu Koreeda, in which the eldest son of the doctor's family died trying to save a drowning child.
Similarly, Shen Hao, the son of Shen Yingming's family, dragged Liu Xing, the son of Liu Yaojun's family, into the reservoir in "Long Time". Liu Xing was not so lucky and drowned.
It was director Hirokazu Koreeda who told about the impact of losing this son on the members of the family. The film reflects a whole life through one day;
Wang Xiaoshuai's speech is about the emotional entanglement between the two families because of the loss of their son for nearly 30 years, condensing an era through half a lifetime;
It seems to be the same, but if you think about it carefully, this "Long Time" has a bigger vision.
The whole film is 175 minutes long. It is said that there are some deletions from the Berlin competition version. The story is about Liu Yaojun and Shen Yingming, who are both educated youths in the countryside. They returned to Baotou and entered a large state-owned enterprise. The four children who were supposed to be good were born on the same day and grew up together like brothers.
Catching up with the national family planning, Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun accidentally conceived a second child. They wanted to hide it from everyone, but were told by the wife of Shen Yingming, the director of the Family Planning Commission, that the child was forcibly aborted. As a result, Wang Liyun lost her fertility.
Coincidentally, the two children of the two families who grew up together went to play in the reservoir when they were teenagers. Haohao of the Shen family pulled the star of the Liu family into the water, causing the star who could not swim to drown. Liu Yaojun and his wife were doomed. There can be no more biological children in this life.
When the wave of layoffs hit, the two left the city that made them desperate, traveled to Hainan and settled in a small county on the coast of Fujian, taking the child adopted from the welfare institution as their own son. However, what is quite different from the originally well-behaved Liu Xing is that this new Liu Xing is a rebellious child. After the ID card is completed, he runs away from home and has no news.
Shen Moli, who had always admired Liu Yaojun when she was a child, came to visit Liu Yaojun before going abroad and accidentally had a child. Because of her brother and sister-in-law, Shen Moli proposed to give birth to this child as compensation for Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun from the Shen family, but Liu Yaojun refused.
In this way, Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun, who can only live by each other in this world, have been with each other all the way to old age. When Shen Yingming's wife was dying, they returned to Baotou. "Reconciliation"
so long, my son
The time line in the film is chaotic, and it does not tell the story directly, but puts the ultimate contradiction in the title, that is, Liu Xing's death, and then splices the emotional entanglement of the two families for the audience through various events before and after this point in time. .
To be precise, for the male protagonist Liu Yaojun, the film has four of his "sons", the son Liu Xing who drowned, the son in the womb of Wang Liyun who was forcibly knocked out, the adopted son "Liu Xing" from the orphanage, and The child in Shen Moli's belly that he didn't know if he had aborted or not.
The film also shows that he lost his son four times. According to the chronological order, the first one to lose is the child who was knocked out. He was extremely angry and beat the wall with his hands until the skin of his fist was all torn;
The second one lost was the drowning Liu Xing. When he ran to the hospital with the child in his arms, he still held back a glimmer of hope, but the hope at the door of the emergency room turned into despair like a deflated balloon;
The third is the runaway of the adopted son Liu Xing. He has accepted the tricks of fate calmly. It seems that no amount of emotion is worth his waste;
The fourth is to send Shen Moli away, sitting in the car alone and crying silently.
Fortunately, the director was not so unreasonable. After losing his son "four times", in the last scene of the film, everyone has a video call with Jasmine who is in the United States, the moment when they see Jasmine's child and secretly know that the child is not him. The difference between the moment and the moment is more than ten seconds. Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun only have a few expressions on their faces that suddenly change.
In the end, their adopted son "Liu Xing" went home. At the end of the film, the loss of nearly three hours of the whole film turned into hope. It is worth mentioning that the acting skills of the two actors, in this and "Liu Xing" "In the clips of the call, you can see the emotions of their life being awakened pouring out.
The emotion of this film is extremely restrained, and there is a feeling of wanting to cry but unable to cry, but it is painful in the throat, and this restraint is precisely the emotional integrity of the Orientals.
At this time, the title of the film "Earth and Sky/so long, my son" appeared on the screen at the right time. Heaven and earth are space, long time is time, and my son is the meaning of our existence in time and space.
Forever
After a long period of time, he said that the son is not only the meaning of Liu Yaojun and his wife's life, but the director also cleverly placed the loss of several sons in the corresponding historical events, conforming to the role of ordinary people in the times.
In chronological order, the starting point of the film should be the early 1980s, the most prosperous era of the national crackdown movement. Another friend of the two families in the film became a criminal because of the heyday of the crackdown. It was also an era of heavy production and labor, and labor skills and work attitudes were the most glorious and sacred halo of that era. Liu Yaojun was also because of this moment, which made Shen Moli admire him.
The first lost child was in the golden period of his life. The film only showed the excellence of Liu Yaojun and his wife, but never deliberately mentioned the honorable titles of the two as labor pacesetters and technical leaders. It couldn't be more ironic to tell the audience after the forced abortion that they were given the title of model family planning. (It is said that there is this part of the content in the Berlin Film Festival version, and the domestic version is only mentioned by the two people)
Many years after the model worker passed, state-owned enterprises and large factories were faced with the impact of the market economy, and the wave of layoffs hit, but the fates of the two excellent families were completely different: Shen Yingming "going into the sea" early, but Liu Yaojun had been fantasizing about it. and Wang Liyun to dredge again.
The behavior of adults is reflected on children, and it can be arranged by the director. In the film, Haohao said that Liu Xing was timid, but Haohao was afraid of embarrassment, so he pulled Liu Xing into the water and pushed him, which eventually led to Liu Xing drowned.
In the real world, it wasn't the "family planning model" that Shen Yingming's wife pushed Wang Liyun that made them get the phrase "models should take the lead even if they are laid off." No matter in spirit or material, Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun, like Liu Xing, have drowned in this era.
The third son, the three of them live in the spring breeze of reform and opening up and the tide of the market economy. Their relationship with their adopted son is like their relationship with this era.
The adopted son finally ran away from home. Liu Yaojun's attitude was acquiescence. He knew that he was unable to make any struggle. This was not the era when he was a pacesetter, nor the era when he resisted being laid off, watching a group of village murderers brought back by his son. Matt, he knows the times have completely abandoned him.
After his adopted son ran away from home, he secretly met Jasmine and talked about their lives, to the effect: "It's pretty good here, I don't understand what they say, and I don't have any interaction with them, so we just live our own lives." Precisely It reflects the current mental state of Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun.
The fourth son seems to have nothing to do with the times. Liu Yaojun said this. From the moment Liu Xing died, he and Wang Liyun no longer lived for other people and things, but for each other. This accident happened to Jasmine. The children who come are like an olive branch thrown to them by society, a hand of reconciliation, and one who wants to make up for their hearts, but in the eyes of Liu Yaojun and Wang Liyun, it has no meaning.
In the hearts of them and the group of people they represent, the knot will always be Liu Xing's drowning death.
So the opening of the knot must also be Haohao's confession to them.
So you see, the logic of this movie is to lose (family planning + forced abortion), lose (lay off + son drowning), lose (self-employed in a foreign land + adopted son run away) and then lose or become a refusal to reconcile (out of touch with the times + refusal Accidental Son), then reconciliation (back to Baotou + Haohao confession) and redemption (received a call from adopted son to go home)
The son is just a clue to the appearance, and the era is the hidden motivation. The growth and aging of this generation is like the emotion between them and the "son" in the film, which is painful and profound.
END
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