The story begins in Datong, Shanxi, an old city in northern China, where gangster Bin (Liao Fan) is sentenced to five years in prison for a life-threatening act of violence, and his girlfriend Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao) is sentenced to five years' imprisonment after she fires a gun in the street to protect him. After his release from prison, Qiaoqiao became the "jianghu man" in Bin's words, and was mercilessly abandoned. Years later, when Bin suffered a stroke and his career was in the doldrums, Qiaoqiao took on the role of a jianghu man again.
On the side of the volcano, Bin taught Qiaoqiao to hold a gun to the distance, and said to her: "Now you are the people in the world." Years later, or that volcano, or those two people, Qiaoqiao to that once taught her "where there are people, there is a jianghu," Bin said: "There is no emotion there is still righteousness, but you are no longer in the jianghu, you do not understand."
So what is the jianghu? Bin's heart jianghu is rich and powerful, loyal and righteous, front and back, Qiaoqiao heart jianghu is a love, is moral righteousness and kindness. This a man and a woman two rivers and lakes, all the deep love and righteousness, through the vicissitudes of change, and ultimately submerged in the waves of the times, leaving a place of sadness.
From Shanxi all the way south to the Three Gorges, from the Three Gorges to Wuhan, and then westbound to Xinjiang, and finally back to Shanxi, 7700 kilometers of spatial conversion, seventeen years, the jianghu in the change, the jianghu love is also in the era of change.
Bin resolved the internal brotherly strife under the witness of Guan Gong, which is the embodiment of the old jianghu sentiment. The boat bypass Qiaoqiao wallet middle-aged woman, do not know whether the restaurant diners pregnant, obscene motorcycle drivers, full of mouth running train Klamath male ...... briefly appeared and real shape and color of a group of people, it is this trip to run the jianghu experience Qiaoqiao to become a real jianghu people. In the end, this loose and full of imagination jianghu passed away in the waves of the times. Jia Zhangke's remembrance of this spirit of the jianghu is also in line with the saying, "We are all prisoners of the universe".
"Sons of the Lake" has an ambition that Jia Zhangke has never seen before, not only paying homage to his own past work in many places, but also expanding the shaping of the universe in his work. When Qiaoqiao sees an alien flying saucer in the middle of the night, it's probably because Jia Zhangke wants to express the power of faith. Even though the wind and clouds are changing and darkness is like this, the heart of goodness and righteousness, faith, and the purity of the heart, the unquenchable moral righteousness makes her strong.
Jia Zhangke's movie has an obvious poetic quality, a loose culture of narrative, focusing on details, heavy listening rather than sensationalism, put everything in front of you, calmly told, as if waking up from a dream, disappointed. Yang Dechang once said that a movie can explain the whole world, and a movie can encompass the whole of Chinese society, and Jia Zhangke's grasp of interpersonal relationships makes the movie especially real. Jia Zhangke's movies are often unforgiving because of their sharp expression of the current life in China.
At the end of the story, the two people in the red world, who once had such a love-hate relationship, are reconciled with their inner selves after experiencing the sculpture of time and forgetting about each other, and just as "volcanic ash is the cleanest thing", the inner purity of the heart, so they can live well in their own lives.
The film opens with real images of buses, opera house songs, cheesy music and square dances, the coal capital of Shanxi, the construction of the Three Gorges Reservoir and the disappearance of the city ...... China's development and urbanization over the past ten years are shown in front of the audience, restoring a real China, which is a kind of nostalgia and sadness, and a reflection of the times. a myth of the times.
As Jia Zhangke said: I want to use the movie to care about ordinary people, in the slow flow of time, feel the joy or heaviness of each ordinary life, life is like a quiet river, let us experience it.
So, why don't we just "savor it" and leave it all to time?