But when the word "August" appeared, the English translation of the movie gave me a great shock, The summer is gone. The summer is gone. At that moment I realized that it might be different from my usual literary films, and not just for boring entertainment, so I decided to watch and interpret it carefully, and write a good review.
The story is set in the early nineties in a small western town, the country began to implement the reform of state-owned enterprises, the iron rice bowl was broken, the state-owned studio family home, every simple family life is affected by the reform, and eleven-year-old Xiaolei so in the economic changes and the family changes in between the ignorant growth. Every character in the movie has a distinct personality and is a reflection of the times, such as Xiao Lei, his parents and a group of relatives, such as the seemingly insignificant gangster Sango.
Although this is a movie that pays homage to his father's generation, many of the sights have remained unchanged from day to day for decades. The moncler jackets outlet uk people playing cards in the noisy environment, surrounded by some onlookers, children wearing cheap clothes sandals in the side of the rubber band jumping, adults shouted at the children to go home to eat dinner when the boy reluctantly said, "I want to play a little more". Xiaolei's childhood is also my childhood, to be precise, it is my childhood when I was a child living in the countryside to see the childhood, not to experience the childhood. My childhood was filled with playing the piano, painting, practicing and memorizing words, and I was not happy.
Maybe it's because I like kids, I always thought that Kong Weiyi - Zhang Xiaolei's kid in the play - had a nice smile, and when he looked at his mom's weird way of watering the flowers, he laughed with a "pfffft", which is only for kids! That's the kind of smile that only a child can have when he's so mischievous and quirky that I laughed from the bottom of my heart as I watched the movie. Many people gathered around the river to watch San take out the linden seeds from the sheep's belly (not sure what San was doing, just a hunch), and in the group of adults, only Xiao Lei's eyes had the curiosity and inquisitiveness that only a child can have. The adults are dull and dead, and only the children bring life to the dullness of life.
The tug-of-war in the family home will be a sporting event, and when the winner is not yet decided, the car in the factory can not move, everyone goes to push the car, until the car is started many people still follow the run, and the loudspeaker reads a passionate poem as if this is a farce. As the crowd drifted away, the camera focused on Xiaolei, Xiaolei's look half bewildered half seem to know something, half-knowing eyes, thin and small figure, so childish to the unknown unknown, always make people want to cross the screen in front of him to hug him. Xiao Lei waved the nunchucks in his hand and ran to the room at the end of the stairs, secretly opened the door and couldn't help but ask, "Daddy, what is this?" "Playing a movie." "Why don't you go to the games?" Of course, Dad wouldn't answer, how could he explain it clearly to a child, and even if he did, what could he answer? He cut a piece of film and gave it to Xiao Lei. The child, being a child, immediately took it to the window and asked his father, "Who is this?" "This is your old Uncle Yun." This moment of father and son scene is particularly cozy, the window through the film through the light, as if the father and son of hope.
The father, Zhang Chen, has been like a child who has not grown up. "Don't lower your noble head" - I'm afraid this is not the need to consider the difficulties of survival do not know the taste of sadness of the teenager to be qualified to say words, impulsive and reckless father, drunken father, unwilling to compromise with reality father, take Xiaolei to see the movie tears father, how like a literary and artistic father of the father, how like a literary reckless big kid. Not to mention a father's age, even now we are gradually growing numb, worrying about the present and the future, has been rarely in other people's stories to shed their own tears.
In the middle of the movie, Xiao Lei begins to change from a child to a teenager. The school director turns around and sees Little Ray, "Whose kid is this?" "What ah" - the unique hostility of a teenager. And then the father and Xiao Lei did not see the movie, the rich man's arrogance and his son's fat boy in the eyes of contempt, thin Xiao Lei face can no longer hide anger, his hands and body has made the most direct reaction. And the father, probably because of a long time of internal repression, he did not go to stop his child to do it. But the mother was very angry, dismantled the father's hand-made nunchucks for Xiaolei, threw down a I never care about you guys again. If I can live easier, I do not want to struggle so much, this is probably what the mother thought. In the eyes of others, she is "Teacher Guo", but her greatest fear must be "I'll be you when I grow up", she is afraid that her son will grow up to be as unproductive as she and her husband. She is tired, tired of her every role in life, which is the hardship of every mother, every woman in an ordinary family.
"Why do you want to go to the third grade?" After the meal at the table Xiaolei did not answer this question. On the way home a family of three beautiful, Xiaolei sitting on his father's bike is very happy, parents a relaxed face, mom asked Xiaolei this question again. "Because the third form has the most handsome uniforms and a belt like San's." At once, the father stopped his bike and left Little Ray riding away as fast as he could. At first I didn't think that the one who was raging here was actually the father who had always been good-natured to his son, and then I thought that he must have been very disappointed in his son. But that is just a child's simple worship, he does not realize how much parents have to pay for this, he does not understand his suffering is someone to suffer for him, someone to carry the weight for him to go forward. This is the sadness of most ordinary parents, who have used the wrong way of education from the very beginning. In my opinion, it is not that the child needs to be more mature and understand what family burden, but the child should have the right to know, have his own choices and judgment and for which to pay a certain responsibility and price.
Sitting in the field, Xiao Lei and his father ate face to face. The first thing that came out of his head was: "Dad, I'm not going to the third grade." The first time I saw him, I didn't realize that he hadn't been able to salvage anything with that one sentence. Maybe it was his mother's words, "Your one point is a month's salary for me and your father," that touched him, so the child simply thought he should know better and made his own great sacrifices, but the reality was so hopeless. The father patted Xiao Lei's head. On the way home, the old man upstairs sang, as in the opening scene of the movie, "How many things have happened in the world's prosperity and demise Mang my God's country". Yes, the song is still the same, but a lot has changed. But at such a young age, what does Lei need to know about the rise and fall of the world? He doesn't even know what his parents and relatives have done for him, and he doesn't even know that his father is about to leave home.
"Fuck you kid want to go against me ah" this scene of the movie opening family watching TV, the midfield reappeared when the line repeated three times. The play within the play people against people, the play reality against people. The father took out the tape, crazy tearing, is the deep feeling of life's powerlessness, as the drama in the drama stuck in the picture, shall not move forward. Xiao Lei heard the living room rattling, secretly opened the door to poke his head out to see his father is boxing. The punches and kicks, which look clumsy and a bit ridiculous, are his father's self-perceived abilities, which he has no place to give vent to. We came to the world with our bare hands, and despite everything, we still haven't changed anything, including ourselves.
The night before the farewell party for his father, there were some arguments. Is it really full of ambition and disdain for the meticulous or a group of people with empty ideals of self-congratulation? Mom's words, want to be down-to-earth, the shadow of many mothers. A while ago, NetEase cloud fire "I want to eat a meal with you" lyrics no car no house, but also to the future of the confused still want to go wandering. Empty ideals and hot blood can not be enough ah, when I earn a lot of money, will be with such a you, holding hands around, but if nothing, I'm afraid of two people will starve to death. But that scene in the cabaret awakened an inexplicable passion in my heart. "Tomorrow to sail, loved ones of the blue bandana, will be fluttering in the stern of the ship" song, as if the future has a feverish anticipation, everyone is in the self-centered lively, parents holding hands and dancing, at this time Xiaolei wearing his expectations of the set of three middle school uniforms, lying on the table, fell into a deep sleep.
On the eve of his departure, his father came to the room with the belt "as handsome as San" to look at his son, and left with a sigh. I remembered that the night before I left home, I would also lose sleep. Early the next morning, the parents carried their luggage, holding a sleepy Lei all the way to catch the bus. The whole scene literary and realistic, the bus urged people to go quickly, leaving very quickly, Ray did not like the general movie played like chasing the car running, just frowning looking into the distance, like the loss of what, a hint of a hollow point of bewilderment a seemingly unintelligible look. It seems that when I was young I also experienced this scene, the eyes and Ray is the same. Father did not wave his hand to signify goodbye, even too late to turn his head to look out the window again, the car did not wait for someone to say goodbye. But in the car heard "on that rainy Sunday I send you out of the hometown ...... you in his hometown okay whether you want to lean on my shoulders" this song, he shed tears.
After his father's departure, the extended family, the long bedridden Xiaolei taimou died. The relationship between the entire family has also been eased, "Mom, the past is my fault, you want to not cry, not cry out hard". One hand on the other hand, the moment the tears flowed down, it was reconciliation with the past, reconciliation with themselves. In the group photo Xiao Lei waved his arms, only his father was missing, and Xiao Lei went from sitting on his father's bicycle to pushing his own bicycle and walking on the road in his school uniform. Above the bed at home is a group photo of father and son, and on the bed are nunchucks made by his father. In addition, Sango's father died, and he seemed to grow up overnight. Calcium milk cookies, the crew issued a night snack, and did not want to eat, all left to Sango. Sango yelled at Xiao Lei, who was comforting him, to get lost. Unlike before, when he was extorting pocket money from others, his "get lost" was disdainful and uncaring, but this was a moment of perseverance, not wanting to let the children see him as helpless and needing to be relied upon. At night, Xiao Lei's blossoms bloomed, and everything quietly changed.
The last scene of the film is of the father out on location, and the scene turns to color. Maybe the rural world is in black and white and the outside is in color. It looks like the father is doing okay out there, which is a comforting ending. The opening of the blossoms probably means that the hot, dry restlessness of summer in August is over, and the coming fall is a time of maturity and stability, when life tends to calm down.
The details of the whole movie are well handled, the poster of Cui Jian's "Nothing" on the door of Xiao Lei's family room (this is the second part of the movie that shocked me, and I don't need to talk about Cui Jian's influence in that era, perhaps there is a certain moral in the movie), the night before his father left home, the line of "I'm smoking Marlboro", the end of the night, the night before the meeting, the night before his father left home. The line "I smoke Marlboros" when we meet the night before his father leaves home, and the word "band" on the wall near the end of the movie, all y reflect what the nineties were like. The only thing I found lacking was a very small part of the movie that the director probably didn't even notice - a scene in which a group of people are dancing in the alley when his father is driving Lei home on his bicycle. The music for the square dance is "Winds of the Southeast, Winds of the West, Winds of the North, Winds of the South" by Eva Chok, which was only released in 2000, not in the early nineties.
The lyrics to the closing song, "Green Wild Grapes," are from Gu Cheng's poem "Comfort," which is also a song from an old movie from 1985. The movie theater was not crowded, but most of them did not go first, but quietly saw the last second, I suddenly remembered last year's infamous "Roadside Picnic". The difference is that "Roadside Picnic" has deliberate literature interspersed with obscure poetry, while "August" is an old story without the slightest bit of florid words, a stale old photo. On the way back, I read the poster advertising the movie before the movie - keep the good times rolling. But I don't think the good times need to be retained, I think the good times should be in the future, the past, the proper collection of carefully placed.
Margaret Mitchell's famous book "Gone with the Wind", the English title is "Gone with the wind", with the wind and go; "August" is translated as "The summer is gone", the summer is gone. In a way, the movie and the book are the same, what has been recorded is the life that has passed away.
The Summer is Gone--August, is the July fire.
2017.03.26
Little Onion