"Civil and military incense is expensive, 1245"
This is a sentence that Wang Jixiang has been talking about since he became ill.
Wu Wen is the brother and sister of Wang Jixiang, the eldest, the second, the fourth and the fifth. He is the third Wang Jixiang, but he never calls himself, only his brother and sister's names.
Twenty years ago, Wang Jixiang was seriously ill, his brain was burnt out, and his IQ was only a few years old.
Before his illness, he was the pillar and pride of Lao Wang's family. After graduating from college, he joined the work and was assigned to the oil field as the chief of the security section. As long as he can help, he must be at the front of the list. It can be said that Lao Wang's family is getting more and more prosperous because of his contribution.
However, an encephalitis caused the pillar of a family to collapse. His wife left Wang Jixiang with her 15-year-old daughter and almost all her property. He is only a few years old and can't take care of himself. The mental hospital refused to accept him, so he lived under the care of his old mother and other relatives.
Twenty years have passed, and now Mrs. Wang has fallen, leaving only Wang Jixiang with no elders to rely on. A more realistic problem is immediately before us. Who will take care of Wang Jixiang?
At this time, Wang Qingli, Wang Jixiang's long-lost daughter, also came back, but the return of her own daughter did not solve the actual problem of providing for the aged.
Wang Jixiang doesn't remember this daughter who is related to her by blood. Wang Qingli needs to earn money to support her family. She has her own family. It is impossible to take care of her father at the same time.
So on the evening of the 30th, the question of who will take care of Wang Jixiang was put on the table.
The second brother's family, who has taken care of Jixiang for 20 years, advocates sending him to a nursing home or taking Lili home to take care of him. After all, they are no longer young. Only those who have experienced it can appreciate the bitterness of taking care of such a sick old man.
Others think they are all brothers and sisters. If they can help, they can't ignore it. "If one can't manage four, how can those four manage one?" The quarrel in this family is getting more and more fierce.
At this time, Wang Jixiang was angry at the TV with no signal in the room, and the fireworks outside the window were also blooming.
This is the work "Auspicious" by Dapeng who won the Golden Horse Award for best short film creation in 18. In the film, Wang Jixiang is his third uncle and Wang Laotai is his grandmother. Except for Liu Lu, the actor of Wang Qingli, who is a professional actor, the rest are amateur relatives of Dapeng in reality.
Making such a film is arranged by heaven. Originally, Dapeng wanted to go back to his hometown in Northeast China to shoot grandma, to see how the old people spent New Year's Eve, whether they were looking forward to bringing their children and grandchildren home or just an ordinary day as usual, and let Liu Lu play his own role in the film.
But it backfired. When the crew went to the northeast a few days in advance to prepare for filming, grandma fell ill and finally failed to welcome the New Year.
At this time, my uncle's daughter Wang Qingli just came back, so Dapeng turned the camera to my uncle Wang Jixiang, and let Liu Lu play Wang Qingli in the play. This relationship was "auspicious".
be gratified
If Auspicious is a documentary, Ruyi is a pure documentary, which records how Dapeng filmed Auspicious.
We seem to be watching a drama with a slightly documentary style, but it is horribly real. It has no conflicts deliberately created in other movies, and everything is real and true.
As mentioned above, everything is arranged by heaven, and the uncontrollable condition of uncle makes the presentation effect of the film unknown. Dapeng can only have a plot direction. What will happen specifically? "We eat what God gives us."
There is a transition scene between the two short films that can be a classic. At the end of Auspicious, when Wang Jixiang was walking slowly in the snow, the camera was gradually opened, and then a picture appeared in the camera. Wang Jixiang continued to walk on the screen, and there were more things around the camera, with steps and audiences. It turns out that this is an embodiment of "auspiciousness".
Then the film began to tell the whole process of how Dapeng filmed auspiciousness, and we also changed from bystanders to auspicious participants.
The significance of Ruyi to Auspicious is not only to explain how the film is made, but also to further analyze and deconstruct Auspicious, so as to raise the film to another height.
It interweaves illusion with truth. In Ruyi, the real Wang Qingli appears in the camera, framed with Liu Lu who plays Wang Qingli. The two women are about the same age, one is in the play and the other is outside the play. This feeling is wonderful, just like a movie shining into reality. We watch not only movies, but real life.
The authenticity of the play and the drama outside the play also collide fiercely in Ruyi.
In the scene of Chinese New Year's Eve, the family had a fierce quarrel over whether Wang Jixiang would stay or not. Liu Lu, played by Wang Qingli, finally lost control of his emotions and fled the shooting scene to Wang Qingli's room.
So two Wang Qingli are in the same box again. Wang Qingli in the play is still heartbroken, just like the real Wang Jixiang's daughter in real life, while Wang Qingli outside the play is playing with her mobile phone silently, as if staying out of it. The influence of this picture is too great to tell which is true and which is false.
In the face of the real father's quarrel in the play, Dapeng also quickly stopped recording, lest everyone fight. Inside and outside the play, it's all reality.
These two short films thus formed the film Reunion, which broke the barrier between drama and documentary.
homecoming
In addition to technical innovation, this film is also full of emotion, or it is very real and more appropriate.
Lao Wang's family took his critically ill grandmother home. According to the custom in China, when an old man dies, he needs to take it back to his hometown and leave leaves behind.
Auspicious accompanied by mother's bedside, the only response is the old man's shortness of breath. Seeing this, I burst into tears. Four months ago, when I rushed back to my hometown and shouted at my grandmother, all I heard was her undulating chest on the ventilator, exactly like the scene in the film. Perhaps this will be a cruel reality that every family has to face.
After grandma's funeral, the director asked Wang Jixiang, will Lao Wang's family get together so neatly in the future? The answer is never again.
The old man is the center of a family, and the brothers and sisters in the family get together because of the old people. Now that the old man is gone, the cohesion seems to have dissipated a lot. Maybe everyone will go back to their hometown in the future, but it's hard to get a family photo.
But the most difficult thing is Wang Jixiang's pension problem.
Finally, the quarrel on New Year's Eve did not come up with a concrete and feasible plan. At the end of good luck, Wang Jixiang walked aimlessly in the snow and smoked, but he didn't know where he was going and where to go.
Liu Lu, who plays Wang Qing's Lido Day, also asked Wang Qingli a question with the audience, "Why don't you come back ten years later?" But Wang Qingli didn't answer. Wang Qingli, Dapeng and Liu were all silent. Maybe they all have their own answers, but this is no longer something to say.
This movie is too real. It points directly at the family problems faced by modern China society, especially in rural areas, and makes these problems public, so that the audience can't help thinking about what choices they will make if they face these problems, and whether they have the ability to accept all this, which may happen to them in a few decades. So what should they do?
From Pancake Man, which received rave reviews in 15, to Sewing Machine Band, which was actually good in 17, but still controversial because of the influence of Pancake Man, and now The Avengers, Dapeng has directly evolved from a commercial film director to an art film director.
It is destined to be a blockbuster movie, but as a director, it seems that everyone wants to make a movie that belongs to him completely in his career, otherwise it will be a pity, but a movie arranged by heaven like Reunion is enough.
After watching the movie, Zhang Yi said with emotion, "This movie is a milestone in the history of China movies. Because of this film, there will be more forms and contents of China films in the future. "
Whether it can become a landmark work in China's film history will not be discussed for the time being, but for Dapeng, it must be his best work so far, and maybe in the future.