"Seventeen-year-old Bicycle" was banned from being released in the Chinese mainland because it was not audited to participate in the Berlin Film Festival.
I've always known about this movie, I've never seen it. I also know that the two goddesses Gao Yuanyuan and Zhou Xun have participated, but when I first saw the title, I thought it was a group of young boys and girls.com.
Watching the whole film today, I found that Gao Yuanyuan and Zhou Xun did not have too many scenes and no lines, but the film was so profound that I was surprised.
"Seventeen-year-old bicycle" is very lifely and has a strong sense of substitution, but unlike Wang Xiaoshuai's "Qinghong", which is so oppressive and heavy, equally profound, but it reveals black humor everywhere.
People who know director Wang Xiaoshuai know that he is always good at digging out the theme of the heart from the lives of ordinary people. Wang Xiaoshuai said: Movies are not only entertainment, but also need to have keen tentacles, closely follow the social pulse, and leave a unique film language text for the era in which we live.
I took my little cousin after the 90s to see "Little Times" once, and he said that he would never watch this kind of movie again, that was not their life; and our post-80s youth was not as bloody as "To the Youth We Will Eventually Die".
Wang Xiaoshuai is a post-60s, but he did not expect that the "Seventeen-Year-Old Bicycle" he shot in 2000 made this post-80s see a lot of real life shadows.
Two 17-year-old children from the countryside and from the city experienced pain because of an inexplicable intersection of a bicycle. Bicycles are not only bicycles, children are not only children, but also reflect the lives of adults.
Cycling, we are not strangers. It can be said that it is the predecessor of the car, the original means of transportation, but not just the means of transportation.
Bicycles, when we learn to ride it, buy it, go to school, go to work, can also be used to carry goods, make a living, it also represents romance, used to attract beloved girls, but also a symbol of wealth, because at that time the bicycle is not one of the three-piece sets that everyone can afford.
Ah Gui, 17 years old, from a poor rural area, many of his peers are still studying, he came to Beijing to earn a living and found a job as a courier. The boss sent him a mountain bike and said that after a month of doing it, the bike would belong to you.
Cycling, for him, is a tool for making a living, a survival, and an opportunity to integrate into this big city. Because of express delivery, you need to be familiar with every street in the city, contact different people and addresses.
Xiao Jian, 17, who lives in a not-so-wealthy family in Beijing's hutongs, is in high school, and children of the same age are playing with mountain bikes, but he has not, so he stole 500 yuan from the family and bought a second-hand mountain bike.
Cycling, for him, is self-esteem, is to integrate into the "circle of friends" around him, and can also make a good "girlfriend". Because there is no bicycle and "buddy" can not play together, "girlfriend" is also very easy to run away with others.
The subtlety of the story of the film is that two 17-year-old children who also regard bicycles as very important have a dispute because of the same bicycle, and the bicycle that Ah Gui lost is the one that Xiao jian spent 500 yuan to buy.
At the age of 17, two teenagers, whether they live in the city or from the countryside, have their own demands and pains. Ah Gui's bicycle was stolen, and his survival faced problems, so he must defend it with his life; Xiao Jian, if he did not have a bicycle, how to play with the "buddies" and how to have confidence in front of the "girlfriend", so he must also resolutely defend it.
The theme was further sublimated, and the screenwriter let Ah Gui and Xiao Jian reconcile, one person rode for a day, "shared" the bicycle, and the two agreed on a place to exchange rides. This image reminds me of an Iranian tear-jerk movie "Little Shoes", the brother lost his sister's shoes, because the family was poor and could not afford to buy new shoes and did not want their parents to know, the two brothers and sisters changed and wore a pair of shoes and ran back and forth to school.
Ah Gui and Xiao Jian are different, but they are the same people. They are all the same poor people, and they all face the problem of "integration".
Ah Gui, very hard, but still facing the danger of unemployment and being driven away at any time; Xiao Jian, who was admitted to the fifth place in the whole school, is still very inferior in his heart and cannot look up at any time in the "circle of friends".
Ah Gui, a child from the countryside, is in the city, but it seems to be far away from the city. The revolving door of the big hotel turns people dizzy, the yin and yang mistakenly enter the sauna and bathhouse and almost can't get out, and the girl's modern high heels ,...... Wang Xiaoshuai uses these symbolic plots to tell the story of Ah Gui's incompatibility with the city.
Xiao Jian, who took the bicycle bought by the family for 500 yuan, was said to have stolen it, once there was no bicycle, and was also insulted by his father in public, and his girlfriend also followed a rich boy with better driving skills. It can be said that Xiao Jian at this time is also in a state of isolation and helplessness.
At the end of the day, the urban-rural divide, the social rigidity, and the solidification of classes make it difficult to "integrate." Growth is a process of integration, integration, takes time,
At the age of 17, he is in the age of entering society or about to enter society, and there is still a long way to go, but it is destined to be a cruel growth journey.
At the end of the film, when the bottom line was repeatedly broken and could not stand it, Xiao Jian and Ah Gui used slab bricks.
The movie "Seventeen-year-old bicycle", 17 years later, so far it seems that it is not outdated at all, but it is more and more radiant, more and more realistic observation.
Now that "bicycles" have been shared, people may no longer be bothered by "bicycles", but the same problems still plague many young people, as well as adults.
Author: Brother Hemu, please contact us for the original article reprint.
This article was first published 丨he wrote movie id: dsreview 丨