A few young people in fishing villages who dropped out of school, all day long, fighting, watching white dramas, gambling, and playing with girls, desperately squandering excess hormones in the disgusted eyes of others. They ran all the way from the wind cabinet to Neiyuan and then to Kaohsiung, ran into the testing ground of love and friendship, and plunged into the starting life full of internal injuries.
Such stories don't seem new now. "East, west, south, south, and north, get rich to Guangdong" was also the slogan of the times when the tide of migrant workers in the interior was also found. For the multiplying cities, the factory number plates given to these passers-by are obviously more relevant than their place of origin.
Hou Xiaoxian's "The Man from the Wind Cabinet" is neither called "The Man from the Wind Cabinet" nor "The Man Who Went to Kaohsiung". It's a very intimate feeling, like a lot of small talk between people.
"Look at you, you're dark-skinned." How? Home by the sea? ”
"Penghu Island, where are you?"
"I, from the wind cabinet."
The title of such a warm and affectionate film reminds people that there is a fishing village called wind cabinet in Taiwan, and on the other hand, it also tells this group of cold-eyed onlookers that this movie is about people.
The film version of "The Man from the Wind Cabinet" does not have a clear ending. Screenwriter Zhu Tiantian described it at the end of the novel, "The tide shore does not know where to reach. They will also be, and their going is unknown. "Youth is of course unknown to many people, the curtain of life is just opening, in the gap between accidents and diseases, the young people who have survived are looking forward to the future."
The young people of the small town came to the city to shed their dead skin and rush to the future. However, Ah Qing's transformation was exchanged for a long look back. The back of the dimly lit place was my childhood father. For Ah Qing, his father was never a mountain of shackles. Whether it is a film or a novel, my father is always covered with a grayish-yellow hue of an old fairy tale. He is like a ship that returns regularly, traveling and adventure, returning and harvesting, and bringing back everything as sticky as honey. Baseball stunned his father, and he gradually became a sculpture eroded by the sea breeze in Ah Qing's mind. There is no encouragement, protection, surprise, or sadness in life other than nagging. The brother in the film, the mother who is stable and overpowering, is not another mirror of the fishing village?
In the 1970s and 1980s, when Taiwan's economy was booming, the demented father gradually coincided with the decaying wind cabinet. The fishing villages of the harbor that died and then disappeared could no longer keep restless young people. A qing wants to be a father. His father killed snakes for him, and he taught the village bully for his brother. When his father went from Magong to the main island, he ran from the wind cabinet to Kaohsiung. He struggled to reproduce his father in his memory. The mother silently guarded the father, and he also silently guarded his white moonlight. Ah Qing's growth is repressive, his father has left, where is he going?
If "Wind Cabinet" also has a sequel, what kind of future will the characters in the film have? Ah Rong will become a rich man. Driving a big run, drinking foreign wine, and calling the boss his own family. Guo Zai may become a civil servant after retiring from the army, providing for car loans and mortgages, and supporting a pair of children, but he cannot change the disposition of a righteous and big man. What about Huang Jinhe? Maybe he had already stuffed Ah Xing, along with those learning materials, into the discarded barrel. Years of life at sea would make him dark and cracked, smoke growing on his hands, and complaining would fill his mouth. Drunk as mud, he shouted to write a letter that he did not know where to send. Ah Xing went to Taipei, met the second, the third Huang Jinhe, and finally she had to hide far away, in the Nantou County where she could not see the sea, married to an honest clerk, and lived a housewife life of rice, oil and salt.
As for A-Ching? He doesn't seem to have a fixed anchor like other characters. Will he follow in The Footsteps of Xiao Xing to Taipei? Will he suffer again and again? Will he get lucky enough to have a marriage with Xiao Xing? Will he choose to hide, avoid, and guard, like Jin Yuelin guarding his Lin Huiyin? Or maybe Xiao Xingxing became a vague brand, and Ah Qing didn't remember the face that made him stop until his death. Will he return to the Wind Cabinet every year to perform baseball in front of his father's grave? Will he also plunge into his father's recliner, look at the sea, and take a deep breath after choking without words?
At the end of the novel, they run naked on the beach in West Bay. At the end of the film, Ah Qing jumps on the chair and shouts to clear the warehouse and sell it. What's the deal with the sale? Do something for Guo Zai, who is about to serve in the military, and have a party party. Compared to the novel, I am glad that the film will end with this scene. At that moment, Ah Qing made himself back to count gains and losses. After all, they are young people from the wind cabinet, Kaohsiung is not their home, the wind cabinet has no neon lights, and the youth that cannot die is after all singable and does not need to cry. "The Man from the Wind Cabinet" was written to youth, to his father, and to the harbor fishing village that was flooded by torrents. The waves of the monsoon will rush into the corroded cave without hesitation, making a loud whining sound. Youth has always been like this, and the clouds have collapsed.