This year 520, "Love Letter" will be re-screened in the mainland, this 25-year-old love classic has become the best love film in the hearts of countless movie fans, many fans call it a "movie that will shed tears no matter what."
Even though Shunji Iwai later remade the "Chinese version of "Love Letters" and "Hello, Zhihua", fans still have "Love Letters" in their hearts.
In 1994, Shunji Iwai had just finished filming "The Bondage of Love", when he was thirty years old, and he planned to make a youth film to say goodbye to the twenty-year-old youth. Make a film that "makes young boys and girls across the country dry their tears and can stay in people's memories."
Shunji Iwai thought of Haruki Murakami's novel "Norwegian Forest", which was published in 1987 and sold more than 5 million copies, which shocked Iwai Shunji and did not expect that "our youth is still enduring."
However, it is easy to adapt Murakami's novel, in addition to the difficulty of finalizing the copyright, the difficulty of adaptation is even more prohibitive, so Shunji Iwai wants to "refer to the settings in "Nuo" and try not to miss flaws."
Love Letters continues the theme of Norwegian Woods – death and rebirth. Movies begin with death and end with new life, and although "Love Letters" is a pure love movie, it is filled with sad emotions.
Watanabe's fiancé Fujii died young, and on the third anniversary of her ex-husband's birthday, she came to Kobe and saw his junior high school graduation book in the room where her fiancé was alive, which also wrote Fujii's address when he was studying in Otaru.
Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was to pin her thoughts, Watanabe Hiroko wrote down the address, and in the darkness she wrote a love letter to Fujii Tree to heaven, and the letter read: Fujii Tree, how are you? I am fine.
The letter came to Otaru, and it was sent to a girl her age, also named Fujii. As a result, the two strangers begin to communicate, and after further understanding, Watanabe Hiroko discovers that the female Fujii tree is a classmate of her boyfriend's teenagers, and this love letter sent to heaven unexpectedly unfolds a youth memory.
"Love Letter" is a natural lyric poem, but there are many ingenious designs by the creators. Kieslowski's famous work "Two Flowers" creates the structure of "two flowers", two people, the same face, the same age, with the same name, but with different circumstances, making people believe that "there is another me in the world".
Shunji Iwai undoubtedly borrowed from this structure and extended this mirror image further. The male Fujii tree, the female Fujii tree, was united by the same "name", but Watanabe Hiroko found another self along the name of the "Fujii tree".
Such a "two flowers" transition romance, to some extent, is also the state of youth. The teacher named the male and female Fujii trees to form a relationship, and the memories of youth were inadvertently awakened in the process of searching, and the love of youth was full of accidents, and was quietly awakened in the confusion.
The same is true of the crush, the male and female Fujii tree mutual affection but do not press the table, in the long life of each other but buried in the heart, not unexpected words will also retain their feelings until the last moment of life.
The same is true of the audiovisual language of the film, calm, restrained, no sensationalism, but there is an objective and Japanese style of "material mourning", the long shot of the snow field at the beginning can bring into the story, the flying snow outside the window, the cherry blossom leaves flying underground, the lights of the carport flickering on and off, and the Fujii tree that disappears under the white curtains, all of which have become the classic pictures of the movie. Shunji Iwai captures the state of first love with the emotion of wanting to talk and stopping.
"Love Letters" is not only about love, but also about thinking about death. At the beginning of the film, Hiroko Watanabe lies on the snow as if dead, and then opens her eyes and breathes heavily, this kind of experience from birth to death, watanabe Hiroko experiences a state of near-death, to sympathize with her fiancé.
With this perspective, we cut into this love story with "death", the death of her fiancé, the confusion of Hiroko Watanabe, the death of the father of the female Fujii tree, and this pure love story is all about thinking about death.
At the end of the film, the female Fujii tree and Watanabe Hiroko reach a reconciliation. How are you? I was fine, the two let go of the death of their lovers, and the love of youth was also released.
We have watched too many stereotyped youth films, abortion, infidelity, car accidents seem to have become the standard of youth films, love has become dog blood, pure love has become a pretense, will watch this old work 25 years ago, we can only be ashamed, and no youth film can depict the first love so movingly.