Film critic | "Ramen Life": a touching father-son relationship

"Daddy, the only thing I can do for you in my life is this..." said the little boy in his wheelchair on the side of the desolate highway. The camera has been facing his father's face for a long time, and Ren Changding, who plays his father Dakui, is twisted, like relief, and like after suffering a heavy blow; both like feeling happiness, but also like a heart full of tears that are about to turn into raging tears. He did not let his son stop, but forced a smile, like an old naughty boy to point forward, let his son refuel and push, push until the wheelchair flew up, pushed until the wheelchair flew out of control, fell in the winter harvest after the farmland ... By the time the father climbed up the ditch, the son who was pushing the wheelchair behind him fell on the road and was unconscious.

Yes, it was this 9-year-old boy who was terminally ill and in a wheelchair. He saw his father knocked down by exhaustion and depression, and in order to make his father happy, he directed this scene on the highway.

Back at the beginning of the film, Dakui came to Seoul with the dream of becoming a singer, but the harsh reality made him can only make pirated CDs for the black-hearted boss, living a narrow life at the bottom and unable to see the light. One day, he came home with the girl he had just met in the bar, and suddenly there was a persistent knock at the door. Opening the door, a little boy appeared in front of Dakui with a backpack on his back, calling out to his father, introducing himself as Renquan, saying that his mother had arranged for him to come and live with him.

The 26-year-old DaKui Wulei is booming, he is not yet married, how to support a child who fell from the sky? In order to get rid of this little boy who stuck to him like an eraser plaster, Dakui tried his best: pretending not to know the child, going to the police station to apply for help to help the boy find his family, throwing the child in the street and running away... But he found that he was far from the opponent of the boy who could roll over in public and shout "Daddy" to the ground. Rough to him? Dakui couldn't bear it, because he clearly remembered that he had indeed lived with his girlfriend during high school.

Just when Dakui was in a panic, the little boy Renquan proposed, as long as you accompany me to realize the trek through Korea, my most important wish can be fulfilled, and I will disappear from you immediately... DaKui immediately agreed, and it was the height of the summer, and he did not believe that the boy could last for three days. So the father and son began to walk sweatily. Along the way, Dakui constantly inquires about Renquan's mother and wants to quickly send the "little trouble spirit" away.

During the trip, when they were staying at the inn, the owner's pregnant daughter-in-law was suddenly taken to the hospital in the middle of the night, where Dakui learned of Renquan's secret. When Da Kui learned that his son only had three months to live, his reaction was actually a pained laugh, and he repeatedly asked the doctor: "Even with the best medicine, can't you let him live longer?" At this time, the audience realized that the film was full of foreshadowing, and only then did they understand that the little boy's stubborn walk was to say goodbye to the good country, and only then did he understand that when he faced the green mountains, the sudden expression of age-incompatible attachment in his eyes. The child comes to find a father who has never met, which seems to be a dead beggar's reunion, but also to say goodbye.

After discussion with the doctor, Dakui finally respected his son's wishes and pushed his son in a wheelchair around the country. The son is getting weaker and weaker, and he will suddenly faint and smile hard with painkillers. Dakui, who has spent only his savings, sells songs on the street to earn money, buys a cake, and inserts candles to make up for his son's birthday from the age of one to nine. He even pleaded with the producer who had offended him for his son, to give him some opportunities to perform...

The director of this film is Wu Xiangxun, who became famous for directing "The Great Legacy" in 2003. He is good at digging into the lives of small people, touching the audience through seemingly ordinary but undercurrent details. After Dakui revealed that he was selling songs on the street to save his son, he did not flock to donate, but there would be passers-by silently handing the father and son a can of drinks. The marathon runners silently followed the father and son day and night. When Da Kui was in extreme pain, he opened his son's medicine bottle in a trance and took a pill. The son asked strangely, "Daddy, why are you taking my medicine?" ”

Dakui couldn't explain it to him. The male protagonist, Ren Changding, squinted his eyes with mixed feelings, as if he was smoked by the heat of ramen noodles. Yes, this pair of joyful father and son, from abandoning each other to brewing a feeling of dependence on each other, is largely dependent on the repeated scenes of cooking and eating noodles in the film. The Korean ramen in instant noodles is the most common food for the underclass. Xiao Renquan would cook ramen for his father, he put two large pieces of dough into boiling water, knocked in the whole egg, added the diced green onions, and the aroma of the ramen grunted, which was the warmest sound in the world. It is from this voice that the director finds inspiration and interprets a touching father-son relationship.

At the end of the film, there is the opening scene of this article, the wheelchair falls off the farmland and breaks, the father carries a backpack on the chest, and the back carries the seriously ill son towards the end of the road. He already knew the news that the child's mother had died of lung cancer, and the boy himself knew it, but he did not expose his father's lies: "Mother is getting married, and she told me to take good care of you..."

At the end of the road is night and dawn.

Author: Xiaoxiang Junzi Source: Yangtze Evening News Editor: Hua Mingyue