This is a blockbuster movie that people around me are crazy to recommend, and friends who have seen it have almost unanimously given a "good looking" rating.
I'm ashamed to say that it wasn't until the beginning of the Spring Festival in 2022 that I realized that I should watch this film carefully in the midst of a variety of film famines.
The story takes Chen Guilin, a steel mill worker, as the main character, telling the story of his wife's divorce after the factory bankruptcy and layoff; the main plot line advances around Chen Guilin and his wife competing for custody of his daughter; the film's "McGuffin", that is, the core of the text narrative is that as a father, he wants to do everything possible to get a piano to keep his children.
For this goal, Chen Guilin has experienced from borrowing money to buy a piano to asking someone to steal the piano and then to forming a team to make a piano. In this process, the friendship between Chen Guilin and his colleagues and friends, the affection with his relatives and lovers, and the imprint of his former life and the dilemma of real life are all jumping on the screen through the image picture bit by bit.
An era is gone, the pain of the disintegration of the old order and the reconstruction of the establishment of a new order; the fate of a class group is ups and downs, and by depicting some of the individual group portraits being displayed in a point-by-point manner, it constitutes a "ukiyo-e" that records historical changes.
Absurd, the low chant of sorrow before the long journey of the old times
From the overall style point of view, this is a film that shows realistic themes with absurdist artistic techniques. Light and witty dialogue, creating the joy and sorrow of a group of little people. And the collective emotion embedded in the background of the times reveals the tragedy of a class that must be transformed, and the unrelenting nostalgia for the glory of the past.
Chen Guilin made a simulated piano keyboard for his daughter with a wooden board. When the child questioned the inability of the keyboard to make a sound, he used the special case of Beethoven's deafness to teach his daughter that as long as there is music in his heart, he can hear the existence of sound. The background music at this time is Precisely Beethoven's famous song "To Alice".
In the face of his daughter's cross-examination, Chen Guilin lost his father's dignity due to financial constraints. This, in turn, was the norm for a large number of laid-off industrial workers who gradually lost their "ownership" status due to the reform of state-owned enterprises.
In an instant, the vague sourness of identity and the loss of family status, a complex and indescribable emotion overflowed the screen.
In order to solve the piano problem, Chen Guilin's original idea was to borrow money to buy one. However, borrowing money from the laid-off workers in which he lived at that time had become an insurmountable taboo.
He went to find colleagues, friends, relatives, and everyone either did not take up the topic or silenced them with embarrassed expressions. Even more exaggerated was the fat head who was forced to climb the water tower, and he told Chen Guilin that in order to avoid Chen Guilin's borrowing of money, Wang Kangmei, who had learned of the wind, actually hid his family in the countryside.
This set of shots is exaggerated to the point of almost distortion, and the position of the characters in the composition, one looking down and one looking up, seems funny and helpless. Why are the working-class brothers who once helped each other indifferent to each other?
In fact, they are only caught in the predicament of economic income contraction because of the major adjustment of the original production system. Judging from the later storyline, the class feelings between them are still deep, and the power of unity, fraternity and mutual assistance is only temporarily sealed.
The whole film always uses an absurd artistic style to write about the sadness of the former waves that were pushed on the beach before the advent of another era.
Chen Guilin's brothers ran to the school to steal the piano, and were twisted by the security guards to the public security organs. There they saw a brand new piano. At this time, the skillful skills forged in the blood of the working class were inadvertently awakened.
Through observation, they each analyzed the material, process and manufacture of the piano according to their own type of work. It was an almost instinctive reaction, and once these people returned to familiar territory, the light that had been obscured in them would surely bloom again.
Therefore, Chen Guilin decided to work with his friends to build a piano by hand with the outstanding technical craftsmanship of everyone. This is a return to the light that the era of large collective mode production is about to pass away, a proof of the value of the workers' own existence, and a farewell to the old order.
Rich symbolic representations metaphorically refer to the conformity and resistance, pain and struggle of small people
In the film "The Piano of Steel", there are a large number of symbolic representations. These highly connotative lens languages either hint at the hearts of the characters or point out the background of the times. In short, their existence extends the interpretation space of the film's text, and also highlights the personality characteristics of the director Zhang Meng's author's creation.
Throughout the film, the "chimney" is one of the most distinctive symbolic representations. In the first chapter immediately after the opening of the film, the small band organized by Chen Guilin is paid to provide services for the white affairs of an old man's death.
It's an absurd set of shots with stark counterpoints. The old man's shrine is set up next to the abandoned wall of the factory, and behind it are two huge industrial exhaust chimneys. Paradoxically, the picture freezes in an instant, and the two chimneys are like two huge candles. This eerie scene adds a bit of mourning to the theme of "passing away".
Echoing this, at the end of the film, despite the appeals of many employees, the chimney was demolished by blasting and disappeared into the distant horizon. At that time, a hundred and ten employees had no choice but to silently watch the chimney collapse.
For industrial workers, the "chimney" is undoubtedly a spiritual totem in the absolute sense. The removal of the chimney means the end of an era. And that era contained them and their fathers and grandparents... The youth, wisdom, blood and sweat of all friends and family, and even the dedication of life.
However, there is nothing they can do. In order to keep the chimney, they thought of many ways to create several seemingly absurd preservation schemes, trying to preserve the chimney by adding value to the chimney. So all the seemingly clumsy efforts are just their desire to leave a little thought for those former glories. What worries them is that the achievements that have been worked hard for generations have eventually become vague and even pale memories.
And the lathes, blast furnaces, cranes that are locked in abandoned workshops but still function normally... Like Chen Guilin, they were warriors who had been tested for a long time but had lost the battlefield. Looking at the rusty machines, we are looking at the group of workers like the second brother-in-law, who have a skill but have no place to use.
Just as Shuxian mischievously replaced "Three Sets of Cars" with "Backgammon", this indicates that the pace of the new era is coming too fast. When history makes a choice, there are always some things and some groups that fade out of the stage in some painful and even tragic way. No matter how much the people in it fight, retain or give up, they will not stay for a long time under the torrent of the rolling forward times.
The hardcore tragedy cloaked in comedy lies in the fact that what has passed away cannot be traced after all, and the tribute must be withdrawn
Whether it is the script's excerpt of the proposition of the times or the expression of group emotions, the observation perspective of the film "The Piano of Steel" is extremely accurate. Many times, in the context of the theme of the times, the only thing that ordinary individuals can do is to adapt to this change and find their own positioning again.
Sighs and regrets, after all, are meaningless.
As Chen Guilin's daughter Xiaoyuan said, "Whoever of you can buy me a piano, I will go with whomever I want." As the focus of contention, Xiao Yuan himself did not understand that the laid-off father and the mother of the sea had actually fallen into two different classes. Nor did she realize how much effort her father had put in to keep her.
On this issue, Shuxian, who is also a woman, gave a prophetic prejudgment: Chen Guilin, you just built the piano, and Xiao Yuan can't live with you!
After waking up to this, Chen Guilin proposed to give up the manufacture of pianos, and changed his previous resolute attitude, while giving up the claim for custody of Xiao Yuan. At this moment, he knows very well in his heart that the group in which his ex-wife lives may be the mainstream value orientation of the next era.
After handing over his daughter to his ex-wife, Chen Guilin decided to continue making pianos. At this time, the purpose of making a piano has changed from competing for small yuan to justifying a man's self. Those small friends who rallied around Chen Guilin also consciously justified the former glory of the "working class" group.
Sometimes, giving up doesn't mean losing, it's just the beginning of another quest. In this context, all the workers involved in the construction of the violin are rejuvenated. The directivity of their behavior shifted from helping friends to proving themselves.
But for Chen Guilin, when his ex-wife drove a BMW to carry her daughter to see the piano he had built, his heart was still extremely complicated. In his life after being laid off, he lost his job, lost his marriage, lost the opportunity to raise his daughter, and lost his old father. When he offered to marry Shuhyun, he was only silently silent in response.
In the face of marriage, perhaps he failed to fulfill his husband's responsibilities; in front of his relatives, perhaps he could not give back to them more; in front of his lover, perhaps he could not give any commitment. But can his life be judged by "failure" or "misery"?
The wind blew down the plane trees, and others talked about the short and long. Whether Chen Guilin's merits or not are judged by history.
As an excellent realist film, although "The Piano of Steel" has been released for 11 years, it is completely called an "old film". But the profound themes it reflects still have some real meaning for people's lives today.
In the face of rapidly changing times, the concept of the so-called "iron rice bowl" itself is a false proposition. The characteristics of the "iron rice bowl", that is, the stability and reliability within the system, have been repeatedly confirmed by history, and it is only effective for a short period of time. The disadvantage of this relative stability is that people in it gradually lose their perception of changes in the external world, which is often called "boiled frog in warm water".
Once the support of the stable system is lost, everyone in it will always change from the original good living state to become extremely difficult. What is even more pressing is that when they want to use their own strength to change the miserable survival dilemma, they find that they have long lost the courage and means to run away from the rivers and lakes.
(The pictures in this article are from the Internet, if there is infringement, please contact to delete.) ）