The TV series "Dear Child", starring Qin Hao and Ren Suxi, is adapted from "Left and Right", directed by Wang Xiaoshuai and won the Best Screenplay Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
The original film tells that a divorced couple has formed a new family, but because their daughter is suffering from leukemia, they can't consider the feelings of their other half, they plan to have another child, use the umbilical cord blood of the newborn to save their daughter, after three times of artificial insemination failure, they have to face the ethical dilemma and personally fight...
01
Is "Dear Child", which truly restores marriage and childbearing, selling anxiety?
The TV drama version of "Dear Child", the first half of which is almost a brand new story, in the dozen episodes before the daughter's illness, the story focuses on the discussion of women's marriage and fertility crisis, and the triviality and unbearableness after marriage are vividly expressed.
At the beginning of the story, Xiao Lu, played by Qin Hao, and Fang Yinuo, played by Ren Suxi, are about to become novice parents, and Fang Yinuo is about to be in the basin.
In the first long shot of the TV series, under the dim light, Fang Yinuo looked at himself in the mirror, took out the makeup remover to wipe off the foundation, revealing the melasma on both sides of the cheeks, the bulging stomach stretched out the skin with spreading stretch marks, and Fang Yinuo's eyes revealed a helpless sadness...
Compared with the destruction of women's bodies by childbirth, what is more desperate is the absence of husbands.
Fang Yinuo was in the hospital, but her husband Xiao Lu secretly went home to drink beer and watch the ball game, so that he overslept and missed his wife's birth; Fang Yinuo was incontinent after childbirth, although Xiao Lu coaxed his wife who could not cry and helped her deal with excrement, but turned to the next shot, that is, Xiao Lu repeatedly scrubbed his hands, it is difficult to hide his disgust... These are more creepy than the pain of childbearing.
After that, the new parents are busy taking the baby, the conflict with the sister-in-law, the contradiction between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law... Wrapped in it, Xiao Lu began to escape all this, he could hide in the car after work, and he could not come back at night without coming back, and a drunken disorderly sex, resulting in the breakdown of the marriage.
"Dear Child" completely presents the pain of women's fertility and the pain of raising a baby, and presents the efforts and sacrifices made by a woman to become a mother. Fang Yinuo's situation easily resonates with female audiences, after having children, Fang Yinuo is an anxious mother, and she herself is compressed to infinite small, and when the school proposes to promote her to class teacher, she has to temporarily give up her personal value.
But is "Dear Child" really selling anxiety and creating fear of marriage and childbearing?
The writer Mo Yan once said: "I have a prejudice that I think that literary works will never be a tool for singing praises." Literature and art should expose darkness..."
Of course, our film and television dramas cannot forever whitewash the peace and become a tool for pastime and relaxation.
Although Fang Yinuo's despair in the TV series has made some viewers think that it is a horror film, more viewers have seen its positive significance - "Dear Child" is actually teaching every mother how to accept herself and live bravely.
If you don't seal the problem, everything will be better, not say nothing about the pain of marriage and childbearing, and the future can be a beautiful fairy tale.
Only in the face of anxiety can we know how to heal and alleviate it.
As director Sun Yu said a hundred years ago: "If film and drama can be used to describe the suffering of the people, it can at least promote social self-vigilance." ”
02
Since the truth of marriage and childbearing is a chicken feather, why should it be born?
After exposing the pains of childbearing, baby-rearing, and widowed parenting, "Dear Little Child" ushered in a major conflict - her daughter Hehe suffered from leukemia at the age of 4. This is the impermanence of life, even if we have children, whether we can raise children healthily is often up to us.
If life is so bitter and full of uncertainty, why do you have to have a child?
When not married, I always feel that once a woman becomes a mother, she is faced with a body shape, losing herself, talking about the child's and fart, as well as counseling classes, chicken babies, listening to it feels boring, young and not yet enjoy life, the priority of raising a baby must be in the back row.
Li Yinuo, the author of the book "Where Does Power Come From", originally thought the same thing, she is a bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University, a Ph.D. from UCLA, a former global managing partner of McKinsey & Company, the chief representative of the Gates Foundation's China office, and the co-founder of the public account "Slave Society" and the innovative educational institution Yitu School, who has not considered having children for eight years after marriage.
It was two sentences that completely changed Li Yinuo's thinking.
A friend said to Li Yinuo: "After having children, you really feel that you have your own family." ”
Another friend heard Li Yinuo's pessimism about the future world and said, "Have you ever thought that maybe your children can change the world?" Aren't all the changes in the world driven by people? ”
So Li Yinuo decided to have a child. She spent ten years at McKinsey, six years as a global partner, and gave birth to 3 babies in between. In the two steps from project manager to deputy director, and then from deputy director to partner, she was full of belly.
Li Yinuo said: "In 2010, our first child was born, and in the years since, I am really grateful for my original decision. Of course, there is a lot of suffering and tiredness, but from the perspective of life, the child is not only our continuation, but also our mirror, inadvertently illuminating our own true and complete life state, allowing us to see ourselves that we have not seen, and also letting us understand that having and raising children is actually the self-completion journey of each adult. ”
03
All experiences are making us a better version of ourselves
Cui Xuan, founder of the women's growth platform Momself, is also a successful working mother.
In the book "Mother Born Great", Cui Xuan recounted her difficult experience of starting a business while taking a baby after experiencing postpartum depression, cui Xuan believes that although the pressure is great during this time, she is stronger before and recovers faster in the face of many setbacks. What Cui Xuan sees is that becoming a mother allows us to experience the integrity of life, to become a mother, to make us "more ways" and can't help but want to become a better version of ourselves.
Life never goes according to our expectations, and when we rush into marriage and look forward to becoming a mother, everyone is happy to bless, but no one has told us that you will encounter so many challenges.
But when we have survived these storms, we will usher in a transformation of the self.
Dai Ying, the chief producer of the occipital bone, said when talking about the name of "Dear Child", the story is not only about the child named Hehe, every character in the play is a child, and their homework is to learn to become better parents.
There is a pessimistic interpretation around the finale of "Dear Child", that is, in fact, Hehe has passed away, and at the end of the film, Fang Yinuo tutored Hehe's homework, and Dong Fan took Hehe to perm his head, which is just a beautiful imagination.
But no matter the real ending, Hehe survived or not, Fang Yinuo has become a better self after the triple test of having a baby, divorcing, and getting sick.
Fang Yinuo was originally a bit selfish and desperate, ignoring Xiao Lu in the first marriage because of child-rearing, and ignoring Xie Tianhua's feelings countless times in order to save his daughter in the second marriage.
But after experiencing pain and torture, she decided to love Xie Tianhua well, and she grew armor in her life of war and horses.
In "The Dream of the Covered Bridge", the housewife played by Meryl Streep, when she was invited by her beloved lover to leave with her, said a sentence:
"Did you know that once a woman chooses to get married and have children? On the one hand it was the beginning of her life, but on the other hand, more, it was also the end. ”
But we can't think of it that being a mom is not the end, it's a "beginning."
The rewards of becoming a mother are far more than the efforts.
In the process, we will find ourselves with abilities that we never knew.
Don't be afraid, we can only see, possess, and get completely if we go forward and experience it.