One courtyard, two windows, three meals a day and four seasons.
The documentary "Four Springs" freezes the seemingly ordinary family into a precious light and shadow.
The protagonist is a pair of parents who often live in a country home and watch for the return of their three children every spring.
You may wonder – what is so good about such an ordinary story?
Netizens said: "The mother's super ability is to know that it is the daughter who calls when she hears the bell ringing." The special function of the father is to see that every family member can protect the peace of the way. ”
Even well-known actors Chen Kun and Zhou Xun were touched by it, saying: "Ordinary daily life contains great significance, I am not crying, it is a tear of the heart." ”
Home is a pot and a pan, but also a blessing in life and death; It is the starting point and destination of people.
Director Lu Qingyi recreates the neglected image of a family through the lens and uses four springs, and also lets us see the poetry and open-mindedness of the family.
The story starts with a DV machine...
In the first spring, see
Time to pull back 25 years ago.
In 1997, Lu Qingyi's family had the first tape DV machine.
This was given to her father by her sister, and the father did not expect that her daughter would send a machine of tens of thousands of pieces.
Lu Qingyi was 24 years old that year, and his parents had just paid off their marriage debts. In his memory, although the family was poor, every holiday the family went to the photo gallery to take pictures.
With the DV machine, my father could shoot as much as he wanted, and went to Guiyang to buy a lot of tapes.
This planted a seed in Lu Qingyi's heart.
Years later, Lu Qingyi became a North Drifter, and every year when he returned home, he would use a DV camera to photograph his family.
At first, he just recorded some of the passing time, but then slowly discovered that happiness and love were all in it.
This Year's Spring Festival, parents, as usual, are preparing for the New Year.'
Go up the mountain to worship ancestors, prepare Chinese New Year's Eve meals, greet relatives and friends every day... These mediocre and cookie-cutter New Year's events have become very lively when they come to their parents.
Before retiring, his father was a physics teacher, and during the Spring Festival, he was "wen and martial" both:
"Wen" can be proficient in more than 20 kinds of instruments to play music, write brush big characters; "Wu" can plant flowers and trees, repair electrical appliances, and repair musical instruments, and everything is difficult for him.
The mother is also not ambiguous:
Can sing ten days of mountain songs in a row, and the lyrics of self-composed lyrics are never the same; Wearing an apron, under the musical melody of his wife, he can also dance elegantly; Sewing clothes and hometown meals is a masterpiece.
Lu Qingyi, like many "children" who went home for the New Year, should have been a part of the busy work; But he decided to hide himself behind the camera and record everything in front of him.
When I went out to climb the mountain in the early morning, the soles of my father's shoes fell off, and I tied them back with grass tied from the local materials;
The family ate and sang toasts, and the mother teased her father like a girl;
When the lights were on, my mother was lying on the tailor's machine to mend clothes, and in another room, my father sang an old song to the computer.
Lu Qingyi disappeared throughout the process, he did not intervene in the life of his parents, but broke away from his son's identity and stared at the life of his parents from the perspective of a bystander.
When he pieced together these daily fragments, he realized that his parents enjoyed life so much! And his life has always been spent in these laughter.
But soon, the family experienced a heavy tragedy.
In the second spring, suffering
This spring, Lu Qingyi's sister fell seriously ill.
Parents took turns to accompany them all night, her sister in bed was in better condition, and the family smiled and took a group photo.
But the world's family affection can not be the enemy of fate after all, and the sister is gone.
The bald man sent the black haired man, and in order to send the daughter on the last journey, the parents did everything they could, and many people said that they could not bear to watch this paragraph because it was too sad.
It is true that we all hate sickness, aging, and death, but no one can avoid them.
For parents, this is the impermanence of the human world, but it just happens to fall on the daughter first. All they could do was to find a good grave for their daughter and plant beautiful plants.
After the funeral for a while, my mother was busy with needlework in the kitchen, my father put a disc, my daughter sang "Wind and Rain" and the song came out, and my mother listened and listened, and burst into tears.
The sister sang: "Come and go in a hurry, just like this, wind and rain." ”
When the sadness fades, the camera not only records the suffering, but also the mutual watch, companionship and commemoration of the family.
When my sister was seriously ill, my mother prayed for blessings on the side, and my father stayed up late to accompany her; After her sister died, her room was still neat and clean, as if the deceased had never left.
At every meal, the family still vacated a chair and a bowl for my sister, and the rice was also served.
Life and death gathered and dispersed, and suddenly they were illuminated by this family with warmth.
Perhaps at the moment when my sister left, we felt that the "home" was incomplete.
And looking back, I understand:
The love and needs of parents and siblings, as long as they can be seen, then home will always be there.
The DV machine also opens up the time and space distance between the family and the suffering, so that they can constantly reflect and reminisce about life after the past.
In the third spring, rebuild
After suffering, the days will go on.
Those who stay still have to get through those darkest moments.
Some books and movies tell us that when suffering comes, as long as we are brave enough to accept it, we will eventually usher in the sunshine.
But no one seems to have made it clear, how to deal with the sadness behind it?
The answer given by the family is companionship and support.
At night, they reminisced about the past together.
My father sat in front of the computer and looked back at the video he had taken with the DV machine.
The story of 1997 is played in the film.
That year, the family reunited for the New Year, and the father's narrator introduced that the children were only in their early twenties.
That year, they had their first DV machine, which was a wish from my sister to her family.
Later, I changed many DV machines, and the subject of the shooting was always a family of five.
In front of the screen, the family sang and danced; Behind the screen, the second elder has not sung for a long time.
Another video is of my father photographing swallows under the eaves in 2012.
He shakes the camera while narrating:
"Today they all flew out, the house seemed empty, all flew back again, hahaha."
The old mother took it out, looked at the world, and flew back.
Seven little swallows, all able to fly.
Maybe today and tomorrow will fly away. ”
These pictures taken at that time have become precious memories of Lu's parents today, accompanying them through the long silent night.
During the day, they face reality and live each day to the fullest.
In addition to the housework of the parents, visiting the grave of the sister has also become a routine.
On this day, they came to weed and plant vegetables, fearing that when the grass grew, the cattle would come to eat it, and they would damage their daughter's grave.
Under the lens, they talk and laugh less than before, and their appearance is much older, but they are still strong.
As it is said in The Ordinary World:
"It is often in the midst of countless pains, in the midst of numerous contradictions and difficulties, that people mature and become strong."
Their way of coping with grief is not to completely indulge in the past, nor to deliberately avoid the death of their sister, but to incorporate it into their lives and live it realistically.
But behind this calmness, Lu's mother is also worried:
What if one of the couples leaves first?
She said to the camera:
"My sister is gone, I thought of a problem, but I didn't know it, and your father is also...
If I'm gone, how can your dad face this family alone? ”
Such a big room.
Life and death, being left alone, the parents always have one person to face.
And what they can do is to use the DV machine to fill each other with enough happy memories before that day comes.
When the director stitched together the images that many families had ignored, we suddenly saw that the most important force of "home" had long been hidden in it.
It will always be able to support the people behind and go on well.
In four springs, love
This Spring Festival, parents are still preparing the New Year dinner as before.
The moment Lu Qingyi stepped into the door, her mother said happily: "Welcome, warm welcome!" ”
Parents' lives are finally back on track.
Mom often prayed for the blessing of her family and smoked sausages.
The father found the flute, "I haven't touched it for more than a year, it's all ash, and I can't blow it."
He keeps bees at home and is teased by his wife: bees have become your first love!
In the spring of the family reunion, in front of my sister's grave and under the lens of the DV machine, my parents finally sang again.
Little by little, in the trivia, happiness begins again.
Remember that in 1999, Lu Qingyi's family encountered a fire, which came from the relentless blow of fate, and burned down the home that his parents had built after a lifetime of debt.
All the furniture and appliances burned to charcoal black, and the DV machine bought by my sister also burned out.
The father flipped the violin out of the rubble, and the back plate was almost charcoal.
He sighed and went downstairs, standing on the well platform of the patio, pulling out the rustling of the piano.
You see, the family under the lens always seems to be able to transform misfortune into warmth.
Many people feel that their lives are too hard, and their days are "survived":
When you are young, you work hard to earn money;
With children, the chores of the family are paved with all the daily routines;
With a partner, the feeling of love is getting weaker and weaker...
Why?
Because we often only taste the bitterness of the surface of life, but we do not taste the deep enjoyment and warmth from the subtleties.
No one can recognize at a glance the happiness of their own life.
Fate never brings happiness to us, it is only responsible for arranging each person to do different roles. Only when we jump out of the role and look back at the past like a DV machine can we really see the happiness behind it.
Not only the family, but also among relatives, friends or strangers, there are too many overlooked images;
It's just that we are sometimes too confused to taste the details of life, and even feel ashamed to look back and think about it, and miss it.
So, dear you, leisure when busy, quiet when busy, quiet when busy, in these small moments, we may be able to return to the essence of life, out of a single perspective, to look back at those "images" that have been ignored in the family and life.
I hope that you will also become the director and editor of your own life.
Planning | Six notes
Edit | Kiwi