Not long ago, the "South Korea's Room N" incident shocked the whole network.
The darkness, the humiliation of women, and even the development of a complete online and offline industrial chain...
These acts are unbearable to look at.
But with the results of the police investigation, a more alarming category was discovered.
Some of the victim girls are disgusted with the world and the wicked, but will "seem" the perpetrator as the only relative.
Even in the afterlife, they will return to the home of the perpetrator as the only hope and salvation.
Treating perpetrators as rescuers sounds ironic.
With the recent release of a new Japanese work, this matter has once again been put on the cusp of the storm.
The heroine was abducted by the "pedophile" when she was a child, and did not hesitate to become the target of the public, insisting on defending it and living with him forever.
What's the reason for this? Let's find out with the movie.
The Wandering Moon
Director: Lee Sang-il
Starring: Suzu Hirose / Momori Matsusaka
When we sympathize with and pity others, how much do we really understand?
"Wandering Moon" is a sensational child abduction case by the prisoners, victims, and the critical and compassionate eyes of the surrounding society, profoundly interrogating the good and evil of human nature.
The author of the novel is Ryo Shio, who won the "2020 Hongya Award".
The popularity of this book in Japan is no less than that of Murakami's "Norwegian Forest".
But the subject of "pedophilia" in the book is obviously sensitive today.
When I first read the original book, my first feeling was "like the tension of walking on a thin rope."
The 9-year-old girl can't stand the long-term sexual assault of her cousin at home, runs to the street and is homeless, meets the teenager Arwen, and the two of them spend a carefree time in the apartment.
Two months later, Arwen was arrested on charges of abducting a girl.
Since then, the two have been named as victimized girls and abductors, and have been subjected to social discrimination.
After 15 years, the two are trying to return to normal life, and the old relationship has not been forgotten.
One day, the 2 people reunited again, igniting the complex emotions of the two again, and finally walked to an irreparable end...
In 2022, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name by Japanese director Lee Sang-il.
Lee Sang-il has always been good at writing a kind of heavy story with a twisted human nature on the edge, with complex and tangled relationship diagrams, or with criminal cases as a starting point.
Peel back the cocoon, expose the pain that each character bears, and reveal the root cause of social problems.
The previous works "Fury" and "Wicked Man" are among the classics.
Lee Sang-il's filming is characterized by a shocking murder case and digging into the holes in social humanity.
After 6 years, the director brought a high-level new work "Wandering Moon", which once again focused on a sensational crime.
This story is undoubtedly the story of two forgotten marginalized people, who are nicknamed each other.
From the story material, it is not difficult to understand how two lonely marginalized people can get along with each other and trigger a relationship of suffering and sharing.
But the setting is both like pure love and involves a somewhat morbid, almost perverted relationship.
Judging from this topic, it is indeed a subject that Lee Sang-il is good at.
Whether "The Wicked" or "Fury" talks about such outrageous relationships, he can always shoot to a stunning degree.
This case was based on real events, which caused great social repercussions in Japan at that time.
No matter how many years later, the two are separated or reunited, in the stereotypical public perception, one is always a perverted and obscene pedophile, and the other is an unclean "dirty woman".
These labels are accompanied by sideways glances and insults from bystanders, as well as flocking glances.
Lee Sang-il admits that this is what attracted him to decide to adapt the novel:
"The calm and thorough idea of how we see the world and others only the way we want to see them, and whether we judge and criticize others based on our own narrow common sense, resonates a lot with me."
The story is poetic in words, with a bit of poignant and depressing, which is bounded by the relationship between love and friendship.
The "deformed love" of emotion and courtesy is to be romanticized and imaged, which is quite a test of the director's skill.
The film can be said to be fascinating in the first half.
A pair of strange men and women in the past, from the narration of the narration, can know that there was a bit of a "friendship above, lovers are not enough" relationship, because of external pressure, legal considerations forced to separate, no one ever cared about their real relationship.
After being separated for a long time, they meet again, which tube is the heart as a stranger to the other party, which tube life is as plain as water, or hope to know each other's life.
This plot is simple and powerful, with a bit of fresh breath, but also a lot of suspense, why the two sides separated, what happened 15 years ago...
These questions appeal to the audience.
Li Xiangzhong is paired with a healing lens, which makes the reality and the past two time and space full of emotion;
The sunny cottage of the past, compared with the dark café today, has a clearer point for the movie, supplemented by the shortcomings of the two protagonists' current lives, with a little bit of the situation of marginalized people, which is still the director's signature style.
In the first half, the male protagonist of "Kindness Explosion" is definitely a good person in the first half of "Wandering Moon", and the audience will also be extremely sympathetic to his situation.
Coupled with Matsusaka peach plum from beginning to end is the same look full of sadness, it feels very suitable for the original persona.
Natsume Soseki quotes the Japanese love story "Tonight the moon is so beautiful."
It is obvious that the Japanese people express their love implicitly.
So since the name of the movie is "The Wandering Moon", "Moon" is one of the themes that we can't avoid talking about, what image does the moon in the movie contain?
The original book of The Wandering Moon reads: "There is a distance between what we know and what is true as the moon and the earth. “
The moonlight we see is only the light refracted from the sunlight 2 minutes ago.
It is only when you are a subject that you look at the light of a so-called object.
Different people around the world can see different shapes of the moon, but they all think that the moon they see is the most real one.
The moon is often described as "orbiting the earth" while ignoring the nature of the moon – the moon does not shine.
The heroine of the film, Gengsha, is labeled as this kind of moon - the moon that is supposed to revolve around the earth.
The goodwill and justice that comes from the imagination may be a sharp blade that hurts others when it is imposed on others.
Like the more veil labeled "molested", when the restaurant colleagues easily searched for her case on the Internet, the dinner suddenly said comforting words to her, or the boyfriend's wishful thinking was accepting her weakness and embarrassment, and even decided that she had nowhere to escape, so she had to rely on him to reach out and save.
Here is another quote from how the colleague who later became a mistress described the more yarn:
"Don't people like us end up relying on men only? Without relatives, there is no place to escape. Boyfriends are beyond romantic relationships and are necessary to live a normal life. If there is an accident and a guarantor is needed, friends will not help us sign it. ”
More Yarn's father died early, his mother remarried, spent the night at a relative's house but was sexually assaulted by his cousin, and then went to Ah Wen to cause controversy, he only had a part-time job, and he was a person who "had nowhere to go even if something happened", so it was also his duty to wear himself around the "earth" (boyfriend), and even being raped by domestic violence was also "deserved".
The words in the heart of Ah Liang, the boyfriend who usually wantonly spoiled Gengsha, seemed to be "Moon, I give you a place to live, and I reward you for becoming my lifelong slave!" ”。
Even his name seemed arrogant: bright, you look like the earth.
So how do you view this "taboo theme"?
The encounter between a 19-year-old male college student and a 9-year-old girl, feelings and sympathy developed between the two of them.
They are very sensitive to each other's invisible "wounds".
Probably because you can see each other's pain, Fang let the other party enter the most intimate heart.
The relationship between Gyusha and Arwen is allegorical, an ideal relationship that is too pure to be summed up in "love".
But the real world is cruel and harsh, trying not to destroy the beauty and purity of the core of the relationship, and in order to better express the relationship in an image way, the director has several places in the shooting that are set off by the "moon".
Like the scene where Gengsha and Ah Wen float on the surface of the lake and look up at the moonlight, the details can be tasted.
The director explains:
We consciously capture the existence of the moon and water, such as the moon shadow in the lake, the river, the rain, etc., to connect the more yarn and Arwen, and visually present the common feelings imprinted in the memory of the two.
The first shot of the moon in the film is in the next scene where Gengsha runs away from home after being brutally abused by Gengsha.
Ginsha remembers the fragment of Ah Wen floating on the lake as a child, asking Arwen to watch the moon together, and then escaping to the moon in her heart: the refuge outside the earth, Arwen.
This time the moon appeared in the broad daylight and appeared pale and weak.
The second time the moon appears in the movie, it is Arwen floating on the lake, remembering a sentence that Gengsha said, "Arvin, did you hear it?" I like you", and then Arwen cried bitterly.
This time the moon appeared in the afternoon, and although the faint moonlight could gently illuminate the sky, it was not enough to rely on the moonlight to lead the way.
Just as the kindness of more yarn can borrow warmth for a while, it is not enough to accompany you for the rest of your life.
The third time the moon appears in the movie, after Ah Wen's mother abandoned Ah Wen like uprooting a malnourished potted plant, Ah Wen looked up at the moon, but the moon was covered by dark clouds, and there was a thunderclap immediately.
Although he could not see the moon in the sky this time, the next scene that followed was the white moonlight of Arwen in the park.
The moon appears for the fourth time in the movie, and it is also the last scene of the movie. After Arwen reveals his physical mutilation to Gengsha nakedly, the two have been together ever since.
This time the moon appeared in the great night, shining brightly, and the grand spirit declared that it was the main body.
The last line of dialogue in the movie is "Then go to another place to wander", yes, the moon does not need to revolve around the earth, wandering can also be the destination.
Where you are, your home is.
Until the end of the story, the two were shackled by the shackles of public opinion around them, choosing to move out of the community, and if they were exposed again, they would find another place. Let's wander together.
They agreed so...
It is worth mentioning that one of the differences between the film and the original book is that the director did not use the clue of the two people watching the love crime movie together in the novel, but instead let Arwen read the poems of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe.
Because surrounding people like Arwen is absolutely lonely.
The director once described Matsusaka Momori, who plays Arvin, as having hollow eyes like the depths of the lake.
"When I try to sublimate such abstract ideas into the expression of cinema, poetry becomes a clue. The use of poetry in South Korean director Lee Cang-dong's Oasis also greatly helped. ”
In addition to "Oasis", this movie may be reminiscent of Kore-eda's "Family of Thieves" and so on, but I think of Saudi Arabia's "Vomiting".
The first time the protagonist in the book feels sick is:
When he saw the children playing with stones and drifting, he also wanted to throw stones at the sea like they did, but I stopped, and the stones fell from my hands, and I walked away, probably in a trance, so that the children laughed behind my back. This is the appearance, and what happened to me did not leave a clear mark. I saw something that disgusted me, but I didn't know if I was looking at the sea or the stones. The stones were flat, the whole side was dry, and the other side was wet and covered with sludge.
The stones in "Vomiting" are like the moon in "The Wandering Moon", and the meaning and essence of things are confused by almost everyone.
Because everyone is accustomed to objectifying the things around them with themselves as the center, judging the essence of things based on their own meaning, the logic of causality, and choosing the arguments they want to emphasize.
But the protagonist refuses to accept this order and habit of objectifying things, wants to break this prejudice and illusion, so he begins to constantly deny everything and even deny the stone in his hand.
It will cause a huge sense of dislocation between oneself and things, resulting in a feeling of dizziness.
Almost everyone in the film is unawakened and has long been drowned in the one-sided message of the media.
He even exterminated Gengsha and Arwen in the name of "goodwill".
But viewers outside the film should be alert to the fact that they don't have to feel the saudious.
Good and evil have always been an important proposition in Lee Sang-il's films.
Over the years, he has repeatedly challenged the blurred boundaries between good and evil in human nature, and also hides hope and love in the depths of pain.
At the end of their loneliness and pain, Gyusha and Arwen find each other who eat ice cream together for dinner at night.
To interject a digression: Why did Arwen choose to open a coffee shop instead of an ice cream shop?
Because it's so bitter...
In terms of actors, the heroine Suzu Hirose put away the performances in recent years that are sometimes out of state and sometimes with a little jump, playing a role full of inner pressure, even if the script is limited to play, it is also better than the comedy and idol route in recent years.
Playing a role with a little complicated bitter love is not exposed, making her the biggest selling point of the whole film.
The bitter feelings of Matsuban's peach and plum from beginning to end, with an expression to support the whole film, he won the TAMA Film Emperor, which is also deserved.
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