The interestingness brought about by the "delicate" relationship between the two reflects that between "playing" and "being played", people are powerless to control their own destiny, and the superiority of the power breeds a kind of arrogance and discrimination.
Director Chen Jianbin's debut film "A Spoon" was nominated for 5 nominations at the 51st Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards, and finally Chen Jianbin won two awards: "Best New Director" and "Best Actor".
The spoon in the title is both a tool used to drink soup and rice, and it is also a northwest dialect, in the Gansu dialect, saying someone's spoon means stupid, which is also in line with the English name of the film, "A Fool" (a fool).
The film is adapted from Hebei writer Hu Xuewen's novella "Running Moonlight", which tells the story of a simple farmer in the northwest who rescues a mentally handicapped person who lives on the street, named "Spoon". "A Spoon" throws out sharp questions from the bottom perspective and solves them with a civilian attitude.
The film's black humor style brings the audience a relaxed, pleasant and laughable effect, which not only advances the narrative of the film, thus presenting a cruel, grotesque, absurd humor that reflects reality, and finally returns to human nature and social torture.
The peasant pulls a strip and encounters a beggar fool in the town, who follows him home. The note was posted to find the person, and soon someone claimed the fool. Immediately after that, family members who called themselves fools appeared one after another, saying that they had sold the fools with a sliver. Trouble ensued, and the puller knew he had been deceived but had a hard time speaking.
He wondered how good things could become bad things. He began to try to prove his innocence in the most simple way of a peasant. And in order to find the fool, he became another fool who pestered others everywhere.
The encounters of the stripes and the absurd, ugly, cruel, and dark undertones of their family's lives have been given "black" things, which on the surface seem to be extremely comedic, but in fact they are treated with a cold, funny, helplessly mocking and self-deprecating attitude.
"A Spoon" will still make people cry and cut their teeth for it under the shell of comedy. Pulling the strip from the initial choice to be the old good man who saves the "spoon", in the process is deceived by people who constantly come to "find" fools, and eventually becomes a fool to face the problems that occur in front of him.
In addition to the effect of creating laughter, the director explains the truth that people are good and are bullied, and good people are not rewarded.
The film uses cheerful and relaxed ways to create laughter, in fact, this is also to create a dark atmosphere before dawn, so as to build a system of pain and laughter that is not equal, reflecting the current situation in real society, torturing human nature and society, which is a desperate humor, showing a terrible and funny reality.
In the rapid development of the information age, the group of people in the film still live at the bottom, they are far away from the city, closed and narrow towns are difficult to obtain effective sources of information, they can only perceive everything around them in their own small world.
As representatives of the low-level figures, Ratizi and his wife Kanechiko are kind-hearted, and Ratieko is considered by his daughter-in-law to be an incompetent man, but he is industrious and simple, relying on his own labor to raise sheep to maintain the family's livelihood.
He grabbed a handful of melon seeds in the market and put them in his pocket without giving money, but he could spend the money he had saved the homeless man, and was willing to accept the homeless man spoon, and his son's imprisonment made him pin all his hopes on the big head brother, in order to help his son reduce his sentence, but the big head brother cheated fifty thousand yuan.
They don't get into a fight and always treat those around them with their kindness.
But long-term kindness will also be tired, when they encounter unpleasant things need to vent, then their relatives and sheep around them become the object of their venting, they are played by the absurd and cruel reality, and become the "spoon" in the eyes of others.
Faced with the thorny problems in front of them, they did not choose to escape, and tried to solve the problem in their own way, but the final result was always unsatisfactory.
As a "rich man" in the town, the big brother is in a different class from the stripe, and he claims that he can help the son of the stripe to reduce his sentence, and as a result, he cheats the stripe of fifty thousand yuan.
He owns a large number of land and real estate, but we have no way of knowing the source of these, behind their seemingly bright appearance there are actually criminal incidents, pulling the stick to the big head brother as his umbrella, encountering difficulties to go to the big head brother for help, the big head brother seems to be helping him, in fact, through the pull of the stick to his trust, so that the two have a "delicate" relationship.
This layer brings a certain degree of interest, reflecting that between "playing" and "being played", people are powerless to control their own destiny, and the superiority of the power breeds a kind of arrogance and discrimination, the director will focus the lens on different classes, through the confrontation of classes to show the complexity of human nature.
In previous film and television works and real life, the police are regarded as urban heroes, and we unconsciously label them as justice and light, they are justice and advocates for maintaining social peace.
But the Police Officer Yang in the film changed the definition of this role, she followed the two points and one line step by step, she was neither sympathetic nor understanding of the alarm of the strip, nor did she form a mutual help relationship with the strip, often with a cold attitude to look at every case, treat every party, and we have no right to accuse her.
"A Spoon" uses a fable story to dissect how the family is trapped in a difficult situation step by step and cannot get out, aiming to convey the creative intention of people who are good and are bullied and good people who are not rewarded.
The film has a critique of reality, a question of human nature, and a reflection on the current situation that exists in society.