South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, known internationally as a ghost director, has won countless firsts in Korean cinema. His films are bold in subject matter, always exploring complex human nature and life circumstances on a large scale.
Kim Ki-duk's films, from "Drifting Desire Room", to "Bow", "Baby Prostitute", and then to "Empty Room", the dialogue between the male and female protagonists in the film is very small, but it peels away the taboo appearance of "sin and evil" and opens the heavy shackles of reality.
South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, known as the "ghost director"
The director of the film to be introduced today is not Kim Ki-duk, but he is called China's "Kim Ki-duk". He is the representative of Chinese avant-garde drama - Diao Yinan, a director who is very unpopular to outsiders, but he is very famous in the circle.
Diao Yinan, like Kim Ki-duk, under his lens, has always been paying attention to the marginalized people, and the problems that people are difficult in life but dare not discuss openly are exposed one by one in the film, which is also the original intention of Diao Yinan to make movies.
China's "Kim Ki-duk" - Diao Yinan
In 2007, Diao Yinan released his second film, Night Train, about a female prisoner who is executed while her husband falls in love with the female bailiff who takes her on her road. In the film, the director's every scene and every frame of the picture is cathartic and depressing, and the love entanglement, identity loss and reality dilemma of the bottom, the edge, and even the slightly humble little people are vividly expressed.
"Night Train"
This film has not been released in China, and many people feel strange. But at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, two films by emerging Chinese directors were shortlisted, one is the well-known "Blind Mountain" directed by Li Yang, and the other is Diao Yinan's "Night Train", which won both the New Director and New Film Awards at the 23rd Warsaw International Film Festival.
<h1>01. The female bailiff who sent away the prisoner</h1>
Wu Hongyan is a female judicial policeman, her husband died of illness ten years ago, and since then her life has been lonely and boring, repeating her routine work every day, that is, sending away one desperate person after another.
At the beginning of the film, the plaintiff is still crying in court, but she yawns. It wasn't that she was cold-blooded, but as a bailiff, she restrained her emotions and treated these prisoners without any emotion. Often confronted with desperate people, she was also accustomed to life and death and coming and going, and she only did what she did the rest of her job—sending away prisoners.
On this day, it was an ordinary day again, Wu Hongyan put on gloves, took the gun and bullets, and made final preparations. Today she sent away a female prisoner Lingling who deliberately killed people, and after Wu Hongyan finished the execution, she burned off her gloves.
Then, Wu Hongyan took Lingling's ashes and found the steel mill where Lingling's husband Li Jun was located. The director of the factory lost his temper and blamed her for bringing the obscurity of the dead to the factory, and transferred the important army to the reservoir for idle duties.
Li Jun eavesdropped outside the house, knowing that Wu Hongyan had sent his wife to the Kingdom of Heaven, and deeply remembered the woman's appearance.
<h1>02, Lonely Female Bailiff</h1>
Wu Hongyan's life is bleak, just like the gray sky in the film. She is a person who is very afraid of loneliness, 10 years after her husband died of illness, she lived alone for 10 years.
Back home, through the long corridors, she was confronted with cold walls and a deep sense of loneliness. For ten years, she had been trapped in this house, trying to escape, but with nowhere to hide.
Wu Hongyan's neighbor is a dancer, and every night a different man comes home with her. On this day, when she came home from work, the woman next door stopped her: "I am a serious woman, and I am a little more quiet with my boyfriend at night, how much you understand." Red Swallow was speechless.
At night, Wu Hongyan, who was lying alone in bed, heard the noise next door again, and the sound of indulgence ignited her inner desire. After Wu Hongyan listened to the wall for a while, it was even more unbearable for her, so she knocked on the wall and asked them to be quieter.
Wu Hongyan's repression, which has nowhere to vent, advances step by step under the director's lens, and that kind of loneliness and longing arise spontaneously.
<h1>03. Wu Hongyan, who has experienced countless failed blind dates, met a deformed love</h1>
Wu Hongyan's life is boring and tedious, without a trace of waves. Only the weekend blind date became the spice of her life. She knew that this way might not lead to a confidant, but she insisted on going every week.
This marriage agency is still a gray room, the men and women who come to the blind date are dancing, and only Hongyan is sitting alone in the corner in a daze.
At the end of the blind date, on the way home, Hongyan found that Li Jun was following her, and she thought that Li Jun was also dating from the marriage agency and had a good feeling for her, so she let him follow all the way.
In the underground passage, Li Jun took out a knife. However, the surging crowd made Li Jun timid, and he put away the knife again.
At the end of the underground passage, Hongyan took the initiative to show favor to Li Jun. The two entered the hotel and embraced each other, and the intertwining of love and hate, repression and desire seemed to find an outlet at this moment, and a deformed love affair occurred.
<h1>04, two people trapped in shackles</h1>
Within a few days, the two lived together, and everything happened like this, but this was not Li Jun's intention, his purpose was to avenge his wife.
Wu Hongyan is not a person who talks a lot, and Li Jun is also a stuffy person, the two people do not communicate much, but the personality is very similar, Hongyan feels that she has found a confidant.
Wu Hongyan felt that the two could develop further, so she took the initiative to move to the house next to the Li Jun Reservoir. Here, she finally felt at home, she seemed to have found her own home, and she behaved like a virtuous wife.
On this day, Wu Hongyan found some photos in Li Jun's bag, and she found out that Li Jun was the husband of Ling Ling, a death row prisoner she had executed. Only then did she know that the man had other intentions in approaching her.
<h1>05. Get out of the cage</h1>
Li Jun, who still had hatred in his heart, wanted to take the opportunity to kill Hongyan, so he said that he would take her to the boat for dinner.
At this time, Hongyan said slowly: You and your wife are very affectionate, but unfortunately I can't replace her."
After Li Jun listened, he cried bitterly in the small boat alone. It is not difficult to see that Wu Hongyan's care has melted him unconsciously.
Hongyan inadvertently opened Li Jun's backpack in the room, only to find that it contained knives and axes, and Li Jun's hatred for her shooting his wife did not seem to have been eliminated. In fact, this is just Hongyan's work, she does not do it, there will be other people to do this.
Hongyan understood what Li Jun was going to do, so she fled in a hurry, without even a bag or scarf.
On the way to escape, Hongyan saw a horse pulling firewood, firmly tied in the reins, being mercilessly whipped by its owner with a leather whip, but no matter how the horse herder whipped, it would not go.
Hongyan suddenly realized that her life was like this horse, she had been trapped in a cage, with nowhere to escape, and she was desperate and helpless, not knowing where to go.
Li Jun returned home and saw that Hongyan was gone, leaving only her scarf, he held the scarf tightly in his arms, breathing in the warm smell of hongyan on the scarf.
When Li Jun planned to leave in a small boat, Hongyan returned. She stood on the shore, and Li Jun stood in the small boat, shouting to Hongyan: "Come up."
The film ends here, the final "on the boat" is the two people to the end, or to the new life?
<h1>06. The film brings us thoughts</h1>
The title of the film is aptly used as "Night Train", and the two heroes and heroines are a journey in the dark.
Wu Hongyan and Li Jun, two people, experienced completely opposite mental processes in the film.
Wu Hongyan's life was originally in despair, and after meeting Li Jun, she lit up hope for life again. And when she found out that Li Jun was going to kill her, she was from hope to despair.
As a low-level figure, Li Jun's life is even more desperate after his wife leaves. After he met Wu Hongyan, he felt the warmth of home, from despair to hope.
At the end of the film, director Diao Yinan gave an open-ended ending. In my opinion, this is the beginning of the lives of two people, Hongyan awakened Li Jun's love and trust, from Li Jun holding her scarf smell has been doomed to the end, and Hongyan also stepped out of his inner cage and bravely faced reality.
John Shores once wrote in The Wishing Tree:
There is no incurable wound,
There is no endless sinking,
All that is lost,
Will come back in another way.
Wu Hongyan and Li Jun, both of whom are people who have lost a lot. But the love between them gave each other warmth and hope.
Through the darkness before dawn, a "night train" will always usher in the dawn of dawn.
Only by opening the shackles and opening the cage can we open the door of hope in our own lives.
Life is always good, no matter how many cracks we experience in our lives, there will always be sunlight shining in.
——END——