Fern, the heroine of the film "No Man's Land" (directed by Zhao Ting, starring Francis McDormand, released in 2020), is in her fifties, widowed, unemployed, on the road, and doing odd jobs.
"The Land of No One"
Wendy, the heroine of the film Wendy and Lucy (directed by Kelly Lecat and starring Michelle Williams, released in 2008), is in her early twenties, single, unemployed, on the road, odd jobs, accompanied by a dog named Lucy.
Wendy and Lucy
Both Fern and Wendy have Alaska on their itineraries.
It's very different
These two American road movies, respectively, by the mobile stories of elderly women and young women, bring everyone the vision of homeless life. I have to say that compared with Wendy, Fern's situation is like the middle class of the road circle, with self-sufficient RVs, with some furniture, with tableware, and finally friends also gave a leisure chair, Fern can support a chair in the open, drink coffee, play a sweater... Wendy, the girl, was much poorer, and she didn't know why she had embarked on the road of driving and wandering, but at the moment there was only an old Honda sedan, and all the belongings could be carried away in a large cloth bag.
Vern also has a fairly friendly circle of friends, a caravan family, a group of companions, and a male friend who admires her; they rebel against the harvest of mainstream society and use the "on the road" method to fight against the incorporation of the conventional order. They have anti-capitalist convictions, and under the leadership of opinion leader Bob Wells, they are connected, mutually loving, and living a utopian life. Wendy only had Lucy, the dog, and was caught stealing dog food, losing Lucy. During the dog hunt, she meets an old security guard who helps her and a strange man who may be violent.
For those on the road, there is no more critical moment than a broken car. Vern has a sister who can be called for help, and Wendy has an older sister, but she is the kind of relative who has never been able to ask for help, so she loses her car and can no longer drive a car. The road movie couldn't go on, and the director stopped in the shot of Wendy picking up the van. Where did she go? Is it going to Alaska? She wouldn't pick up the wrong car...
Why are they in such different circumstances on the same road? Because of age? Fern has worked for many years and is close to retirement, and she is at least capable of buying herself a motorhome. Wendy may have just graduated from college or never graduated anywhere, but in short, she is a young man with nothing, and it is normal to drive a second-hand car with a fault. Indeed, what kind of walking tools you have roughly determines the class on the road. What Vernn showed us was basically a group of people over the age of fifty, who always had a caravan and a bunch of belongings that had accumulated in their lives. When they feel that time is running out, the important thing is loose.
Wendy was abjectly poor, and apart from a cotton blanket, there was no fixed object, perhaps too young to need objects to witness the memory. But she was so young, and even if Michelle Williams, as a young actress, had a face that was much more pleasing to the eye than Frances McDormand, the director did not arrange a trace of emotional drama for her. We only see her alone in a lifeless town in Oregon, looking for her lost dog. Without a car, he had to stay in the woods, escaped after being raided by delirious homeless people, and finally broke out for the first time, crying hysterically in the public toilet. The elderly security guard gave her a little help, but it was empty, as empty as the lonely and nameless town.
Under the lens of director Zhao Ting, Fern did not encounter any danger, and the biggest danger probably came from the sense of aging brought about by age. Under director Leikart's lens, Wendy seems to be in danger.
The scenery is very different
Fern's vision has everything that satisfies our imagination of a road movie, a vast expanse of land, a boundless highway, a magnificent landscape. Wendy's town has no decent landscape for a long-range lens to lyrically, the film begins with a few minutes of panoramic footage of the railway, explaining the geographical location of the town, in addition to the end of the film, Wendy picked up the truck, the continuous woods outside the speeding carriage, is also objectively visible. Therefore, "The Land of No Man" can be said to be more like a typical road genre film, providing the necessary scenery and distance, and providing a romantic resemblance for people incarnating in nature - the pursuit of freedom and rebellion against convention. Coupled with Fern's long poems about Shakespeare, coupled with the long breath she repeatedly exhaled from her recliner facing nature, plus those who are warm and affectionate in nature, and the most important thing is an emotional motivation point that has to wander: a childless woman who rebels against her original family and misses her dead husband endlessly. Do I have to add it? What does this moral reason bring to this character? Does it make her deeper? Those knife-sharpening wrinkles are even more sad and moving? The naked body swimming in the wild is even more worried? If it is only like this, it is equivalent to betraying all these people on the road, just running away, just not facing it, just because we need a willing other, so we are on the road!
The fictional character of Fern strung together all kinds of "good guys" on the road: Swankie, Linda May, Bob Wells... These experienced real travelers come into the camera, bringing us a solid texture of wandering life, and fictional and non-fictional characters are co-starred, fused in a road movie to maintain the rough feeling of wandering life. But if you are not careful, a layer of aesthetic pleasure will wrap around the coarseness, causing a short circuit of realism. Those large landscapes, footnotes that resemble pages, are notes on human behavior. The more commentaries we make, the more the book enters the space of specialized learning, fading away from our natural reach. And the more landscapes there are, the more the behavior itself loses its intuitively visible energy.
The expression of landscapes in road films tests the creator's self-consciousness even more, and they are too easy to become objects of hope for vulnerable people, absorbing a little pitiful resistance and reflection from the collision of reality. People are relieved to think that they have found a solution, so they indulge in wandering, and then find that the real situation may be the same as Wendy's, there is no ally to accompany the road, no continuous close temporary work, no kindness, no love, no relatives in the rear who can support the bottom, and even the scenery is lackluster. Even more frightening is the risk of life from nature and from man himself— such as the hero who lost his life in "Survival in the Wilderness" and "Grizzly Man".
《Wilderness Survival》
The appeal is very different
Every wanderer is already a political demander different from the mainstream, but if this demand and appeal are only satisfied with unilateral expression, it is a kind of fantasy brought about by demand, ignoring the complexity of life and seeking only a simple confrontation. The landscape does not become the way to urgently touch the contours of our lives, to touch our thoughts, feelings, and ways out, it simply blunts and suspends our perception of reality. Who needs this overflowing landscape? Which pair of watching eyes is waiting for this exquisite "free lunch box" to feed, so that I can sigh calmly, "Only my lifelong hobby is natural!" ”
The people who are surrounded by the same sexual order of movies, food, books, and commodities are probably the proud sons of this day's choice, and they are most qualified to throw out such affectionate obscenity. "Wendy and Lucy" interrupts this identity and silences it. If freedom cannot be modified, uncontrollable, and full of accidents, people can only be silent in the face of it. Those who have escaped the temptation of siren's singing may not be able to escape their silence, for silence is a more lethal weapon than singing. If speaking implies even the danger of a slight lie, silence is a more powerful option.
At the end of the film, the nomadic opinion leader Bob Wells has a conversation with Fern. If you don't seriously reminisce, this conversation will easily fall into the chicken soup of Hollywood movies - there is always a scene, which is for the person who always has such a person to be responsible for the long heart. Wells's words are indeed used by the director to take on this function. Interestingly, wells intentionally or unintentionally rewrote this chicken soup function to give the conversation "practical wisdom." He discusses with Fern why people are on the road, and Fern tells Wells that she can't forget her dead husband, Po, and Wells talks about her dead son (this may be a fictional plot, and information about Wells's real-life children has not yet been found to support it).
"There are a lot of our peers on this road, and we all carry the pain. A lot of people haven't come out either, and that's okay. The most attractive thing about this kind of life is that there will be no tricks. I met hundreds of people on the road, I never said goodbye, I would always say goodbye, we will see each other on the road. And it did happen, and a month later, a year later, sometimes years later, I saw them again. I looked ahead, convinced that I would see my son again, that you would see Wave again, and that you would remember the time you spent together. ”
There is no need to complain too quickly that this is "self-deception", and as anti-sadness, comfort can be a definite way of mourning oneself, like Aristotle's catharsis. Did these tourboys see the deceased on the road? Must no longer be a concrete person, something has been lost and reappeared, in a cup of coffee in the sunset after a long and hard work, in the smell of gasoline that is launched when departing in the glimmer of the morning light, in the chill that takes off the bloated winter coat skin... What is lost in life resides in some kind of material object, and we summon it like a soul, summoning it out and meeting it. Because they want to meet these insignificant objects again, and repeatedly, so as to know life itself, some people will let go of everything and pursue. This may be the "practical wisdom" of the modern nomad, the conviction of What Bob Wells said, and the hardcore of wandering life after putting aside the filter of "political correctness". But if this hardcore falls into the movie, shouldn't it be made out, not spoken out? The director undoubtedly used the wrong position.
Jessica Brudd, author of The Land of Nowhere, describes the nomadic people as:
"The truth is that people may struggle with their inner struggles while experiencing the most painful challenges. This does not mean that they refuse to accept reality, but rather demonstrates the unparalleled resilience and ability of people to seek value and belonging in the face of hardship. When suffering shakes our resolve, there will be small joys, like sitting on our knees with our friends by the campfire in the starry night. ”
Wandering on the road, out of the sedentary life, out of the mainstream social order of the hostage, is the way people find to survive under the oppression of the situation, is a creative transformation of poverty and systemic inadaptability, a positive face to the idea of gangsterism. But there is no need to heroize and romanticize these resistance wisdoms of daily life, "If it is not at the expense of your dignity, how do you communicate with people at the cost of dignity?" A writer who chose to stay in Germany during the Nazi period put it this way. What matters is to put aside the filter of aesthetic pleasure and analyze the deepening tendencies towards the distant and nomadic worship. Is it the social contract that continues to disintegrate and the gradually hollowing out of the middle class? What else? Those are the artistic creations that really face the issue, and that creation may be very costly and more challenging, but only in this way can the cold and reserved dignity that remains in the young girl Wendy's heart be able to support her to the old Fern.
See you down the road, we'll see you on the road, no tricks.
Wen | Wang Yinjie
Edit | Yu Jing
This article was published in the B4 edition of Beijing Youth Daily on January 29, 2021.