"Wasteland" is probably the most special domestic film of the year.
The special features of this film are the most intuitive and impressionistic of two points.
One is that the whole film focuses the lens on the vast desert and wasteland landscape for a long time. Magnificent and cruel are two sides of the same coin, the primitive nature in the film seems to always try to "devour" the audience, and the unknown wilderness is breathtaking.
How does the heroine survive? This makes us hang a breath all the time during the movie.
The second is that the entire movie was almost completed by Ren Suxi alone.
This is quite rare in domestic films.
As a result, we are able to see Ren Suxi's "mask of pain" countless times and her various levels of physical and mental state.
Brave, tired, dizzy, painful, decisive, fearful, fluke, hysterical, angry gossamer...
And the most impactful is the end of the film, where the despair of physical suffering accumulates at this moment, transforming into a thin force, accompanied by the cluster of fire that decisively ignites the bag, making people cry.
All friends who have watched "Wasteland" will have a similar conviction: thanks to Ren Suxi, it is hard to imagine who is more suitable and competent for this film than her.
The storyline of "Wasteland" is extremely concise, telling the story of a pair of brothers and sisters who are looking for their father in the wilderness and are trapped in distress, and the younger sister Jungle (played by Ren Suxi) crosses the wasteland to seek rescue.
Ren Suxi's solitary wilderness survival process is the primary highlight of the movie.
That is to say, the powerful actor Ren Suxi, who has always surprised everyone in different types of movies such as "Donkey Gets Water", "Nameless", "Half a Comedy", this time the opponent she faces in the movie is "desert", the most primitive nature, and herself.
The film uses realistic brushstrokes to present the survival process of the jungle in the wasteland for seven days. At the beginning of each day, the movie will appear with a subtitle description: temperature, trek, remaining water and supplies. And every day passed, her lips became more chapped and worse, and her skin gradually covered with thick blood scabs, which was shocking.
The jungle faces different dilemmas, in addition to the lack of food and water, there are also various accidents, whether it is a sudden fire in the supply station, or a casual fall to the bottom in order to pick up the walkie-talkie, the characters often always change from short-term comfort to momentary danger, and the film's twist makes people gasp.
However, wilderness survival is also full of witty survival tips.
Very detailed things such as dressing wounds with sanitary napkins and making insoles.
A rare and lighter scene is to steam the meagre precious water from the scarce greenery of the wasteland. This is all her water supply, supporting her to walk 40 kilometers in the heats of the 40-degree wasteland.
In the process of struggling to survive for several days, the actors need to show rich differences, layers and tensions.
This requires authentic and nuanced performances.
So small that after the jungle collapsed exhausted on the wasteland, it picked up the ants that climbed up and sent them into their mouths. It is this subconscious "desire for life" character action processing that is enough to make people empathize.
It is precisely because of such difficulty that people feel more that Ren Suxi's relaxation is natural and uncarved.
Interestingly, Ren Suxi's filming process and performance process in "Wasteland" are consistent. From the first day of filming, Ren Suxi suddenly felt that she was arrogant, to later she muttered in an interview: I don't know if I don't shoot, I don't know if I shoot, I compare with the power of nature, the feeling of fighting with nature, and I don't regret the experience of being an actor once.
The audience's viewing experience is also "experiential", as if following the characters in the vast desert, through the lens can intuitively feel the high temperature of the desert, the sound of madness by the bonfire at night, thirst and dehydration, exhaustion and dizziness, pain and fear, exhaustion and collapse on the road as if the soul is drained...
Another example is the most exciting "see the oasis" scene.
When the jungle is almost exhausted, there is finally hope for a turnaround, and we deeply empathize with the characters at that moment, and the survival psychology of this scene and the level change of the "moment of hope" are very moving.
From a genre point of view, female adventure stories such as "Wasteland" are quite experimental in domestic films.
As far as the domestic film market is concerned, this genre is quite niche. The theme itself has its own difficult attributes, especially for female protagonists, whether it is filming or actors, they will face great challenges.
As for the adventure theme of survival in the wilderness, horizontal comparison, such as "Into the Wilderness", "127 Hours" and "Falling" in recent years, adventure films have different emphases and considerations.
In terms of narrative, the above films mostly use multiple time and space to tell women's redemption stories, or focus on national and cultural categories. Therefore, the stories of women's adventures abroad may be more or less mixed with many social issues.
In domestic films that focus on the western space of China, the natural space of the west and the wilderness is often abstracted into a dynamic poetic background. Its texture is often not realistic, as in many martial arts movies. Other films involving trekking, hiking or pilgrimage, such as Kailash , focus more on excavating spiritual salvation propositions and rituals, often with strong religious genes and sacred meanings.
In contrast, "Wasteland" focuses more on simplicity, simplicity and local temperament in terms of image and narrative.
The director's lens captures more of the nature of the wasteland and nature, and as the director says, "there is no art".
The film does not have fancy multi-time flashbacks, no dizzying image processing such as split-screen. The ultra-distant and large close-ups show the roughness, desolation and wonderfulness of the Western Desert.
One of the most memorable shots is when the jungle like a gossamer stumbles into a rugged landscape similar to strange peaks after stumbling. The strange landscape instantly made her awake.
This is the most primitive impact from nature.
The original, magnificent sense of realism can highlight the cruelty of the other side.
Several shots go back and forth between extreme proximity and extreme distance, and this switch highlights the feeling of loneliness. The feeling of powerlessness in the jungle alone in the endless wasteland jumps into the screen.
A close-up of Leng Buding's full screen, the wrinkled skin of the jungle, messy hair and chapped lips bring an indescribable emotional impact.
The narrative of the film is also extremely concise and restrained, with a single line, direct narrative, and very few lines.
Abandoning abstract "redemption", the motives of the characters in "The Wasteland" are more plain and grounded, which is a story of a girl who reconciles with herself in the process of survival. The jungle has always been trapped in the heart knot brought by the original family, and there is a longing for his father, but also to ease the kind of heart knot that why his father chose his brother instead of his own, in order to reconcile with himself and the past.
It does not have the existential "Kerouac" impulse of young people longing for the road, let alone self-inflicted.
As with all survival adventure movies, the protagonist goes through about two stages of crisis.
Existential dangers and mental crises.
Survival is a top priority. The threat of survival adventure is relatively fixed, and the film shows and describes the survival process of the characters gradually. Long-term physical exhaustion, no one to communicate, and the sense of anchorage in a huge landscape are greater challenges to the spirit and will. Feelings of despair can make her distracted, screaming, nightmares, and even collapse.
The jungle is always walking, and even in some monotonous shots, her self-talk is quite interesting.
Later in the journey, she also has moments of anger and corruption that are easy to understand.
For example, on the way to Tafeng Lake, the only water bag leaked in the evening after the gerbil. Or when the only walkie-talkie (more mental) connected to her brother slipped, she desperately tried to risk picking it up, and then unexpectedly put herself in even worse danger.
The camera images, characters and lines all form white space in the film, providing the audience with space for thinking and taste.
The film continues the basic theme of outdoor adventure movies: reverence for nature and transcendence.
The director's expression in "Wasteland" is restrained, the jungle is physically exhausted on the way near Tafeng Lake, the presentation of rescue is extremely simple and clean, and the final outcome is unknown, leaving it to the audience's own imagination.
There is a slogan in "The Wasteland", "Watch a man's movie."
In fact, everyone has their own process and state of experiencing a "wasteland" very lonely, and even people may experience this "wasteland" in their entire lives, but whether they can be rescued is only known at the last moment.
Just like a few lines in the song of the same name in "Wasteland" composed by Ren Suxi, it is worth savoring, "Where there are poets, where there are deer." Where there is firewood, which household. O gods, light the lights, and the stars show the way. One step grass grows, one step hurts. ”
Like Neruda's poem: "In my barren land, you are the last rose", reconciliation is ultimately the story of the self.
After watching "The Wasteland", I believe everyone will have their own interpretation.