How far and how difficult can a person's journey home be? Taking a train from a big city to a county seat, changing four means of transportation along the way, the road becomes narrower and narrower, the sky gets darker and darker, and people's hearts become more and more lonely.
The film "Night is Coming", which is currently being released in theaters, captures the plight of young people adrift in the city: there is nowhere to live in the big city, and there is no way to return to their hometown.
In 2020, Suga Haodong will just turn 30. According to traditional Chinese thinking, the year of establishment should have not succeeded. The film and television industry is turbulent, and he has no drama to shoot for a long time. It was also in this year that his grandfather died. On the way back to his hometown in Shanxi from Beijing to attend his grandfather's funeral, a friend called to tell Kan that the self-built apartment they rented was not allowed to live, and from a video sent by a friend, Kan saw that his luggage was thrown out.
"A lot of things were lost at that time. Grandpa left, and the little ones around you, friends, favorite stars, and directors left one after another, as if every day, you are saying goodbye to many people. For Kan at the time, creation became an outlet for emotions.
In order to shoot "Night is Coming", Kan Haodong borrowed an online loan to pay labor fees to the crew, and completed the filming in 20 days in the cold winter of 2021. At the 6th Pingyao International Film Festival at the beginning of last year, "Night is Coming" won three honors: Fei Mu's Honor for Best Film, Fan Choice Honor, and Tongye Honor, and the prize money he won helped him pay off his previous debts. A year later, the film was released. As of January 30, the box office of the film was 510,000, and the number of moviegoers was 13,000.
At the time of the interview with Yicai, Kan Haodong was busy promoting the roadshow for the film, and he had traveled through more than 20 cities from north to south. Mr. Kan said he was content. "I used to be underground all along. Working in a mine at a depth of 500 meters, the film was cut in the basement of Beijing for a year, and now it has finally come to the horizon. I didn't go beyond the horizon, I just stood on the horizon, but I could see the sun. ”
From coal miner to film director
"Did you follow your heart or follow the rules of the majority? In the director's statement, Kan wrote so. If he follows the rules of most people, then at this moment, he should work in the coal mine like most of his hair children, have a stable job, and start a family.
In 1989, Kan was born in a village below Hequ County, Shanxi Province. There are large and small coal mines in the vicinity of the village, and the survival of the villagers depends on the huge industry of coal mines. Kan Haodong's parents were coal miners, his grandfather went down the mine all his life, and his second uncle died in a mining accident. "My father was old, and when he was 55 years old, he went to work as a security guard in the mine for a few years, and then he felt that he was too old and went home to farm. ”
His parents paved a way for Kan Haodong, majored in coal mining, and went to work in a coal mine after graduation: "If you can become a regular and have an iron rice bowl, that's something that everyone is happy to see." Until the age of 26, Suga seems to have been living on this set of established tracks. However, his love for literature and movies made him destined to take an unusual path.
"I have always been different from others since I was a child, and I will not choose to give in and obey others in order to say that I have to start a family at a certain age. Suga said, "Giving in will only make it more painful, because what is left in my heart is always regret and unwillingness." ”
In 2013, after graduating from Shanxi Datong University with a degree in mining, Kan Haodong joined Wangzhuang Coal Mine, and after that, he worked in the front line of the excavation team for more than a year. Every day, I work at the bottom of the 500-meter-deep well, go uphill and downhill in the roadway, walk five or six kilometers back and forth, and do it for more than ten hours, cutting coal, cleaning coal, shoveling coal, huge coal dust is scattered, and I can't see each other's faces clearly from a distance of one meter. Kan Haodong said that during the three-month internship, he mastered all the skills to be mastered in the underground coal mine: "After studying for so many years, many of the knowledge I learned in college are not used, and after I come back from work every day, I am so tired that I want to sleep." ”
Working in the coal mine is a transition for Kan – saving money and using his spare time to think about scripts: "I studied mining and went directly to Beijing, and no one in the film and television industry wanted it." At the beginning of 2015, Kan left the coal mine with the 50,000 yuan he had saved and returned to his hometown to gather his partners to shoot the independent film "Light Blindness," a film about an elderly blind man in the village. After the filming was completed, he took the film to Beijing and began to live in the north.
"Light Blindness" was shortlisted for many film festivals and received a good reputation, but it did not bring too many twists to Kan's directorial career. In Beijing, Kan Haodong studied with some online film crews, and survived by doing recording and assistant director. In 2018, there was less and less work in the film and television industry, and he moved to Tongzhou. At the end of 2019, he moved from Tongzhou to Yanjiao, Hebei Province. In 2020, life and emotions fell into stagnation, standing at the crossroads of life, Kan Haodong decided to create a script, integrate his life experience into it, and also try to find the answer to life through creation.
The long way home of the young people in the north drifting
In "Night is Coming", the protagonist Liang Zhe's return to his hometown is also Kan Haodong's return to his hometown. The means of transportation that he needed to take on the road, the places he stopped on the way, and the scenery along the road were all hovering in Kan Haodong's mind for many years, and they were memories that he was all too familiar with. Due to the underdeveloped local transportation, returning home has always been a twist and turn.
At the end of 2019, the high-speed railway from Beijing to Datong had just opened. Before that, Kan Haodong went home, first had to take a five-and-a-half-hour green train, set off at about 12 o'clock in the evening, arrived in Datong at six o'clock the next day, and then took a bus from the passenger station to Hequ, spent four hours, and then took a minibus to the county seat, the minibus sometimes does not go directly, you need to take a small bread, if you can't catch the car, my father will ride a motorcycle to pick him up.
Kan Haodong's hometown is located at the junction of the three provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Mongolia, the Yellow River separates the three provinces, and the road from the county seat to the village follows the river, and in winter, the Yellow River freezes.
The film combines Kan's complex emotions about his hometown, which resonates with some wandering wanderers. He describes his feelings for his hometown as a kind of "nostalgia that has passed away and may never be able to return".
"The older we get, the more we miss the New Year in our hometown, where firecrackers and fireworks can be lit every year," Kan said. In the city, fireworks are not allowed, these are prohibited. When he grew up, Fa Xiao and his friends had their own families, and it was no longer like in the past, where so many friends could get together to play cards. Now the countryside is not like the past, the population is outflowing, everyone has to go to the county to make a living, to provide an environment for their children to go to school, that kind of childhood memories, emotions, friendship, love, can no longer go back to the past. ”
Like Kan Haodong, Liang Zhe, the protagonist of "Night is Coming", has a very bumpy road back to his hometown, from the county seat to the village, he changed four means of transportation, a bus, a truck, a small bread, a motorcycle, and met a familiar elder along the way, a small man who drove a coal truck, and his first love that he hadn't seen for many years, and picked up a stray puppy. The countryman's concern about how he mixed up and how much money he made outside, and the interrogation of his friends and first love about his long-lost contact made him have to face the fact that at the age of thirty, his friendship, love and family affection are in a state of loss and regret, and the road back to his hometown is a journey that is constantly stung by reality. But he didn't stop returning to his hometown. At the end of the film, the funeral band plays "The Great Victory", and Liang Zhe is in a hurry on the barren hillside looking for what he has lost. A fire was lit on the mountain, like a light in the darkness.
Kan Haodong recalled the last day of filming in 2021, and felt that the god of movies had descended. During the 20-day shooting period, the first 19 days were calm, and on the last day, a strong wind blew into the eyes. The film crew took two long shots against the wind and set up a machine, bringing a calm and moving stroke to the end of the film. It was the last leg of Liang Zhe's way home, his father in mourning clothes carried him on a motorcycle, he hugged his father tightly, silent all the way, the weeds rolled up by the strong wind, and from time to time they were blown into the middle of the narrow path, and the night slowly fell in such a gloom.
From the start of filming to the release, three years have passed. For Suga, this risky thing has finally come to fruition. "Just like Liang Zhe, he is very confused, he wants to find a home, find what he has lost. For me, these things are finally presented to so many audiences through film, and it finds its ultimate direction. Born like a child, to be seen. Suga said, "Finally, it's not that night is coming, but I see a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of light." ”