After 4 years of hibernation, the movie "The Sea of Stopping Crime" is finally about to be released.
Previously, "The Sea of Crime" has won awards at international film festivals such as the Italian International Police Art Festival, the Dutch Septimius Award, and the Buenos Aires International Film Festival.
The reason why it won the international award is that "The Sea of Stopping Crime" won on the theme, it tore apart the pain of domestic violence and resonated with a universal social issue.
1. The similarity and homicide of two victims of domestic violence
When I first saw the trailer for "The Sea of Crime", I thought the film was just a commonplace showdown between police and criminals, and it wasn't until I actually saw the feature film that I understood its theme, which was a story about the search for original sin.
Zhao Hailiang, a suspect in the booby-trap murder of a salon girl in the south, committed the crime again after absconding back to his hometown in the north. Lu Hui, a female policewoman from the south who came from the trace, and Chen Feng, a criminal policeman from a small town in the north, joined forces to investigate, and finally discovered Zhao Hailiang's true identity after several twists and turns, so they touched the little-known family tragedy behind his murder in order to seize women's underwear. And Chen Feng, who has been troubled by the disappearance of his fiancée Shuqing, found that Shuqing's disappearance 3 years ago also seems to be related to Zhao Hailiang.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
"The Sea of Stopping Crime" explores the impact of the family environment on adolescent development. If he had not been affected by his family environment, Zhao Hailiang would not have embarked on the road of crime. From this point of view, Zhao Hailiang is also a victim.
In the film, Zhao Hailiang's family tragedy comes from his father's domestic violence. Not only did he leave his leg disabled after being injured by his father's drunkenness, but his otherwise healthy inner world also caused serious psychological damage. The target of his father's domestic violence is not only Zhao Hailiang, but also his wife Wang Hui'e. But Wang Hui'e is cowardly by nature, so she chose to flee, while the teenage Zhao Hailiang could not leave, and after his mother left home, he could only face the darkness of life alone.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
Such a character is destined for a tragic fate. But I think that the excavation of the suspect's past experience in "The Sea of Stopping Crime" is not simply to win the audience's sympathy for the characters, but to let the audience see the consequences of domestic violence. The consequences of domestic violence are not only commonplace physical harm, but also have a more profound impact on people's mental and psychological levels.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
If we analyze Zhao Hailiang in "The Sea of Stopping Crime" from a psychological level, the accurate expression should be that domestic violence has caused Zhao Hailiang to form a wrong concept of sexuality.
Teenage years are the time when sexual ideas are formed. Zhao Hailiang, who was in a state of sexual embryonic state, was looked down upon by his peers because of his lameness, especially by the girls he liked, which became a lingering heart disease in his childhood. He came into contact with his mother's underwear by chance, and he gained unprecedented satisfaction, so that his love for underwear gradually replaced his love for female classmates, and this recognition will accompany him for the rest of his life.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
South Korean female director Jolie Jung, in her debut film "Dao Hee", also focuses on a child who has suffered from domestic violence. Do-hee, a teenage girl, is timid and silent, and gradually develops strange feelings for the female police officer who helps her. It is not difficult to find that the boys and girls in the embryonic period of sex have realized their cognition of sex and love in ignorance. Although the ending of the girl in "Dao Xiya" is warmer than that of Zhao Hailiang in "The Sea of Stopping Crime", their understanding of sex is equally deformed.
● Stills from "Dao Hee".
Director Dou Xinping traces Zhao Hailiang's life in flashbacks in "The Sea of Stopping Crime". In the picture, Zhao's father, who was drunk, grabbed Wang Hui'e's hair and pressed her to the ground, kicking her with his hands and feet, and outside the door, it was the teenager Zhao Hailiang who was squatting on the ground. This is Zhao Hailiang's home. Zhao Hailiang's sense of oppression deposited in his heart was finally released after the death of his father - he set fire to the "home" that made him miserable.
Zhao Hailiang thought that he could say goodbye to the past with a fire, and then find his mother to start a new life. However, he unexpectedly discovered that his mother had already had a new home and a new "child" Wang Meng. At that moment, it should be Zhao Hailiang's complete despair of his mother and his disappointment in the whole world. And this despair all turned into "hatred" and became the fuse for him to embark on the road of crime.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
Adler said, "The fortunate man is healed by childhood all his life, and the unfortunate man is healed by childhood all his life." Zhao Hailiang in "The Sea of Stopping Crime" is the latter, and he vented his inner "resentment" on those innocent "women". The state of his frenzied portrait of women should be a reflection of his distorted humanity. The women he mutilated represented his hatred for his mother's abandonment of him on the one hand, and the deformed love he had since childhood.
And in essence, all this reflects the extreme lack of "love" of the characters, because they can't get the love of their mothers and the love of girls, so they turn from love to hate to "kill". What he "killed" to death were the "mothers" he had made up in his brain and the "girls" he liked, and what he killed was also the "love" he had for them again and again when he was young. And the "underwear" he took away was the carrier of "love", and he obtained sexual satisfaction from it, and he couldn't help himself. In the interweaving of love and hate, he loses his mind and becomes a perverted murderer, and finally suffers the consequences.
Obviously, Zhao Hailiang committed a crime, but he is also a victim of domestic violence, and he is not the only victim of domestic violence in the film, the other victim is Shuqing, the fiancée of criminal policeman Chen Feng, who has been missing for three years.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
Shuqing, like Zhao Hailiang, also lives in a problematic family of origin, and her father is also an alcoholic and domestic violence like Zhao Hailiang's father. The difference is that Shuqing is worse than Zhao Hailiang, her mother accidentally killed Shuqing's father and committed suicide; however, Shuqing is luckier than Zhao Hailiang, she met a person who redeemed her - Chen Feng, this criminal policeman spent eight years to help Shuqing out of the shadow of the original family, but in the end, it was destroyed by Zhao Hailiang.
Shuqing and Zhao Hailiang are both direct victims of domestic violence, and they have experienced different lives because of different choices. Unlike Zhao Hailiang, who chose to embark on the path of self-destruction, Shuqing chose the path of redemption, although she had an unhappy childhood, she wanted to let the future heal her life. This is exactly what moves Shuqing.
At the end of the film, Chen Feng found the answer to Shuqing's disappearance, Shuqing, who had been living in Chen Feng's mind, suddenly appeared, her face was still full of sunshine, and she said to her fiancé: "Thank you for doing so much for me." "It's plain, but let us see that there is no resentment left in her heart, but full of love. Chen Feng turned around and tore off the paper on the window, and the originally gloomy room suddenly became bright. Chen Feng tore off not only the paper that blocked the sun, but also the shadow of the mystery of his fiancée's disappearance that had been hidden in his heart for three years. After that, Chen Feng under the sun will usher in a "rebirth".
Zhao Hailiang and Shuqing, two people who were both victims of domestic violence, eventually became the targets of killing and being killed. Director Dou Xinping chose to make Shuqing the target of Zhao Hailiang's first crime, perhaps to strengthen the tragic fate of Shuqing's character, but what I see is the director's vigilance for society: the probability of domestic violence is not low!
Today, when we only pay attention to the harm of domestic violence because of a hot domestic violence incident, it already means that we choose to ignore this long-standing social problem more often than not.
2. The "perverts" of fetishistic patients are dormant and cannot be saved
I've been asking: Why did Zhao Hailiang in "The Sea of Stopping Crime" kill people to seize underwear?
There is such a scene in the movie: Zhao Hailiang took away the TV and wooden board placed on a jar in the bedroom of the grain depot where he temporarily lived, and took out a box from the jar, which contained the victim's underwear, he took it out and sniffed it greedily...... Obviously, the underwear with the remains of women's body is full of temptation for Zhao Hailiang.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
I remember that there was a controversial news that reported the illegal sale of intimate clothing such as plain underwear and original stockings on online platforms. Their sales target is mainly fetishistic people. Instead of buying brand new underwear, stockings, etc., they buy personal items that have been used by others, because they carry the user's body. Undoubtedly, Zhao Hailiang in "The Sea of Stopping Crime" is one of such groups.
In fact, fetishism is a type of mental illness that occurs more often in men of all ages, usually from adolescence. They have no interest in the opposite sex per se, and do not care about the ownership of objects, and often engage in reckless actions such as stealing in order to collect their preferred items of the opposite sex. After their pathological psychology is satisfied, they often have psychological conflicts such as remorse, depression, pain, and low self-esteem due to hatred of their behavior, but it is difficult for them to change their behavior. Due to their shame to speak up, fetishists often lack formal psychological treatment, and are a type of mental illness patients who are easily ignored by society.
Regarding fetishism, there was a movie called "Termites" in Taiwan, which tells the story of Bai Yide, whose father died early, who was raised by his mother until he was a teenager, and still slept in the same bed with his mother because he was extremely dependent on his mother. Occasionally, he caught a glimpse of his mother's affair with her boyfriend, and felt that her mother was occupied by others, and her psychology became distorted. When he grew up, Bai Yide liked to collect and steal women's underwear, and also liked to dress himself in women's underwear in private, until one day, his secret was discovered and became an unbearable weight in his life.
● Stills from "Termites".
Whether it is Bai Yide in "Termites" or Zhao Hailiang in "The Sea of Stopping Crime", they are all dormant in dark places that are difficult to reach by the sun, living a dark life. However, unlike Bai Yide's "stealing", Zhao Hailiang chose to "kill" to obtain. This is precisely the pitiful thing about Zhao Hailiang, because in addition to the symptoms of fetishism, he has formed a complex personality of inferiority, cowardice, sensitivity and paranoia under the combined effect of family environment, social factors and many other aspects.
In "The Sea of Stopping Crime", through the gap between the wheels of the train parked on the tracks, a group of teenagers ridicule the lame Zhao Hailiang, who bows his head and has an inferiority complex on the screen. And when his biological mother fled from the domestic violence family, Zhao Hailiang's eyes were helpless and confused, and he didn't choose to leave until his father died, and he was so cowardly that it was distressing.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
After finding his biological mother, Zhao Hailiang, after a short period of joy, because he found out that his biological mother had remarried, his heart was intertwined with disappointment and anger, as if his years of patience had lost its meaning. When Shuqing passed by him, it was just a simple glance at Shuqing, but it reminded the sensitive Zhao Hailiang of the look in his young female classmates when they looked at his lame feet with disdain, so he lost his mind and strangled Shuqing. This is the first time he has killed someone, but after getting Shuqing's underwear, he gets unprecedented satisfaction, and his fetish is revealed.
Bai Yide in "Termites" took the method of stealing in order to obtain women's underwear, but Zhao Hailiang continued to copy the killing method when he first obtained underwear. He went to the south and returned to his northern homeland three years later. It is not difficult to find that in the journey from north to south and then from south to north, Zhao Hailiang did not stop committing crimes, which can be seen in the many pieces of women's underwear in the box he took out of the tank. Although there were victims who survived his clutches, in most cases, the victims were killed.
As for the reason why you must kill someone, there is no clear answer in "The Sea of Stopping Crime". If you analyze it from the psychological level, perhaps although Zhao Hailiang, who has a cowardly personality, dares to kill, he has a paranoid personality and does not measure the difference between the harm of killing and robbing, but chooses to kill and kill in order to prevent himself from being accused. What is intriguing is that Zhao Hailiang presented in "The Sea of Stopping Crime" is difficult for people to associate him with the murderous murderer from the appearance. Echoing this, isn't the good and evil of people in real life so disguised!
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
If "The Sea of Stopping Crime" is a mirror, then the Zhao Hailiang portrayed in the film is just a mirror image of a group. In a pluralistic society, there are bound to be many vulnerable groups, and in a state of long-term neglect, some of them are likely to go to the margins of society, or even to crime.
In the film, the criminal policemen Chen Feng and Lu Hui found Zhao Hailiang's place of growth, and the village chief told them about Zhao Hailiang in the haze of a domestic violence family, he said: "When Zhao Hailiang left the village, he burned down the family's house before leaving. How much hatred must there be in this child's heart?"
I don't know if the village chief, who discovered Zhao Hailiang's hatred and was also familiar with the pain of his domestic violence, had ever rescued the injured Zhao Hailiang with his heart? If his rescue had healed his wounded heart, perhaps Zhao Hailiang in "The Sea of Stopping Crime" would have drifted away from the crime, and Shuqing, another victim of domestic violence, would still be alive and healthy.
3. The dream of a group of people and the departure in reality
"Stop the Sea" uses the shell of a crime movie, but it is actually an indictment of the impact of domestic violence on the psychology of teenagers. This perspective of tracing the cause of the crime from the results of the crime is rare in past domestic violence movies. In particular, the identity of the fetishistic patient makes the suspect's psychological world very complicated, and only by clarifying his life can we understand the reason why he killed in order to seize the underwear with a female body.
However, the fetishistic setting made the film sensitive, wandering on the edge of reasonable expression, and the film took 4 years and many revisions before it finally passed the review.
Director Dou Xinping said that although the filming of the film was hard, what made him feel painful was the repeated revisions in the process of dealing with sensitive details and the helplessness of promoting the release.
This kind of pain and helplessness is a reality that many small-budget movies need to face.
In the early winter of 2023, "The Sea of Stopping Crime" won two awards for Best Film and Best Director in the film section of the 27th Italian International Police Arts Festival. Director Dou Xinping, who had just returned to China, had not yet walked out of the joy of returning from receiving the award, but he encountered embarrassment. At a dinner time at an event, a bald screenwriter jokingly asked: Doesn't it cost money to win an international award?
● On October 28, 2023, the film "The Sea of Stopping Crime" won two awards for Best Film and Best Director at the 27th Italian International Police Arts Festival.
Dou Xinping didn't want to answer. In his opinion, as one of the centers of the European Renaissance, Italy can be described as an artistic destination, not only the opera is world-famous, but also the film occupies a pivotal position in the international film industry, such as "The Pianist of the Sea", "Beautiful Life", "The Godfather" and other films are familiar to Chinese audiences. Dou Xinping feels that in such a country with deep artistic accumulation, if he wants to win an art festival award that has been held for 27 consecutive years, it is by no means the so-called "operation" that can be achieved, and he has no need to say much about the strength of the film itself.
Like many literary films, "The Sea of Stopping Crime" chose to participate in international film festivals before its release. Because it is not a large-scale commercial film, the production budget is tight, and the lack of publicity and distribution budget has become a reality that many small-budget films have to face. "The Sea of Stopping Crime" chose to participate in the international film festival before its release. This is the best way to get as much attention as possible at the time of domestic releases with the artistic recognition of the international film industry.
In the face of "Stop the Sea", as both the producer and director of the project, Dou Xinping's mood is often intertwined between two diametrically opposed emotions: joy and worry. Happily, "The Sea of Crime" did not end in the PPT stage like many film projects, and the worry is that the future of "The Sea of Crime" is full of unknowns.
● Dou Xinping on the set
Dou Xinping can always think of the gestation of "The Sea of Stopping Crime". Around 2019, Dou Xinping has made a number of short films and online films, and won awards at many international film festivals, and like many directors in the past, his ideal goal is to complete a big-screen film.
During that time, a group of directors with the same dream often discussed their creative ideas, they liked "Heart Labyrinth", they liked "Fireworks in the Day", they wanted to follow the path of winning awards abroad to attract domestic attention, and make a name for themselves with the same personalized films. However, many years later, there are only a handful of films that have come out.
Most of these young directors who once had dreams left the film industry, some made commercials, promotional films, and documentaries, some had to switch to the short video track in full swing in order to survive, and some even left the film and television production industry. In the face of harsh reality, film creation is no longer a hotbed for nourishing art, but more often a game of capital.
● Dou Xinping
Although there is no escape from reality, Dou Xinping is very firm in sticking to it, because in his opinion, Chinese films should not be works that bring short-term pleasure to the audience for profit, these works are like opium, which can bring pleasure but are not beneficial to people, and he feels that there must be filmmakers who pay attention to social issues and create thought-provoking works.
Dou Xinping is very fond of Korean films, and films such as "Memories of Murder" and "The Chaser" have left a deep impression on him, and even used these films when creating "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
The story of "The Sea of Stopping Crime" was born from a real case, and it was revised and improved many times before it was put into filming. In order to make the film have a unique image temperament, the director finally selected the old town of Shuangliao, Jilin Province, where he was born, and the local agricultural and industrial scenes for shooting. The small bungalows in the film, the alleys chased by the protagonist, the large cornfields, and the abandoned quarries all present the scenery of the small northern towns in the eighties and nineties of the last century, which is almost extinct.
During the filming period, it was the rainy season in the middle of summer, and the crew encountered heavy rain several times, especially a heavy rain two days before the start of filming, which caused a bungalow arranged by the art props team in advance to collapse a corner in the heavy rain and become a dangerous house. Some people say that it was because the young man of the props team moved a human bone model used in the room for hospital teaching, which led to such a result, so the accident of "Halloween Rainy Night Room Collapse" was rumored to be the "ghost story" of the crew, and the more it spread, the more it became more and more divine.
However, the "ghost story" did not intimidate the creative team, in order not to affect the normal start-up, the staff of the art props team worked overtime in another venue to rearrange the scene, and it was not completed until before the start-up, ensuring that the shooting went smoothly.
● Stills from "The Sea of Stopping Crime".
"The Sea of Stopping Crime" faced many difficulties in the process of filming, post-production, and review, and finally got the opportunity to be presented on the big screen. Dou Xinping became a theatrical film director as he wished, and he felt that this was not the fulfillment of his film dream alone, but the dream of a group of directors who were forced to leave in reality, which gave him the courage to continue to think and present the world we live in.
Dou Xinping revealed that the new film "Double Police" he is promoting is still a crime theme, however, before the new creation, he must face the release of "The Sea of Stopping Crime". In the process of contacting the publicity and distribution company, Dou Xinping realized for the first time that compared with the production of the film, the funds required for publicity and distribution are more like a bottomless pit with an unknown future. It costs money to publicize, it costs money to copy, and it costs money to schedule films, and how much money is spent directly determines the distribution effect of the film. But even if some movies invest a lot of publicity and distribution money, no one watches them, and the huge investment does not bring returns.
But the question that Dou Xinping has been thinking about is: For small-budget films with almost no publicity budget, how to reach the audience?
This is a cruel problem, and it is also a dilemma that many low-budget films need to face.
Dou Xinping pursued the answer. In his opinion, this is about the dream of many directors, and if there is an answer, maybe more directors will stick to their film dreams. Text/Essay