In this year's film market, all schedules are rushing to set new records.
During the Spring Festival, the "Troika" chased me, and the total box office exceeded 8 billion, setting a historical record.
In the Qingming file, Hayao Miyazaki fought Godzilla, with a total box office of 830 million, setting another historical record.
After the May 1st file, 11 movies were piled up, and they had already riveted their efforts to record film history.
On the one hand, the box office success is frequent, and the investors and the main creators are happy;
On the other hand, the true appearance of the movie is gradually lost in the atmosphere of "cool point for camp, emotion first".
Capital uses movies as a tool for profit, and audiences regard movies as "spiritual opium" to relax their nerves;
The aesthetic style that truly belongs to Chinese movies is hard to find.
But there are still some directors who not only seek the box office in the cracks of the market, but also seek truth and beauty.
For example, Li Ruijun's "Hidden in the Dust" digs deep into the simplicity and romance of rural aesthetics.
For example, Gu Xiaogang's "Spring River Plumbing" and "The World of Grass and Trees" reproduce the Chinese aesthetic of landscape scrolls.
"Going by Boat" directed by Chen Xiaoyu is also such a film.
This film has just been released, and Brother Pi also went to watch the movie for the first time, and after thinking about it, I think the word "good-looking" is the most appropriate.
01、
The word "good-looking" here has two meanings.
The first layer is the classical Chinese aesthetics of the film, with idyllic landscapes and pale waves, which are very pleasing to the eye.
If you savor it carefully, it can be divided into four levels, which correspond to the "hook, creature, dyeing, and pointing" of Chinese painting techniques.
Hook is a long-range freehand, empty mirror blank, full of poetic and picturesque feelings.
There are many scenes with a long artistic conception in "Going by Boat", and every frame is just right.
The old houses built by the water, covered with moss, small bridges and flowing water, and boatmen rocking their oars to pass under the bridge.
The country road that my grandmother walked, with its green trees and birds and insects, made people feel as if they were back in their childhood unpolluted by reality.
The wet water vapor is thick in the middle, like an ink painting with appropriate shades, generating the unique temperament of the water town in the south of the Yangtze River.
皴 is the aesthetic texture that goes deep into the texture of life from point to surface.
The beauty of the movie is not only in these scenery and scenery.
Even the most homely pictures exude the poetry of life.
At the beginning of the film, a set of fragments of the grandmother's daily life at home alone are inserted.
Sit in your own yard to feed the chickens, and go to the balcony to collect the dried quilts.
Sprinkle some water on the floor and sweep the floor, and when you are sleepy, you will squint on the sofa for a while.
A few seemingly blandly idle brushstrokes are different from the beauty of the scenery of life aesthetics, which makes people see the shadow of their grandmother and grandmother.
Dyeing is the love in the scene, which is intended to be beyond words, and renders the feelings in the heart in plain and elegant.
The whole movie is like a lyric poem, where people and scenery are integrated, and sound is seen in the silence.
For example, a scene between Ah Zhen and Ah Qing gargle.
The sister and brother, who had just finished arguing, ignored each other, just looked at each other silently, lowered their heads and continued to wash.
White walls and black tiles, the breeze blows, in this situation, the sister and brother look at each other inadvertently, and the deep relationship between the sisters and brothers is self-evident.
The point is that the object moves at will, and the objects dotted in the scenery convey the feelings of several generations.
For example, the ship that often appears in the picture.
In the context of Chinese culture, "boat" is given the meaning of "crossing".
My grandmother, who is over the age of old, was married here by boat.
Many years later, the grandson, who had grown up, left on a boat and went to the big city to find his own foothold.
The mottled wooden boat connects the traditional countryside with the modern city, and also carries the soul of the grandmother to the brave new world.
The filming location of this film is director Chen Xiaoyu's hometown of Deqing, an ancient town in the south of the Yangtze River that is being occupied by modernization.
Every time he returned to his hometown, Chen Xiaoyu found that there would be some changes in his home:
There are fewer and fewer old houses, more and more new buildings, and the human touch is getting less and less.
When I was a child, those places where I picked lotus leaves, fished frogs, and chased and played with my friends will eventually be buried by new things.
So he wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to make a movie to preserve the traces of the old days.
02、
The second layer is the story, the simple life, the taste of reality.
Stripped of the skin of poetry, "Going by Boat" has a story that makes many ordinary people empathize:
When the elderly in the family are seriously ill and difficult to treat, how to accompany her through the last days?
The story is not complicated, and there are only three main characters:
The grandmother with a brain tumor, the eldest daughter Ah Zhen, and the youngest son Ah Qing, the relationship between the characters is clear and clear.
But the three characters are like pebbles thrown into a waterhole, stirring up all kinds of interesting real problems.
Here, Brother Pi wants to talk to you about this story through the three lines in the film.
The first sentence, "The United States is so good, why do you want to come to China to make money?"
The person who said this was a Chinese student in the study abroad class.
The target of his bombardment was Ah Zhen's foreigner husband Ryan.
Ah Zhen, who has worked hard in Shanghai for many years, divorced at an early age, and Lane is her second husband.
The two partnered to open a study abroad agency, where Ryan also served as a teacher.
After the student said this, he turned around and left in style;
Ryan didn't care, he seemed to be used to it.
In a way, the student's words are not wrong.
Ryan took root and settled in Shanghai, saying that it is better to listen to it for love, and to put it bluntly, it is to make more money and live comfortably.
Leaving the United States and staying in China is Lane's choice.
The other people in the film are also faced with all kinds of multiple-choice questions that they have to do.
The eldest sister Ah Zhen, for the sake of her career, she chose to leave her son to go to Shanghai for development, which led to the disharmony between mother and son.
The younger brother A Qing, as the eldest in the family, he chose to wander around, and he was middle-aged and had no wife and no children, and he achieved nothing.
Ah Zhen's son Ah Tao, after graduating from high school, went to the crew as a group performer, but he enjoyed it.
Even my grandmother, when she was young, resolutely left her suffocating original family and found what she loved to start a new life.
"Create what kind of life you want. ”
This is the creed of life that my grandmother believes in, and it is what she has always taught her children to do.
Firming up oneself and pursuing what you want most is the best solution to the "choice problem".
The second sentence, "Grandma's duck eggs are not marinated thoroughly, and eating them will make you upset." ”
There is a very interesting term in the medical world, called "Tianbian filial son syndrome".
To put it simply, I usually can't see the shadow around my parents, and I rarely take the initiative to care about my parents, and my parents suddenly flash when they are seriously ill and express their concern for their parents urgently.
This typical symptom is very prominent in Ah Zhen.
Ah Zhen, who has been away from home for more than ten years, is busy in Shanghai and rarely goes home to get together with his old mother.
Even if I went back, the family had a hurried meal, said a few words and left.
Every time her mother asked her to bring back some of the specialties she had prepared, Ah Zhen was reluctant, but she couldn't resist her mother's kindness.
Just like the salted duck eggs pickled by the mother, Ah Zhen always said that the mother did not marinate them thoroughly and let the daughter throw them away halfway.
When her daughter asked Ah Zhen why she didn't tell her grandmother to let her marinate it thoroughly next time, Ah Zhen was silent and didn't answer.
Because she had never considered such a thing, she thought that she had neither done so to discourage her mother's kindness, nor would it cause her mother more trouble.
This is Ah Zhen's problem: he always imposes his own self-righteousness on his concern for his mother.
Therefore, after her mother was seriously ill, Ah Zhen and Ah Qing had completely different attitudes towards how to treat their mother.
The younger brother felt that he should let his mother leave comfortably and not increase the pain of the old man because of the treatment.
My sister felt that she had to use the best medical resources to keep her mother at all costs.
Even though he knew that his mother would rather leave naturally and suffer less sin, Ah Zhen was unwilling to give up.
The younger brother accused his sister of not considering his mother's feelings, and asked his sister rhetorically:
"Do you think she (mother) is not as clear as you are?"
More extreme than this, put it in reality almost grabs a lot.
On weekdays, the elderly are seriously ill and difficult to treat, and they go to the hospital to cry and make a lot of noise, and even blame their brothers and sisters who usually take care of their parents.
Just like in the movie, after the death of the grandmother, distant relatives and neighbors came to the house to discuss how to do a big deal for the elderly.
At this time, Ah Zhen seemed to understand, and she insisted on letting her mother leave quietly despite the opposition of other relatives.
What scenery and face have no meaning to the mother, it is just a trick for the living.
The third sentence, "There are indeed gods in the sky, I saw it when I was on the plane." ”
At the beginning of the movie, the fact that my grandmother was seriously ill was thrown out, which made people's mood sink suddenly.
But what is ingenious is that the film dissolves the heaviness of the topic itself through the open-mindedness and humor of the grandmother herself.
When she was idle at home, her grandmother accompanied her old sister to the funeral, which was right to pass the time.
Watching TV at her daughter's house, her granddaughter asked her why she had to watch this drama again after watching it.
Grandma replied seriously: It's because you have read it that you can understand it.
Grandma, who is in her 70s, still maintains an innocent state of mind.
Like a child, she will quietly eat ice cream without telling her daughter and feast on burgers.
When she learned that the doctor would not let her be discharged from the hospital, the old lady vented her anger like a wronged child:
"The doctor is my father, where do I want him to take care of it?"
Grandma will also think about the world after death, is there a hell?
She still remembers one time on a plane, she seemed to see those strange clouds in the sky, hiding all kinds of immortals.
The fear of death lost its deterrent power in the optimistic grandmother.
She even took care of her own funeral and refused her daughter's proposal to go to the United States for treatment.
Grandma doesn't want to live and suffer, she always has to come, so it's better to face it calmly.
As she said:
"A person has a man's cave, a person has a person's life, I only have this home, and I recognize this place. ”
This energetic and joyful old lady is the prototype of director Chen Xiaoyu's grandmother.
In the film, Chen Xiaoyu directly used some of the words of his grandmother who usually said, which was playful and did not lose the texture of life.
The director also mentioned that in the movie, his grandmother died, and a scene of the memorial service was filmed at his grandmother's house.
But my grandmother was not taboo about this kind of thing at all, and she joked with her grandson:
"If you shoot at someone else's house, will they be happy?
03、
Speaking of which, the most rare thing about "Going by Boat" is that it has both spring and snow, and does not lose the worldly human touch.
In more than 90 minutes, the director has used restraint many times to gently tell the family affection.
There is a scene where the critically ill grandmother falls out of bed and shouts "The money is gone, how can I treat my daughter".
The whole family was busy, finding a stack of banknotes and giving it to her grandmother, and the daughter hugged the old man and comforted him softly.
The camera was always far away, just cowering in the gap between the legs of the table in the distance, filming the scene.
As the director said, he couldn't bear to let the camera enter this cruel scene and leave his grandmother with the last bit of dignity.
There is also a scene where my grandmother can't bear the pain and tries her best to take off the oxygen mask and want to die.
Son Aqing found out in time, but after picking up the mask, he found that his mother turned her head and refused.
Ah Qing hesitated, but after hesitation, he still put the mask on his mother.
These few seconds of brief hesitation are also the director's compassion for family affection.
Although Ah Qing said that he didn't want his mother to suffer, but when it really came to this time, he couldn't do it.
From the form to the spirit, from the skin to the bone, "Going by Boat" makes people tear up several times, and they have a lot of stamina.
The director used an investment of 1.9 million yuan to shoot the most positive Chinese aesthetics, and the various small and vivid emotions in the film are also the most moving.
After watching this film, some viewers said:
"I thought of my mom. "After reading it, I want to go home and hug my grandmother. ”
Many people put this film into the ranks of the best of the year, calling it the biggest surprise of this year's Chinese films.
Even Jiang Wen, who has not appeared for a long time, stood up and praised this film, which is enough to show the level of "Going by Boat".
At the moment when "big data" movies are rampant, the ontological beauty of movies is becoming more and more a joke.
However, the existence of movies such as "Spring River Plumbing" and "Hidden in the Dust" supports the style of film aesthetics.
I hope that "Going by Boat" can gain more audiences, and don't let such a good movie sink silently.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Ah Zhi
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