"Old Fox" directed by Xiao Yaquan was released in Taiwan, China in November last year, and it only became popular in the mainland a while ago.
Fans have seen this movie through various channels outside the big screen, and the lack of the ultimate experience in the theater has not lowered the rating of this movie, Douban is as high as 8.1, more than half of the audience gave four stars, and the five-star praise is close to 30%.
Such a reputation largely stems from the fact that the film is simple, pure, and extremely portrayal of characters, without utilitarianism, and at the same time conveys correct universal values, it also has a sense of fatalism.
Liu Guanting and Bai Runyin play Liao Tailai, Liao Jie's father and son, two people with pure nature, rent the house of Boss Xie, nicknamed "Old Fox", and every month Old Fox's beautiful assistant will come to collect rent.
Liao Tailai worked in a restaurant and raised his son alone. They are comfortable with the huge gap between the rich and the poor, the soaring stock market, and some people who get rich overnight, and only rely on hard work day after day to get to the life they want.
The old fox, who owns the whole building, holds the fate of father and son in his hands. Liao Tailai's goal is to save money to buy a house facing the street and open his own barber shop. However, housing prices and the stock market have skyrocketed, and Liao Tailai is getting farther and farther away from his goal of opening a barbershop.
In the crazy era, the director used an overly restrained and restrained lens to outline the overly wonderful appearances of all beings.
The old fox controls the fate of others with grace and ease like a godfather, and he always believes that "good people = people who care about other people's feelings = people who fail", which makes him put away his pity and grab fame and fortune.
People's pain comes from ambition and desire, and the fate of the old fox makes Liaojie's worldview and values collapse, and the rivalry between the old and the young is not only magical, but also like a cruel fairy tale that leads the audience to look forward to a happy ending.
The intersection of the son and the old fox, the fate between himself and Lin Zhenzhen, the test of human nature on the crazy rise in the stock market, and the sudden death of the restaurant owner...... These pushed Liao Tailai to a fork in the road of fate. There is no standard answer to right or wrong, and Liao Tailai makes the expected choice.
As far as the movie itself is concerned, the end of the movie can be completely closed before Liao Jie grows up. The scene when he grew up was widely interpreted by fans as the director was explaining that even in a society with a large gap between the rich and the poor and class inequality, good people can still make good and correct choices in various unequal social rules.
However, understanding this level, I really didn't eat this movie thoroughly. The reason why 99% of people don't understand it is because I believe that less than 1% of all audiences may buy or sell houses at the "darkest moment" of the current real estate industry, and only after experiencing it once can they suddenly understand the deep meaning of the movie.
Next, I will tell a little story that happened in the first two days.
I have a couple of friends.
They are as hardworking, elegant and kind as Liao Tailai in the movie, and they have worked hard for half their lives to buy a house at the high price of housing. As a result, the economy was in a cold winter, the income was unsustainable, and the supply was cut off for seven or eight months, and it was forced into a dead end.
Kind-hearted, they lack vigilance against banks, and always think that those financial institutions will be just as kind. naively thought that as long as they scraped together enough money for a few months, they could continue to repay the loan, but there were only two options waiting for them: auction and sale.
It's too late to regret it.
At the end of his life, he was manipulated by intermediaries, coerced by banks, and squeezed by financial companies.
The penalty interest of the bank is as high as 70,000 or 80,000 yuan, and the service fee for the foreclosure of the building by the financial company is as high as 5 points. One is a legal loan shark, and the other is taking advantage of the fire to rob, both are thugs in suits who eat people and don't spit out bones.
The house was sold at a low price, and after paying off the bank loan and deducting various expenses, there was nothing left for the two dates. In a few years, they lost their down payment, lost their renovations, and repaid the loan to the bank, as well as the credit stain that the bank gave back to them that they could not take out a loan for five years.
When I think back to buying a house, three or four people were by my side, counseling signatures, pressing handprints, smiling service, cordial and considerate, as if I was in a different world.
After signing the contract, the buyer watched them wipe their tears and go out, and when the buyer listened to the notary public who was connected to the camera and said, "If the loan is not repaid, we will accept the commission to seal the property according to law", is there still joy in the heart of buying a house, or is it fear and sadness? If the loan is not repaid next, the end is not the same as the couple who sold the house?
The buyer is also self-occupied, but he can't strip away the financial attributes of the essence of the house, we can't wait for the "building collapse" in Wanqing's lyrics in our lifetime, as long as the house is transferred, bought and sold in the future, in fact, it is the same as stocks, it is just a game of drumming and passing flowers, and it will eventually fall into the hands of an unlucky person.
After all this, watch back to "The Old Fox".
Liao Tailai made the choice of fate when he chased out of the restaurant and said "let it to the Li family" with the old fox.
Lao Li, who opened a snack bar, hanged himself in the house due to stock speculation, and the old fox decided to sell it to Liao Tailai at a discount according to the market price of the dead man's house. But at the same time, Lao Li's children proposed to buy it at the price of a normal house. The mercenary old fox was very relieved to hear the words "let it to the Li family", he once again maximized his interests, and Liao Tailai gave up his dream of opening a barber shop.
However, if Liao Tailai chooses not to give it to the Li family, then his friend's experience of buying a house can be made into a sequel to "The Old Fox".
The film begins with a time background in Taiwan, China in 1990, where the stock market soared from 2,000 to 12,000 in two and a half years, and then fell back to 2,000 in eight months. And so far it has not been able to rise back to its original high.
At that time, Taiwan's housing prices were basically proportional to the stock market, and when the story soared, housing prices also climbed steadily, Zheng Zhihua's "Snail's Home" "I carried a heavy shell on my back and worked hard to climb up, but I will never be able to catch up with the soaring housing prices" was written about the property market at that time.
Then Taiwan's stock market crashed, and the real estate bubble quickly burst, causing housing prices to fall dramatically.
Judging from the timeline of the movie, when the Li family's suite was sold, it happened to be the critical point when the property market rushed to the highest point to collapse, if Liao Tailai did not give it to the Li family, he would be an unlucky guy in the drumming and flower passing game, and the ending would be very tragic.
Therefore, Liao Tailai's kindness makes him seem to make the choice of sacrificing himself and fulfilling others, but in fact, looking back, it is the most correct choice, only after experiencing the painful experience of buying and selling a house at the moment, I know how much disaster Liao Tailai has avoided, and I understand that this is the biggest blank space in the movie "Old Fox", and it is the warmest human care that the director tries to convey.
Don't believe me? Look at Liao Jie in the movie.
He was precocious, and he could think of selling Zhenzhen to try to let the old fox sell the house at a low price, and he was so precocious that the three views gradually took shape, so he knew that his father was angry and ruined to give up the house.
Why would such a child choose and insist on kindness again after a few years? It must be that he firmly believed that his father's choice was right, witnessed the cruelty of the stock market and property market crash, and his father's kindness gave him the comfort of the rest of his life and grew up steadily, so that he re-established the belief of being kind.
This should also be the director's most tactful persuasion to the audience!